Invitation to Mathematicians to start survey journals in a Math
Surveys family
Probability Surveys,
in operation since 2004, and
Statistics Surveys, being
started in 2006,
are the initial journals in a planned family of open access electronic
journals
devoted to survey papers. See
The Mathematics Survey project for the big picture.
We invite mathematicians to contribute to the project by starting journals
in other branches of mathematics. This document explains informally what
you would need to do.
Planning stage
At the beginning you need at least
- One person with energy, initiative and enthusiasm to oversee the whole
process
- One person who agrees to be the initial Editor.
These could be the same person, though hustling for money to set
yourself up as Editor might be considered undignified. One,
preferably both, should be high profile within the relevant branch of
mathematics.
We encourage you to contact us (Jim Pitman: pitman@stat.berkeley.edu) at this early stage.
Next, get some people to agree to be Associate Editors. We suggest at
least 10 people.
They should be both reasonably administratively competent and reasonably
high profile
(distinguished people lacking the talent or time for the former could be
asked to be on a Advisory Board). In our experience, most people are
happy to agree.
Funding
Look for a source of funding; you will need about $3,000 - $10,000 per year,
depending on number of papers and where the journal is hosted. We
have obtained funding from professional societies, and that is our first
suggestion. If no existing society is devoted to your branch, then try
national math societies in countries with traditional strength in this
branch.
You will need both informal approaches to individuals of influence, and a
formal proposal.
For the latter you may edit our
proposal for society sponsorship.
Start-up phase
We started Probability Surveys by emailing 75 prominent researchers
to solicit survey papers; this both gathered some papers and publicized
the project. We did this before securing funding -- obviously somewhat
risky. Once funding is obtained you should publicly announce the
journal launch: announce at conferences, etc.
Running the journal
VTEX is willing to host further journals under the same terms as the
existing journals.
Effectively they provide a "turnkey" service, so you don't need to think
about infrastructure.
It's almost like taking over operation of an existing journal.
The document
proposal for society sponsorship outlines the general procedures under
which the existing journals operate.
Alternatives: math society survey journals
An alternative project is to encourage national math societies to set up
mathematics-wide survey journals: see for example
Ensaios Matematicos by
the Brazilian Mathematical Society. This may be more acceptable to societies
providing funding, but may be more difficult to create an Editorial Board to
cover all mathematics. VTEX would be willing to host such journals (less effort
than for you to set up and
run an ad hoc web site).