Thorsten Koch: Position Statement

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Here is my naive view on the matter:

There are a few problems to solve before the WDML comes into being:

  1. Technically collecting all the material.
    This is not easy, but given some money, and after having decided what to include, I believe it is reasonable feasible.
    60% will be reached fast, 80% in the forseeable future and the rest is a task for eternity.
  2. Having done this the collected material sits somewhere unaccessable in a somewhat disorganized fashion.
    The biggest problem is the law. And it is even different in every country. I cannot see that we will be able to change this.
    And even if we succeed for future publications it will not change situation for the existing papers.
  3. Consequently, we need a conjoint agrement with the publishers.
    I believe that the current business model of the publisher is bust and actually resembles some kind of extortion.
    Nevertheless, I see a useful place for the publishers. Imaging something like this:
    • Upon acceptence of a paper you pay something like $100 for producing a camera ready copy.
    • The author retains all rights, but grants the publisher an exclusive right for printed publication for 10 years.
    • Furthermore, the publisher gets an non-exclusive right to put the paper into his discovery service/web site/whatever and also to give the paper to other such services. The publisher is of course free to charge for access to his webservice.
    • The autor still has all rights to distribute the paper electronically in any way.
    This would give the publishers money for what they actually do: produce the final copy, set up a discovery service and sell printed copies. On the other hand, the author can put the paper on his homepage, institute repository and other competing discovery service science institutions would free to set up.
  4. This still leaves the questions of the already published papers.
    Here I believe that The cost of knowledge has shown that there is also some need from publisher to find and agreeable solution.
    This depends mainly on whether the top people in mathematics are willing to support this. Possibly, up the point where they leave the board of a journal.
    In the worst case, a journal could be set up as The new journal on .. with the old board and another publishers.
  5. This leaves the question of how to organize the information.
    I blieve this is not important at the moment. Obviously, there are many things to do regarding making mathemtics searchable, but I think this process will not stop for the forseeable future.
    If should provide the repository with all the material and some discovery service for it. The anybody could get it and develop better ways to access the material.
    Then people might set up there own "better" version, or even incorporated into a commercial service, or donate their new technology for the original WDML website.
    In any case the WDML could become a major topic/resource for development of new serach and access, OCR, ... technology.
    But I foresee so much new to come from this direction that we should not try to organize it.
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