ICSTI
2005 GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Moscow, Russia
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD
In compliance with Statutes 11.6 and 16 and By-Law 8.1, the Executive Board presents
to the General Assembly a report of its activities and a review of the activities of ICSTI
and its Committees during the preceding year. The finances of ICSTI are reviewed in the
Treasurer's Final Year-End Financial Report 2004. The annual report covers the period
June 2004 - April 2005 and refers to the resolutions of and actions consecutive to the
main meetings held during this period:
 The 2004 General Assembly held in London, England May 13-17, 2004
 The Winter Meetings of 7-9 January in Paris, 2005
CONTENT:
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GOVERNANCE
MEMBERSHIP
INFORMATION POLICY ISSUES
TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES
RECORD OF PAST MEETINGS
HEADQUARTERS MATTERS
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GOVERNANCE
Election of the Officers and Executive Board
The following were elected as Officers at the General Assembly in London:
President: Gerard Giroud, EPO
Vice President: Bernard Dumouchel, CISTI, Canada
General Secretary: Elliot Siegel, NLM, USA
Treasurer: Gabriela Lopez da Silva, FCT, Portugal
The following Members were elected to the Executive Board:
IUCr
IUPAP
BRD, US Geological Survey
The British Library
DTIC, USA
Elsevier Science
INIST-CNRS, France
KISTI, Korea
Lapiz Digital Services, India
VINITI, Russia
Committees and Chairs
At its first meeting the new Executive Board made the following appointments:
Finance: Gabriela Lopez da Silva
Technical Activities Co-Ordinating Committee (TACC): Herbert Gruttemeier, INISTCNRS
Information Policy Committee (IPC): Bernard Dumouchel
Membership Committee: Walt Warnick, US Dept of Energy (invited)
Statutes and By-Laws: Tom Lahr, BRD-USGS
Editorial Board for Forum: Martin Smith, INSPEC
Website Advisory Committee: Carlynn Thompson, DTIC, USA
Marketing/PR Committee: Indira Sundararajan, Lapiz
Annual Meeting Committee: Tom Lahr, BRD-USGS
In addition, Martin Smith will act as co-ordinator of the Members who’s activities are
‘commercial’ to ensure their active participation in ICSTI.
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MEMBERSHIP
At the Winter meeting in Paris, the Executive Board voted to place before the
membership a new dues proposal developed by past president, Kent Smith, which retains
the three classes of membership, but greatly simplifies the system with respect to
numbers of categories. Simplification is intended to increase the transparency of ICSTI
dues obligations to prospective members. It is revenue-neutral. Additionally, it
addresses directly the desire to retain as identifiable member organizations those which
have been newly affiliated or merged with other ICSTI member organizations. The new
scheme would be applied to all incoming new members, and would take effect for current
members as of 2006. In an effort to accelerate approval of this dues restructuring plan
prior to the GA in May, an email ballot was distributed immediately following the
January meeting. The results will be announced at the GA in Moscow and a new vote
taken should there be a dissenting vote cast in the email balloting.
ICSTI membership remained stable during the period with the addition of three new full
members in Class B.
German National Library of Science and Technology
Representative: Mr. Uwe ROSEMANN, Head Librarian
Alternate: Ms. Irina SENS, Deputy Librarian
Bureau Van Dijk Information Management
Representative: Martine DEJEAN, Presidente Directeur Generale
Alternates:Anne CARABAIAL Antoine RAULIN
EDP Sciences
Representative: Mr. Jean-Marc QUILBE, Managing Director
During the last year there have been two resignations of members including The Getty
Institute and The Association for Information Management (ASLIB).
Two other members have recently given official notice of their intent to resign after 2005.
These include Science and Technology Information Center (STIC) and Ingenta.
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INFORMATION POLICY ISSUES
Open Access
ICSTI continues to play a facilitative role in the sharing of information and policy
positions regarding the emergence of new publication formats -- printed and electronic,
and alternative pricing models that have the capacity to transform scientific
communications in the coming years. The ICSTI membership includes key stakeholders
from commercial and society publishers, libraries, and scientific unions, thereby greatly
adding to the substance and credibility of ICSTI policy statements that have been
prepared for consideration by governmental and public policy forums in Europe and
North America. Additionally, these efforts inform and engage the international scientific
community in discussions of the importance these matters hold for the traditional role of
scientific communication as means to inform and establish precedence of discovery; to
expand the user base of scientific information amongst scientists in resource-poor
countries and for members of the taxpaying public who underwrite the costs of a
significant proportion of scientific research; and to define common ground between
stakeholder groups. (See Annex 1, program of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science annual meeting, 19 February 2005.
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/Annual_Meeting/03_GI/Info_07_About.shtml#three)
Digital Archiving
ICSTI continues it long standing interest in advancing the scientific community’s
understanding and practices with respect to the preservation of the record of science for
future generations. The new electronic media can both facilitate and impede efforts in
this regard. ICSTI has commissioned important studies of new techniques and
applications by publishers and libraries internationally; issued a policy position statement
intended to define best practices; and is currently collaborating with working members of
the crystallography community in a pilot project to determine their understanding and
experience with preservation issues. ICSTI has also succeeded in establishing the
importance of science information preservation as a component of the World Summit on
Information Society, and is pursuing the development of web portal technology to
facilitate access to best practices by developing countries. This and other collaborations
with CODATA and ICSU will help ensure that developing countries may also participate
in efforts to preserve their scientific and cultural heritage. (See ICSTI public conference,
London, 17 May 2004.
http://www.icsti.org/private/2004ga/ICSTI_Public_Conf_proceedings.pdf )
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TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES
ICSTI member organizations include amongst its ranks many of the leading Scientific
and Technical Information Centers internationally. A study was commissioned in 2004
to identify the critical developments that these centers and libraries will likely face in the
coming five years. It has formed the basis for pursuing discussions that may facilitate
new collaborations among these Centers with the goal of identifying important strategic
initiatives. New project possibilities to emerge from these discussions may be critical to
setting the future technical programme for ICSTI, and attracting new members who see
the relevance of this work to their own organization’s efforts to remain current with new
developments in wireless technology, document delivery, archiving and user expectations
for robust customer services.
RECORD OF PAST MEETINGS
2004 General Assembly
A summary of the entire meeting, both the public conference and the business meetings
was produced by the Executive Director and is posted on the ICSTI Members Area of the
web site. There may also be found the detailed minutes of past meetings.
2005 General Assembly
At the annual meeting in Ottawa (2003), the Board accepted VINITI’s invitation to host
the 2005 annual meeting in Moscow. Professor Yuri Arskiy presented their proposal and
subsequent refinements at subsequent meetings which are reported elsewhere in their
respective minutes. In March 2005 notice was formally issued to all ICSTI members that
the 2005 General Assembly will be convened at the Rossija Hotel, Moscow, Russia from
25-29 May 2005.
Honorary Membership
Outgoing ICSTI president, Kurt Molholm was bestowed with Honorary Membership at
the May 2005 annual meeting. This important honor was also conveyed to past president,
Kent Smith at the time of the Winter 2005 meeting. Both individuals were recognized for
their effective leadership of ICSTI during the past decade, and valued fellowship.
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HEADQUARTERS MATTERS
During the past year, Olivia Gonzales resigned her position due to the transfer of her
husband from Paris. ICSTI was most fortunate to secure the services of Ms. Cynthia
Sauvage who will continue in the administrative role of the ICSTI Secretariat at the Paris
offices. Barry Mahon continues his duties as Executive Director from his base in Dublin.
Discussions continue with CODATA on opportunities for additional collaborations in
important policy and technical areas that impact the scientific community generally, and
ICSU in particular. With regard to the latter, ICSTI has taken proactive steps with the
ICSU leadership to promote recognition of our current and prospective contributions to
the mission and priorities of ICSU in the scientific communications arena.
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ANNEX 1
AAAS Symposium, February 19, 2005, Washington D.C.
Changing Scientific Publishing: Open Access and Implications
for Working Scientists
Organized by: Bonnie C. Carroll, U.S. CENDI; Kathleen Cass, Committee On Data for Science
and Technology; Barry Mahon, International Council for Scientific and Technical
Information
“Open Access” to scientific publications is a technical, economic, philosophical,
and political concept. It was precipitated in large measure by the economic
challenges of rising journal prices and libraries’ inabilities to continue
to provide access to the needed array of journals for technical users. This
economic reality led to questions about new models to provide access to the
results of research. It led to analyzing and questioning the traditional model
of the scientific publishing. At the same time, enabling information technologies
have provided new options for “publishing” and disseminating
research results. Open access became one rallying concept for those looking
for an alternative to the traditional publishing model. People began to experiment.
Ownership of copyright, how to finance publishing, and many other
aspects of traditional publishing were explored. There have been movements
in some disciplines for scientists to lead publishing experiments. These
experiments and the increasingly informed debates have led to a better
appreciation of the complexities of the publishing process. From an initially
polarized discussion between publishers and libraries, the issues of new
models are being tested and clarified. Whatever the future of scholarly scientific
publishing, it will have to deal with issues of acquisition (or identification
of appropriate material), verification and quality control, production,
dissemination (location and access) and archiving. There will likely be fundamental
changes in scientific publishing. The purpose of this symposium is
to review open access as a publishing model and to bring the working scientist
into the discussion in the AAAS context.
A COMMERCIAL PUBLISHER’S PERSPECTIVE ON SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING
AND OPEN ACCESS, Pieter Bolman, International Association of Scientific,
Technical, and Medical Publishers
IMPLEMENTING A NEW MODEL FOR SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING, Helen
Doyle, Public Library of Science
THE ECONOMICS OF OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING: A STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE,
Mark McCabe, School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Christopher M. Snyder, George Washington University
OVERVIEW OF THE CLASSICAL PUBLISHING MODEL AND THE NEW
MODEL OF OPEN ACCESS, Sir John Enderby, The Royal Society
PUBLISHING MODEL FOR A NOT-FOR-PROFIT PUBLISHER PER CONCEPTS
OF OPEN ACCESS, Lenne P. Miller, The Endocrine Society
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