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In this last contribution of mine to Bernoulli News as President of the Bernoulli Society, I would like to highlight some activities and report on some recent first steps approved by the Executive Committee and the Council during the last months.
The Council approved a new initiative for the creation of the Bernoulli Society Prize for Best Survey Papers in Mathematical Statistics and Probability. The goal is to recognize and communicate the importance of expertly written survey articles through a special award. Detailed information is featured in the current issue of Bernoulli News.
Also approved by the Council was the publication of a special issue of the Bernoulli Journal (BJ) in 2013, as part of the celebrations of the 300th Anniversary of the publication of the Ars Conjectandi by Jacob Bernoulli. Following a recommendation of the Executive and the Publications Committees, Thomas Mikosch and Richard Davis were appointed as guest editors of this special issue. It will consist of a series of invited papers to provide a glimpse at future directions in probability and statistics from new application areas, to the development of new models, to the emerging interfaces between statistics and probability with other sciences as well as essays on the future of probability and mathematical statistics. This issue will be published in addition to the four numbers of the annual volume and will have universal electronic open access.
The above initiative adds to a series of activities also planned for the year 2013. Among them are special open lectures in the program of the Bernoulli Society meetings during that year, namely the 59th ISI World Statistics Congress in Hong Kong; the 36th Conference on Stochastic Processes and their Applications in Boulder, Colorado, and the 29th European Meeting of Statisticians (EMS) in Budapest, Hungary. The EMS will also hold a Special Session to celebrate the 300 years of the St. Petersburg Paradox. Moreover, the IMS, one of our close society sisters, has kindly agreed to hold a Special Session for the Ars Conjectandi in its 2013 Annual Meeting in Montréal, Canada. It is also very fortunate that the Swiss Statistical Society is planning a conference in Basel, focusing on the history of the Ars Conjectandi, the impact on science and the development to date of the most important result in this book; the Law of Large Numbers. The Bernoulli Society is one of the organizations sponsoring the Basel Conference. Despite all this, I feel some activities of interest and visibility for a more general public outside our profession are still missing. Some colleagues of the European Regional Committee are currently considering some efforts in this direction. Furthermore, at the time of writing, the ISI and some other statistical societies are brainstorming the possibility of jointly launching an International Year of Statistics, to which all the above described activities would be naturally added.
Prior to all of that, in July of 2012 the World Congress in Probability and Statistics will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. The Programme Committee chaired by Arnoldo Frigessi and the Local Organizing Committee headed by Mine Caglar and Elvan Cehyan have been working very hard to prepare an attractive and interesting congress. The Executive Committee has already approved to fund four Bernoulli Society Named Lectures (Bernoulli, Kolmogorov, Laplace and Tukey), the World Congress Public Lecture, two Special Invited Sessions (one in probability and one in mathematical statistics) as well as the use of the ISI-World Bank Funds for the participation of colleagues from developing countries in this World Congress.
Also in 2012, the XII Latin American Congress in Probability and Mathematical Statistics (CLAPEM) will take place in Valparaiso, Chile. The Executive Committee has also made some financial provisions to support this CLAPEM, as it was done for the previous CLAPEM in Venezuela.
Regarding strategies for publications, the last months have represented an intense period of discussions and negotiations for the renewal of expired publication agreements for the two Bernoulli Society official publications. Firstly, an ad-hoc-committee was formed to negotiate with Elsevier the terms on the new sponsorship of agreement for the publication of the journal Stochastic Processes and their Applications (SPA). This committee was successfully chaired by Frank den Hollander and included Thomas Mikosch, Michael Sørensen, Eulalia Vares and Ed Waymire. At the time of the writing of this contribution, the final negotiations have not been yet closed, but there are some important advances. For example, Elsevier has agreed a 10% annual decrease in the price of the SPA institutional subscription during the period of the new agreement, to increase resources for Bernoulli Society activities and initiatives, and the publication of special issues of SPA with universal free open access, among other matters. Most importantly, some key issues have been identified and clarified between Elsevier and the Bernoulli Society, although there are still other non-trivial matters to resolve in the future. I would like to thank Frank and the whole ad-hoc-committee for their excellent job in these negotiations and to recognize Elsevier’s efforts and understanding in regard to some of the various sensitive issues raised by several members of the stochastic processes community.
With regard to the publication of the BJ, it has been recommended by the Publication and the Executive Committee to renew the publication agreement with the IMS, for a three year term beginning January 2012. It was also recommended to form an ad-hoc-committee to carefully study and suggest a long term proposal, which may include, as a possibility, the move to a commercial publisher. It was pointed out that an increasing number of professional societies in statistics have moved in to letting commercial publishers publish their journals. That is the case of the Royal Statistical Society, the ISI, and recently the American Statistical Association, among others. Moves in the other direction have also been observed, like the Annales de L’Institut Henri Poincaré.
The view on the problem of using commercial publishers, and perhaps also the needs, might be different in the mathematics (including probability, stochastic processes and mathematical statistics) and the statistics communities as well as in the different goal and scope of the portfolio of journals. Therefore the Bernoulli Society should investigate the potential benefits and dangers of this, including how it will be perceived by the mathematical statistics and probability communities. This is a matter that has to be carefully analyzed, considering and including the several and diverse points of view and positions, starting from constructing a Society vision on the future of the portfolio of publications and the role of scientific societies and commercial publishers in the new times of electronic communications, open access policies and dissemination of science.
Institutional subscriptions to the owned society journals are, jointly with membership dues, the most important income sources for a scientific society, but a balance between the goals should be reached. It is a fact that the agreement with the IMS for the publication of BJ has brought a healthier financial situation, as compared with the very critical moments of some years ago and when an alternative move was needed. This and revenues from organization of some conferences have allowed the Bernoulli Society to start modestly patronizing the organization of some congresses, conferences and meetings and, in particular, the participation of colleagues from developing countries in these events. This more stable income has also made it possible to continue supporting other publications like the five open access electronic journals co-sponsored with other societies. Whether the Bernoulli Society can do better is, of course, a question, for which the work and recommendations of the planned ad-hoc-committee will be a strategic achievement.
Finally, I would like to thank the Executives, Council members, Committee Chairs and Editors of the Bernoulli Society publications for their collaborative and team work during the last two years. Thanks also to the several Bernoulli Society members that sent criticisms, comments and suggestions to the several initiatives during the last two years. We will continue working until the next Bernoulli Society General Assembly in Dublin in August of this year. Those attending the Dublin ISI World Congress, write down in your agenda our General Assembly.
Víctor Pérez-Abreu, Guanajuato
President of the Bernoulli Society
The deadline for the next issue is September 30, 2011. Please send contributions to the Editor: Victor Panaretos.