Under the new statutes of the International Council for Science (ICSU) the Committee on the Dissemination of Scientific Information is one of the special advisory committees created by the General Assembly and responsible to the Executive Board. It is charged with providing advice to the ICSU family about scientific publications, new developments in information technology, access to data and information, and pertinent legal issues. It is authorised to continue to use the imprimatur "CDSI''. The committee supersedes the CDSI Publishing Service which in recent years has focussed its attention on providing advice and counsel in publishing matters to ICSU members and which itself grew out of the CDSI which was originally created as the publishing house of ICSU (ICSU Press).
CDSI Standing Committee
CDSI activities are overseen by a Standing Committee appointed by the ICSU Executive Board whose current membership is as follows:
Chair - Eric Sandewall (Sweden)
- Kenneth R Fulton(U.S.A.)
- Gabriela Munoz (Chile)
- N. Mukunda (India)
- Ex-officio - Kai-Inge Hillerud (Sweden - ICSU Legal Adviser)
- Ex-Officio - to be appointed (UNESCO representative)
In addition to providing advice on specific matters, CDSI has recently been
much concerned to provide a forum for discussion and advice to the scientific
community on the impact of the new technologies on the scientific information
chain. In 1996 it organized an expert conference on "Electronic Publishing in
Science" in co-operation with UNESCO. The Proceedings of this Conference and
its Recommendations will be found on this website and elsewhere. In 1996 it received a mandate
from the General Assembly to undertake a programme of follow-up activities in
pursuit of these recommendations. This has been pursued in association with
other interested parties and a list of activities which have taken place is
given below.
In the light of the dramatic developments which took place
during the ensuing five years a Second ICSU-UNESCO Conference on Electronic
Publishing in Science was held in Paris in February 2001. The Proceedings and
Recommendations of this meeting are to be found on this
website and also at UNESCO
1. An international workshop on "Economics, Real Costs and Benefits of Electronic Publishing in Science'' was held at Keble College, Oxford (UK) from 31 March to 2 April 1998. The Proceedings and Recommendations of this meeting may be found here
2. A further international workshop to discuss "Normative Issues", organised in collaboration with AAAS and ACOSC was held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris October 12 - 14 1998 to consider methods of developing best practices and standards for electronic publishing in science. A summary of the proceedings and recommendations of this Workshop has now been published.
3. The results of all these deliberations and their recommendations formed part of a forum organised in association with the World Science Conference in July 1999. A report on this was published in Science International.
4. The important issue of the archiving and preservation of electronic scientific publication is being addressed by ICSTI who have established a working group to report on the issue. A workshop on digital archiving was held in Paris on 30-31 January 2000 and is reported in ICSTI FORUM no. 33 (March 2000).
5. The opportunities, and problems, arising from the increase in electronic publishing for scientists in developing countries has been a topic at the above meetings. In addition a number of workshops have been sponsored and encouraged through INASP and other channels to assist scientists in these countries. A meeting to compare experience and best practice was held in Oxford 10-12 May 1999 in collaboration with The British Council. The papers presented at this workshop entitled "Scientific communication and publishing in the information age" are available on the INASP website.
6. At the request of the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), an international working group has drafted a paper on what constitutes "publication" in science in the electronic environment. The paper Defining and Certifying Electronic Publication in Science is posted here for wide distribution and feedback is invited. Comments should be sent to Roger Elliott
As part of its programme to offer help to scientists
on matters of science publishing the CDSI has published a booklet
GUIDELINES for SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING . This is the third edition and copies
may be downloaded from this website provided you have an Acrobat reader. Those
unable to read pdf (Acrobat) files should access the
HTML version of the Guidelines.
A spanish translation of the guidelines in
PDF format was mounted on this site in October 2001. Those unable to read pdf
files should access the html version .
A french translation was mounted in
September 2002.
CDSI also sponsors the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) in collaboration with UNESCO and TWAS. INASP is a co-operative network of partners whose aim is to improve worldwide access to information. In particular its mission is to improve the flow of information within and between countries, especially those with less developed systems of publication and dissemination. More details of INASP will be found in the INASP Web pages.