Wed, 04 Feb 2004 18:13:54 GMT

Valparaiso Declaration for Improved Scientific Communication. The presentations from the recent meeting in Chile, Strengthening Editors and Scientists Capabilities in Electronic Publishing (Valparaiso, January 14-15, 2004) are now online.

During the conference, the 120 participants from 15 countries drafted the Valparaiso Declaration for Improved Scientific Communication in the Electronic Medium, which was released today. Excerpt: “Journals must improve their production processes by using online technologies in order to reduce their publication times….Assessments of reading habits and analyses of the market for electronic journals clearly confirm the fact that the Internet is already a place of convergence and the preferred medium for the transmission of scientific knowledge….Managers of scientific journals are responsible for achieving their maximal dissemination, bringing with it greater visibility and accessibility. They should not only ensure that their contents and format are standardized but also that they are indexed in the greatest possible number of data bases and indexes, and that the complete texts are immediately available in multiple repositories….The gradual reduction in publishing costs as a result of electronic publication (given the fact that the costs of the production process are more and more being borne by the authors and readers) must inexorably lead to systems of communicating science that are open and managed by the scientific community itself.” (PS: I've linked to an email copy of the declaration in our forum archive. If the conference posts an official version online, I'll blog the URL.) [Open Access News]

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this sounds like it could be the start of something good, but where did the berlin declaration go? why are there 100 different movements? i'm not sure, but i'd like to work on it a bit…..