Open Access Fund

In October 2006, the IMS Council took action to set up an Open Access Fund to which individuals and organizations can donate. The fund will be used to support the establishment and ongoing operation of open access publications and ventures which foster the development and dissemination of the theory and applications of statistics and probability.

IMS currently has several open access publications, including; Probability Suveys, Statistics Surveys, Electronic Journal of Probability, Electronic Communications in Probability and Electronic Journal of Statistics. Each journal has modest expenses including typesetting, electronic platform placement and Arxiv posting. Three further IMS open access ventures are the posting of all IMS journal articles to ArXiv, assistance to members in posting to ArXiv, and the IMS biobibs project.

The hope is that an Open Access Fund will assist the IMS in defraying these expenses and provide an opportunity for individuals and organizations to support such efforts. The above named publications and ventures and future ventures will be supported by the fund. Future ventures might include for example: an online encyclopedia of probability and statistics comparable to Wiley's Encyclopedia of Statistical Science, open access repositories for other professional content such as data, interactive graphics, teaching materials and software, and integration of such diverse content through a web portal.