A short report from the International APE Conference: “Smarter publishing in the new decade”

In his opening remarks, Professor Michael Mabe (CEO, International Association of STM Publishers, The Hague and Oxford) welcomed all participants. He reminded the audience that twenty years of the Internet have changed much in publishing, but that many new formats have historic precursors, e.g., XML the scroll; and PDF the codex. He identified three preeminent themes for 2011 and the years to come: (a) policy development with regard to research data and publications, particularly as new evidence becomes available from a variety of international projects; (b) the (possible) tipping point for eBooks and therefore for all of scholarly publishing to occur online first and primarily; and (c) how to deal with intellectual property rights when, in principle, the first digital copy serves all. In his opening keynote, Professor John Wood (Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, London and Chair of the High Level Expert Group on Scientific Data) spoke about Riding the wave: How Europe can gain from the rising tide of scientific data. The rising tide drives the globalization and virtualization of research, enabling the world to tackle major challenges like sustainable development in a more democratic way through shared and equal access to data and its extensive re-use. At the level of infrastructure, further large-scale investment in the grid and super computers is paramount, while at the policy level international summits should be hosted to develop common standards and a shared understanding of the technical, linguistic and legal challenges involved. Professor Wood stressed that European projects to build research infrastructures demonstrate conclusively that