On 19–20 September 2025, CoP held a two day meeting at the IMU headquarters in Berlin. Participants were:

• CoP members: Ilka Agricola, Jean Pierre Bourguignon, Marie Farge, Takashi Kumagai, Lynn Heller, Ingrid Rewitzky, Peter Taylor, Mark Wilson
• Guests: Ulrike Tillmann (EC liaison officer), Christoph Sorger (IMU secretary general)
• Invited speakers:
  • Anna Abalkina: Large scale fraud in science — insights of a science sleuth
  • Jonas Henkel: AI assisted research in (pure) math.

Beyond updates on ongoing topics and discussions of the invited talks, the workshop focused on the question: What should be the priorities of CoP in the next years? What are the most pressing needs of our communities?

The following priority topics were identified:

1. Intensifying community work and awareness campaigns, identifying effective channels and formats.
2. Promoting sustainable business and governance models for journals, including diamond open access and community controlled infrastructures.
3. Formulating best practices for editors and journals regarding fraudulent publishing and ethical issues.
4. Reforming peer review processes; considering workload, quality, and resilience against fraud.
5. Assessing the impact of AI on publishing and preventing systemic collapse including considerations on proof assistants and AI generated content.
6. Providing advice on complex topics such as copyright, licenses, funders’ rules, and permissions (e.g. in relation to the Permissions Committee’s work).
7. Implementing the Permissions Committee recommendations identifying viable instances of implementation, organisational frameworks, and funding strategies.

These priorities will guide CoP’s work for the remainder of the 2023–2026 term and beyond.
 

25 experts from all continents except Antarctica gathered in New York in September 2024 under the auspices of the IMU and upon invitation of the Simons Foundation to discuss  recent developments in mathematical publishing in a very broad sense. Rather than a classical scholarly meeting, the participants understood their active participation as a service to the global mathematical community with the following goals:

• To develop together an expert opinion on key issues around mathematical publishing
• To formulate recommendations, milestones & guidance for the community
• To discuss the dissemination and communication of the results to the community, national societies, policy makers etc.

Five major points of  interest & action were identified prior to the meeting and served to structure the workshop. Clearly, the topics 3) and 5) were more of a strategic nature, while identifying concrete actions were the goal of topics 1), 2), and 4):

1. Steps towards a Global Digital Math Library (GDML)
2. Copyright strategies and legal issues
3. The future of mathematical libraries and research data infrastructure
4. The challenges of citation cartels and predatory publishers
5. The impact of AI and computer proof assistants on mathematical publishing

This was the first international in-person meeting on publishing in the mathematical sciences since more than 5 years, and for many people it was their first opportunity for a personal encounter. It was extremely fruitful and we believe that it will be the starting point for many further activities and discussions.

A recording of the plenary talks is available on the webpage of the Simons Foundation:

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/mps-workshop-on-perspectives-on-electronic-information-communication-in-the-mathematical-sciences/