Below are documents written or endorsed by the CoP on topics of particular interest (in inverse chronological order). CoPs recommendations as endorsed by the IMU Executive Committee are communicated to the adhering organizations through IMU Circular Letters.
During its existence, CoP has also made further recommendations on copyright and availability of publications in digital form (2001), retrodigitization (2006), and journal prices (2004), but they are not up-to-date anymore and hence not listed here.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping mathematical research through large language models, symbolic computation, formalization systems, and growing industrial interest in mathematics as a testing ground for automated reasoning. While these developments offer significant opportunities, they also raise important questions that deserve careful consideration by the mathematical community.
The Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics, published on June 2, 2026, addresses many of these issues. It emerged from the 2025 conference Mechanization and Mathematical Research at Leiden University, which brought together mathematicians, computer scientists, philosophers, and social scientists from 10 countries. Following extensive community consultation, a working group developed the declaration to reflect the state of AI and mathematical practice as of May 2026.
The IMU Executive Committee and its Committee on Publishing (CoP), chaired by Ilka Agricola, followed the development of the declaration closely. On 2nd June 2026, the Leiden Declaration was published with the endorsement of the IMU.
Joint Recommendations and a Report of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) on Fraudulent Publishing.
The IMU and the ICIAM make explicit recommendations for policy makers and institutions on how to encourage good scientific practice and simultaneously detect and combat fraudulent behavior.
For individuals, the recommendations provide a set of possible actions to safeguard research communities from being corrupted by fraud and pure business interests.
These recommendations were formulated by the authors in close collaboration with the IMU Committee on Publishing (chaired by Ilka Agricola) and have been endorsed by the Executive Committee
of the IMU and the Board of the ICIAM in May/June 2025.
Please find the recommendations and the accompanying report below:
The IMU Executive Committee (EC) – on the advice of the CoP – created in 2021 an ad hoc Committee on Permissions with the task of preparing a report regarding the following:
The Committee on Permissions was chaired by Thomas Brennan (Harvard Law School, US) and submitted its final report to the IMU EC in August 2024. This final report has been endorsed by the IMU EC.
In the years 2020 and 2021, the CoP worked on an updated edition of best current practices for journals, which were subsequently endorsed by the EC. All previous editions thus lose their validity.
As a historical document of particular relevance, we include here the booklet “Recommendations on Electronic Information and Communication” published in the pioneering time of CoP (then CEIC) at the end of the first four year term in 2002. It is a document of remarkable foresight and clarity.