The ISI’s role in international statistics has three principal components: meetings (especially the biennial Sessions), publications, and as the international facilitator for development and communication among statisticians (especially through the Sections). Over time, I will address each of these, but a series of recent propitious changes make publications a timely topic for this issue.

The ISI publishes four journals through the Permanent Office: The International Statistical Review (ISR), Bernoulli, Short Book Reviews (SBR), and Statistical Theory and Method Abstracts (STMA). In addition, we endorse the journal Computational Statistics & Data Analysis (CSDA), published by Elsevier for the IASC, and the new Statistics Education Research Journal (SERJ) published electronically by the IASE (check it out at: http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/serj/ ), and of course this ISI Newsletter.

Two of the printed journals have had major editorial changes this year. We can celebrate having recruited Eugene Seneta of the University of Sydney to join Asta Manninen in co-editing the ISR, and Peter McCullagh of my own department at the University of Chicago to succeed Willem van Zwet as Editor-in-Chief of Bernoulli. We are indeed fortunate in attracting these major scholars to edit what have become two of the world’s most important statistical journals. The ISR was founded in 1933 and has become our flagship journal – a review journal of the first rank, and Bernoulli has in just less than a decade become one of the two most influential journals publishing research in mathematical statistics.

In other editorial developments, we are pleased that Klaas van Harn and Bert van Es have agreed to join Constance van Eeden as co-editors of STMA, the leading statistical abstracting journal, and that Agnes Herzberg has agreed to serve through 2005, the 25^th year of SBR. Agnes was the founding Editor of SBR in 1981 and has played the crucial role in making this publication a remarkable success. The long and exemplary service of both Constance van Eeden and Agnes Herzberg was recognised at the Berlin Session by the granting of awards from the ISI Service Certificates Committee.

We also sponsor books, including the superb volume of biographies Statisticians of the Centuries (Edited by Chris Heyde and Eugene Seneta and published in 2001 by Springer-Verlag), and the excellent new Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms (Edited by Yadolah Dodge with the support of a distinguished Editorial Board and published in 2003 by Oxford University Press). Futhermore, we issue two periodicals, the ISI Bulletin (once the flagship journal of the ISI, now the record of the papers presented at our Sessions), and Cities and Regions, a periodic publication produced by SCORUS with the support of the IAOS. Other ISI publications, mostly proceedings volumes, may be found on the ISI website.

This impressive portfolio of publications serves as a crucial communications link for scientific work today and as an archival resource to communicate with the statisticians of the indefinite future. Our publications are found in every research library and in universities and in administrative offices of government and industry around the world. They do not record all that we do, but they are the means by which we convey our developing statistical technology to an eager and appreciative audience. They present a number of puzzling and unexpected challenges.

The costs of print publication are increasing – even mailing costs are becoming prohibitive. This drives a movement towards electronic publication, and the ISI family is pursuing that not only with the SERJ, which is only issued in electronic form, but also with a trial affiliation with Project Euclid, which now publishes ISR and Bernoulli electronically, parallel to the print edition. I confess that while I view a move to all-electronic publication inevitable, I do not think we are ready for that move yet. The difficulties yet to be addressed fully include those of guaranteeing the indefinite archival survival of the materials. Printed materials from the dawn of printing in the 15th century are still accessible, but computer files from a decade ago may already be unreadable unless someone has overseen the constant migration of files to new platforms. This problem is being addressed, in particular by the eArchive project at the Mellon Foundation.

Another problem is that computer terminals are not the route of choice for most people who actually wish to read a text, rather than selectively consulting small excerpts. I personally resist reading electronic text and will generally not print out materials unless I have particular reason to believe that it is worthwhile. That makes browsing electronic texts problematic, and it is a reason I do not think our review journals ISR and SBR should go to exclusively electronic publication anytime soon. Finally, there is the underappreciated problem that a large segment of our potential readership, even a good fraction of the ISI membership, lacks either access to electronic media or the skills needed to use them.

The abstracting journal STMA has served the profession nobly since 1959, but it is presented with another set of challenges as it seeks to define its future role. As more journals become available in electronically searchable forms, such as those in JSTOR with its powerful textual search capabilities, some of the value of the abstract is eroded. The ASA/IMS Current Index of Statistics is based upon keywords and titles, and faces a similar problem. STMA does not simply reprint article summaries; rather, it provides an effective intellectual synopsis that can only come from a scholarly editor, not from any currently available textual search engine. Thus, STMA has not become obsolete, even for the fraction of the journals it surveys that are electronically available. However, with the continuing exponential growth in the literature, the costs and challenges become more severe. I hope to engage the managers of the Current Index in discussion on how we might consider joining forces in a constructive way. Meanwhile, STMA is making headway in adapting to electronic form, although even there problems remain to be solved.

In addressing these challenges, we will rely on the strength of the staff at the Permanent Office and the advice of the ISI Publications Committee. The new Chair of the Publications Committee is David Brillinger of the University of California, Berkeley, and a former editor of ISR. I do not expect immediate major changes, nor do I expect no change. David Brillinger and I would appreciate any comments or advice that our members may wish to offer.

Stephen M. Stigler
President ISI

I am very grateful for the many kind New Year’s messages that we have received at the ISI Permanent Office. On behalf of the ISI Permanent Office, I would like to extend my best wishes for the New Year to all ISI and ISI Section members. I have been informed by several of our Asian members that this will be the year of the “wood monkey”, hence a year of forward movement, expansion, discussion and the exchange of ideas. A professional scientific organisation such as our own can only benefit by such propitious omens!

The New Year brings with it several cyclical membership tasks. The ISI Permanent Office has mailed out the 2004 membership invoices to all ISI, Bernoulli Society, IAOS, IASC and IASE members. We would be grateful if you could process your payment (including your subscription payments for selected publications) in a timely manner to help us to ensure that our membership records are in order and that you receive your intended publications on time. Credit cards are the preferred payment instrument as bank transfers or cheques involve costly transaction fees. If you have not yet received your membership dues invoice for 2004, please contact ISI Accounts Officer Mr. Peter von Vaupel Klein (@cbs.nl). To allow ISI members to ensure that their own address details are current, we have introduced a new component on the ISI website (see: https://www.isi-web.org/404?ISImembers.PDF ) that not only allows members to view the membership information that we have on file for them, but includes a customised electronic submission form to enable members to automatically inform us about updates to their membership records. 

Speaking of membership matters, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the 35 new ISI members that were elected in the second round of the 2003 ISI membership elections. The names of these new members are indicated below. The ISI Permanent Office is focussing its energy to elicit a larger number of nominations of qualified potential new members. It is our goal to attract 150 new members during the two election rounds that will take place in 2004. We cannot obtain this goal without your help! Although the membership nomination procedure has been simplified (see: https://www.isi-web.org/404?membership.htm), we are still dependent upon the initiative of our members to identify qualified statisticians who would benefit by affiliating themselves with our association. I ask you to take the time in 2004 to please nominate at least one person to ISI elected membership. As a token of our appreciation for such efforts, we will award the three ISI members whose name appears most frequently as a sponsor of successfully elected new members in 2004 with a complimentary ISI watch (see: https://www.isi-web.org/404?watch.htm).

This issue of the Newsletter contains two new features. Each issue of the Newsletter will henceforth include a profile of at least one particular ISI Committee. Many ISI members are not aware of the work being conducted by our various Committees, whose interests are as diverse as the statistical profession. To obtain an overview of all ISI Committees (and an indication of the contact addresses of the Chairpersons responsible for each Committee), please visit https://www.isi-web.org/404?committees.htm.

Another added Newsletter feature, we have decided to introduce a series of brief interviews with ISI Honorary members. For those of you who are not familiar with this membership designation, ISI Honorary members are elected from the ranks of "elected members" recognising that their contributions to statistics merit special appreciation. Our first profile is of ISI Honorary member (and former ISI President) Sir David Cox, who I might add will be celebrating his 80^th birthday this year.

While Honorary membership is a way of recognising the statistical accomplishments of our members, the ISI Service Certificate programme was introduced in 2001 to recognise distinguished long-term service to the ISI and its Sections. These certificates are presented biennially at the ISI General Assembly. The ISI Service Certificates Committee, Chaired by Dr. Ivan Fellegi, welcomes your proposals for deserving candidates (more...).

In an ongoing collaboration with the Indian Government, the ISI is continuing its initiative to biennially award the P.C. Mahalanobis Prize in memory of this eminent Indian statistician. The ISI Mahalanobis Committee, Chaired by Mr. Jean-Louis Bodin, welcomes proposals for deserving candidates (more...).

Continuing our ongoing series of historical anniversary articles, ISI Committee on the History of Statistics Chairman Professor David Bellhouse has prepared a brief tribute celebrating the 250th anniversary of the death of Abraham de Moivre (more...).

We are pleased to observe that we are receiving a substantial number of subscriptions to the new on-line versions of the International Statistical Review and the Bernoulli journal, available via Project Euclid. Details about this publications initiative can be found at https://www.isi-web.org/404?NLet/NLet033.htm#12BernoulliISReviewNowOnline . Please take note that Statistical Theory and Method Abstracts, which provides worldwide coverage of published articles on mathematical statistics and probability, is also available in electronic versions, either as CD-ROM (which also includes Short Book Reviews) or the recently updated On-line version. For more details, see https://www.isi-web.org/404?stma.htm.

Although she has already been working with us for several months, I would like to welcome Ms. Shabani Mehta to the ISI Permanent Office (see below). Shabani (@cbs.nl) has taken up the position of Administrative Project Officer, and will assume responsibility for several tasks pertaining to ISI meetings, Committees and Publications (including co-editorship of this Newsletter). 

Any members sharing an interest in statistical literacy should make a special effort to visit the IASE’s new International Statistical Literacy Project website at http://course1.winona.edu/cblumberg/pubshomepage.htm . Visitors to the site will find a treasure trove of information and resources that are useful for the development of statistical literacy at all levels. The site includes web pages for official statisticians, journalists, the mass media, as well as web pages devoted to useful datasets and links to statistical literacy projects developed by national statistical offices, national statistical societies and other non-profit organisations. We are grateful to Committee Chair Professor Carol Blumberg and her productive team of page co-ordinators. 

Please do not forget to mark April 5-12, 2005, on your conference calendar. This is when the ISI Session in Sydney will take place. Information Bulletin #1 for the Sydney Session will be distributed to all members in March of this year. Sydney Session information can also be found at www.tourhosts.com.au/isi2005 . Young statisticians from developing countries may be interested in participating in the ISI Jan Tinbergen Award Competition, to be awarded in Sydney. Details can be found below. 

Last but not least, I would like to welcome new ISI Ex-Officio Council member Mr. Gosse van der Veen, who has recently assumed the position of Statistics Netherlands Director-General. The ISI Permanent Office is very grateful to Statistics Netherlands for their constant support (the ISI Permanent Office is situated in the Voorburg offices of Statistics Netherlands), and Mr. van der Veen’s input in Council discussions will be welcome. I would like to thank former Director-General Mr. Ruud van Noort for his support over the years, and wish him a happy and healthy retirement. 

Daniel Berze
Director ISI