Thierry Bouche’s DML Home Page

“Scholars might not like to depend on systems that owe their existence to the demand for X-rated movies,
but they will use them when they become available.”

Andrew M. Odlyzko

I have been into e-publishing since quite some time now. It was first related with literature, typography, TeX, pdfTeX, and so on. Since year 2000, I am spending a nonzero amount of my time to questions (and answers!) related to e-publishing in mathematics, especially considering journals. Mostly in relation with Cellule Mathdoc projects. I met Mathdoc long ago, when they first tried to use pdftex in relation with some mathematical database output. I was approached again (fall 1999?) when the project NUMDAM got funded, I wrote the documents for the call to tender that ended up with our first 6 serials online 3 years later. On December 20, 2002, I moved the splash page that kept secret our first posting of two journals (AIF and JEDP). Since that time, we’ve been enhancing a lot the whole service. Since that time, many articles, many pages scanned, many articles, many pages acquired from publisher's digital original source, many bibliographical references tagged, many links to reference databases, many direct links from the bibliographies to cited full texts on the web (40 % on NUMDAM, the rest thanks to mini-DML, out of all our bibliographical references, about 19 % have a link to the digital full text). And more yet to come…

For those liking (outdated) figures, you can witness the growth of the archive by comparing these leaflets: October 2007, March 2008, June 2008, March 2009, November 2009, June 2010. After that, just have a look at the wayback machine!

I was responsible or advisor for the following Mathdoc projects. Since 2011, I am Mathdoc's director, hence virtually responsible for everything...

NUMDAM (Math serials retrodigitisation) at www.numdam.org.
Mini-DML (OAI-PMH integrator for digital math articles) minidml.mathdoc.fr.
CEDRAM (Publishing platform and portal for academic math journals) www.cedram.org.
Gallica-Math (Article-level index of volumes digitised at Gallica) portail.mathdoc.fr/GALLICA/.
Centre Mersenne (Cedram goes beyond math and its core services, starting in 2017)

I was scientific coordinator of the EuDML project.

A summary available about these topics is in my written chapter for the book Communicating mathematics in the digital era, AK Peters (written in 2006).

For more general views on Digital mathematics libraries, the best source is in my paper in Mathematics in Computer Science: “ Digital Mathematics Libraries: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly ” (2010).

Around year 2003, I have been associated to the first DML project granted by the NSF to the Cornell University Library. I cochaired the standards committee with Ulf Rehman.
After that project was completed, I have been appointed to the so-called WDML Steering Committee, which helped preparing the Stockholm 2004 conference, and then stopped working.
Simultaneously, I chaired the work package N3 (standards) in an EMS leaded (Rolf Jeltsch) failed proposal for a European DML in FP5.
I became deputy director of Mathdoc around year 2007. I will leave at the end of 2020.
In 2008, I was hired by the EMS to coordinate a third European project seeking funds from the European commission. We did it (eContentplus program, general coordination by José Borbinha from Lisbon), but it was rejected.
So we rethought the project, modified it a bit, and submitted it in the CIP ICT PSP programme call for: “open access to scientific information”. It was accepted: this is project EuDML no. 250503, which started on Febr. 1st 2010.
More or less at the same time, EMS and ESF suggested that we prepare a proposal for a “Forward Look” on a “European virtual library of mathematics”. When at a mature stage, it was decided to input this in an EMS/ESF proposal to FP7/capacities, to which we were not associated, and which was rejected.
I became director of Mathdoc on January 2011.

Member of

The European mathematical society’s committee on electronic publishing, chaired by Pavel Exner (2005-2008), then Ulf Rehmann (2009-2012).
CICM Steering Committee (2011-2015).
Committee on Electronic Information and Communication (CEIC) of the International Mathematical Union, chaired by Peter Olver (2011-2018).
Global Digital Mathematical Library Working Group set-up by the IMU at Seoul (2014-?).

Chair of

The EuDML initiative (2014-?)
The European mathematical society’s Publications and Electronic Dissemination Committee (2017-?).

I maintain a list of my publications related to e-publishing in mathematics.

Some old news:

2014/08/17 I am member of a group of people that will try to design the plans for making the Global Digital Mathematical Library a reality.
2014/06/02 The EuDML initiative has been launched. I am the chair.
2013/03/15 Final evaluation of the EuDML project by the European commission. My work package's results are not good, they are excellent.
2013/01/31 The EuDML project comes to an end.
2012/11/27 Audition at Washington's National Academies by the committe Planning a Global Library of the Mathematical Sciences
2012/05 I am one of the organizers of The Future World Heritage Digital Mathematics Library: Plans and Prospects, a symposium organized by the Committee on Electronic Information and Communication (CEIC) of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. June 1-3, National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC.

January 3rd, 2011,

Thierry Bouche