Group subjects

1 - Organisational support for the EU platform level action to support innovative efforts for a new scholarly communication framework.

	Questions: Do we need a European organisation for co-ordinating all aspects of the electronic scholarly communication or should we leave some aspects to world-wide organisations? What will be the future role of the OAi steering committee? Is LIBER an appropriate set-up for the overall co-ordination or do we need a new framework? Do we believe a SPARC-like organisation can play an important role in Europe? Do we support "Signal Hill" as a European consortium for e-publishing? Is there a need for an academic superstructure to overview all certification /validation mechanisms? Or can we leave the initiative to the different disciplines?

Moderator: Raf Dekeyser

2 - Peer-review alternatives for preprints, mechanisms. 

	lternatives for peer-review in a distributed scholarly communication system.
In the established journal system, two functions of scholarly communication are combined in the publication process: the registration function (a scholar making a claim for a finding) and the certification function (the approval of the claim by the scholarly community).  The certification in the journal system is fulfilled via the peer review process.  Communication via electronic preprints suggests the feasibility of a scholarly communication system in which uncertified papers are shared in an organised manner.  Actually, it even suggests the feasibility of a communication system in which those uncertified papers are available in open access.   With this regard, the success story of the Los Alamos preprints arXiv -- which has moved to the core of the communication system in Physics -- has served as an inspiration for those who wish to apply the concept of preprints communication in other disciplines.    While communication via preprints can have important advantages there seems to be consensus that certification remains a core building block of a scholarly communication system.  Hence, the question can be raised whether and how certification can be fulfilled at a later stage in the communication process: via post-publication in established journals, via inclusion in so-called overlay journals, via review in secondary databases of peer-review, via collaborative filtering systems, etc.?  So far, no attempts to establish preprints-based communication systems in other disciplines have led to an impact that is comparable to that of the arXiv in Physics.  Therefore, it makes sense to reflect on the reasons why this has not happened (yet).  Are those reasons related to the fact that communication of uncertified material may not be acceptable in certain scholarly disciplines?  Or haven't those disciplines thought well enough about innovative ways to implement certification?

Moderator: Mark Doyle

3 - Protocol for certification on the archive

	A protocol to connect preprints repositories with certification services in a distributed scholarly communication system.
In the preprints realm, the Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting provides an interoperability specification between preprints repositories that store uncertified (non peer reviewed) papers and third parties that provide cross-repository services based on metadata of those preprints.  So far, the focus of such services has been on facilitating the discovery of preprints across repositories.  However, services could also focus on certification of preprints.  Actually, in order to build a scholarly communication system in which preprints are the starting point, it will be necessary to build such separate certification services.  Considering how such certification services could actually be implemented in different scholarly disciplines, it becomes interesting to reflect on the technical interaction between preprints repositories, certification services and discovery services.  Can a protocol similar to the Open Archives Metadata Harvesting specification be envisaged to provide cross-discipline interoperability between repositories, certification and discovery services?  Can the existing specifications be used?  If so, under which conditions can this be done?

Moderator: Herbert Van de Sompel

4 - Economics of a new scholarly communication framework; who pays what ?

	Questions: Should the research institutes cover the cost of the service in a distributed way (the e-servers network)? Should the researchers also pay for the expenses involved with whatever mechanism of certification/validation is adopted, so that free global access can be offered? Or should we allow commercial overlay systems to share the task? Should we foresee for a parallel delayed paper edition?
 
Moderator: Corrado Pettenati

5 - Library roles: 

	Questions: What kind of server network should we try to implement in Europe? A discipline based one (danger of overlooking small disciplines) or institution based e-print network (where larger institutions can host smaller ones)? Or adopt a hybrid system? What about multiple submissions (unique identifier)? What kind of system would guarantee a long-term archival safety? What is the library task in the long-term e-archiving? What are the respective responsibilities of the library and the research institutes with regards of the different processes of the new scholarly communication?

Moderator: Lorcan Dempsey