Back in the old days of 2003 a group of scientists and scholars held a conference and issued The Berlin Declaration on open access to knowledge in the sciences and humanities. In short it proposed that research information should be published free of charge on the Internet and that all models for doing that should be investigated and sustained.

Yesterday a large group of publishers and learned societies published their own Brussels Declaration. I had rather unhelpfully suggested that Brussels sounded a little too 'European'  and countersuggested Bognor or even Basingstoke. Here is the very important declaration:

Brussels Declaration on STM Publishing by the international scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing community as represented by the individual publishing houses and publishing trade associations, who have indicated their assent on the website link (it was too long a list for this blog).

1. The mission of publishers is to maximise the dissemination of knowledge through

economically self-sustaining business models. We are committed to change and innovation that will make science more effective. We support academic freedom: authors should be free to choose where they publish in a healthy, undistorted free market

2. Publishers organise, manage and financially support the peer review processes of

STM journals. The imprimatur that peer-reviewed journals give to accepted articles (registration, certification, dissemination and editorial improvement) is irreplaceable and fundamental to scholarship

3. Publishers launch, sustain, promote and develop journals for the benefit of the scholarly community

4. Current publisher licensing models are delivering massive rises in scholarly access

to research outputs. Publishers have invested heavily to meet the challenges of digitisation and the annual 3% volume growth of the international scholarly literature, yet less than 1% of total R&D is spent on journals

5. Copyright protects the investment of both authors and publishers. Respect for copyright encourages the flow of information and rewards creators and entrepreneurs

6. Publishers support the creation of rights-protected archives that preserve scholarship in perpetuity

7. Raw research data should be made freely available to all researchers. Publishers encourage the public posting of the raw data outputs of research. Sets or sub-sets of data that are submitted with a paper to a journal should wherever possible be made freely accessible to other scholars

8. Publishing in all media has associated costs. Electronic publishing has costs not found in print publishing. The costs to deliver both are higher than print or electronic only.Publishing costs are the same whether funded by supply-side or demand-side models. If readers or their agents (libraries) don't fund publishing, then someone else (e.g. fundingbodies, government) must

9. Open deposit of accepted manuscripts risks destabilising subscription revenues and undermining peer review. Articles have economic value for a considerable time after publication which embargo periods must reflect. At 12 months, on average, electronic articles still have 40-50% of their lifetime downloads to come. Free availability of significant proportions of a journal’s content may result in its cancellation and therefore destroy the peer review system upon which researchers and society depend

10. “One size fits all” solutions will not work. Download profiles of individual journals vary significantly across subject areas, and from journal to journal

And while on copyright matters, here is an excellent example of what can happen when copyright is watered down.

The Publishers Association has now posted its response to the Government's consultation process, 'Making sure crime doesn't pay'. It comes to pretty well the same conclusions as Macmillan's. I hope that the Government listens and shelves these proposals to further limit freedom to publish and freedom to read.

On an unrelated Government issue, The Creative Economy Programme, which I mentioned yesterday when I met the team responsible for producing the main part of the Green Paper. It was a very interesting (for me, I cannot speak for them) session. I tried to make the following points from a publisher's point of view (obviously I'm even more unqualified to comment on other creative industries): 

We are a global technology-driven industry not a craft industry.

We do not seek Government subsidies in the main and have shown that we can thrive without mollycoddling or intervention.

We do not need civil servants telling us how to improve our productivity or how 'to make us fit for purpose'.

British publishing leads the world in various sectors, most notably in scholarly, educational and children's publishing, something we shoud be very proud of and protect.

Government's role in supporting our creative economy should be to improve book, journal, and electronic information provision in school, public and university libraries - which means more efficient purchasing and management rather than bigger total spend.

To ensure that the schools market in particular remains competitive and is not distorted by cross-subsidies (as in the case of BBC Jam) or corporation tax breaks in the case of certain 'charitable' publishers.

And to help ensure the protection of authorial and territorial copyright.

All the other stuff about regional incentives, diversity, creative grid etc seemed to me well-intentioned, politically correct, expensive and pointless.

One paragraph from the Infrastructure working party executive summary particularly caught my attention - and not just for its jargonlish:

Progressive creative senses of place are formed, and creative people are stimulated, by connectivity of concentrations of infrastructure and activity. A key challenge is to position cultural and creative infrastructure at the heart of place and community, which will allow our cities and regions to flourish as creative hubs that work collectively and with London and the South East for UK creative competitiveness.

I found myself wondering whether the creativity of the impressionists in Paris in the late 19th century would have benefitted from the support of the Department of Culture Media and Sport. They seemed to be pretty creative with just a touch of absinthe.

You learn a little every day (sometimes a bit too much) about blogs and blogging. In response to the Pan-demonium piece a bookseller wrote to point out an omission from my list of current great Pan books. This will take you to his excellent review of Bella Pollen's Midnight Cactus.

The bookseller in question is Mark Farley and he writes the Bookseller to the Stars blog. There is no link that I could find to where he works and a Google search on his name is unrevealing, although I suspect his bookshop is in West London. But none of that matters. His blog is brilliant and it's everything a bookseller's (or book trade person's) should be. I am green with envy.

Later today I'm going to be discussing the British Government's Creative Economy Programme at the Work Foundation, an organisation led by the well-known and successful author, Will Hutton. He has been invited to pull together the results of seven working groups and to write the first (and presumably the most important) part of the Green Paper which will emerge later this Spring. The process is described here. The problem as I see it (but doubtless I am wrong and will be corrected) is that the creative economy cannot be driven by Government to any great extent. 

Traditionally, political repression has been a stimulus to creativity but I don't think that's what Will and his team have in mind.

So what is the point of all this? A colleague suggested that the only way the Government could help aspiring artists, writers etc would be to advise them on how to avoid paying any income tax. I'm not sure that's what Will and his team have in mind either but it would certainly be worth a try and I'll suggest it. Any other ideas?

A minor but strange 21st century misunderstanding. I was e-mailing a senior American scientist about a nomination for a publishing award organised by Booktrust, the very respectable indpendent charity which encourages the discover and enjoyment of reading. I didn't get a reply although the scientist is well known to be efficient and courteous. We chased him by phone and it transpires that he'd deleted the email because 'Booktrust' in the subject field suggested it was spam. It must have been the 'trust' bit. In the Internet world, as in the world of advertising, words seem to take on opposite connotations - essential means 'don't need it', great value means 'shoddy', cutting edge means 'won't work', easy to assemble means 'impossible'. And of course publishers have been known to transgress in book blurbs...

Later this week I'm going to write a little more about the new Shakespeare project we've developed with the Royal Shakespeare Company. As it's a Sunday you might have time to check out this fascinating interview with its editor, Jonathan Bate. You can find out more here and this is a poor reproduction of what is a brilliant jacket.

Last December I wrote about an experiment we were undertaking in classified advertising and I was asked to keep readers abreast of progress. The idea was to allow recruiters to place job advertisements on Nature Publishig Group websites free of charge and thus become the number one site for scientists seeking a job. Yesterday we achieved that objective when for the first time Nature carried more jobs than its principal competitor - 2872 jobs are showing at this moment, just four more than Science but commercial competitions (and cricket matches - see yesterday's triumph for England) are often won by very narrow margins.

I've come back from our Eastbourne sales conference very buoyed up by the quality of the Pan Macmillan publishing programme and by the tremendous energy and imagination of the team. General book publishing in the UK and elsewhere has never been easy but I suspect it's never been more difficult. Retail consolidation, price deflation, royalty advance inflation, territorial and other copyright abuses, library budget constraint, and competition from other media are very real threats. However, there are opportunities and great books to be written, edited, sold and enjoyed. It feels as if our team has more than its fair share this year.

This year we are celebrating Pan's 60th anniversary although if you've clicked on that link it appears we should have celebrated two years ago! I think this was the first Pan paperback cover.

And here was the record of its tenth birthday celebrations.

Pan went on to challenge Penguin and to build its reputation as a highly commercial mass-market publisher with strengths across the board but particularly in popular fiction. That was achieved by teamwork, hard work and a nose for a book. During the 1980s I think it's fair to say that Pan's mantle was challenged successfully by a resurgent Corgi Books under the inspired leadership of Paul Scherer, Mark Barty-King and Patrick Janson-Smith.

All the signs are that Pan is the fastest growing paperback imprint of the moment and that the mix of established bestsellers and new arrivals is making its impact on retailers, literary agents, translating publishers and, most importantly, authors. It's great being a 'destination' publisher for popular novelists, even if it's only by a very narrow margin. Congratulations to everyone at Pan for this fantastic achievement. Here are a just a few of our recent and sure-fire future successes.

And if you'd like to hear Gerry (G.M.Ford) go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ and scroll down to 8.30 a.m. and the chilling interview with Angus Stickler about the Peckham murder of a teenage boy.

The snow didn't reach Eastbourne, the sun came out, all but two of the Pan Macmillan sales conference guests arrived, the hotel was great, speakers were entertaining and on schedule, the food was edible and Andrew Marr reminded us what an extraordinarily interesting history the British have lived since the end of World War II and how lucky we've been - but will the luck hold? We British is published in May alongside a BBC TV series. Keep an eye out for it. It could be the most important history book for a very long time.

But the bulk of the morning session was dedicated not to books being published by us but by other publishers who have chosen to use our sales and distribution operations rather than build their own.

There are two schools of thought about this. When I worked at Reed International Books the view was that if we were good at something (e.g. logistics) the last thing to do would be to share that expertise with a competitor or potential competitor. At Macmillan we take the opposite view. If we do something well we should offer that service to others in order to build more scale and to allow us to invest to ensure we are always one step ahead. An additional benefit is that having outside clients who are free to walk away encourages all our service divisions to adopt a customer-friendly approach to their business for internal as well as outside clients.

We've had enormous sucess in India with information processing, fulfilment and software development, in China with our print sourcing and distribution services, at Macmillan Distribution in the UK and elsewhere. We are now positively developing sales support for client publishers using the highly-regarded Pan Macmillan team. And here are some of the publishers who are innovating, investing and creating great books without having to build their own sales operation. An additional benefit for us is that all this brings us into contact with some of the best people in the industry without our having to hire them.

Spy Publishing - the best reference works for boutique and luxury hotels.

The Friday Project - the best of the web into the best of books - and more.

CAMRA - beer is the new wine and the Campaign for Real Ale is out to ensure improving standards of beer and pubs.

Think Books - linked to magazines published for not-for-profit organisations such as the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.

Rodale - the number one health and fitness publisher.

Tokyopop - the market leader in the mushrooming Manga market.

Viz books - related closely or not to the perennial Viz magazine.

There are many shades of sales conference. I'm just off to the annual Pan Macmillan one. After a couple of years of hauling everyone to London we decided to move to the seaside - Eastbourne on the South Coast of England. This is what it looks like in the Summer.

We've invited a stellar cast of authors and booked the Grand Hotel built in 1875 and almost certainly still using the original plumbing. I believe tonight will  be a black tie affair which is definitely in keeping with the surroundings.

The only problem is that at 3 o'clock this morning it started to snow. Train schedules are at risk. Roads will be blocked. It doesn't take much to bring Southern England to a halt but I'm pretty sure our teams will battle through. I'm setting off now and hope to be 'enjoying' the beach later today rather like this lot. Not quite Bondi Beach but the best we can do in England in February.

Audible is the brainchild of Don Katz, a former journalist who recognised early the potential market for downloadable audio and built a company to serve that market. He has been immeasurably helped by an exclusive contract to serve Apple's i-tunes audio bookstore. More importantly, it is clear that downloading audiobooks is a much better technology than fiddling about with multiple CDs or tapes and that the next generation of in-car entertainment systems will include the ability to download on the road. The market potential is immense.

Macmillan has a very strong audio list and we now have an agreement with Audible UK to make it available throughout legitimate territories. We're gradually loading up all our titles and first out of the blocks are Wilbur Smith and Colin Dexter's brilliant Inspector Morse novels. I suspect that Desmond Tutu's reading of the The Gospel According to Judas coming out on 20 March might be the Spring bestseller.

From the future to the past. I am a member of the UK Literary Heritage Working Group and we have today launched a website. Our job is to emphasise the importance of literary archives as part of Britain's scholarly, cultural and educational heritage. While part of our remit is to develop ways of capturing digital archives it is also vital to hang on to manuscripts and papers from great contemporary and not so contemporary writers.

Last night we had a small gathering in my office to welcome a new member of our team, Vikram Savkar, and the beginnings of a completely new venture, Nature Education. Rather than reproduce our press release I've copied in a piece from the leading industry newsletter from Electronic Publishing Services. Another journey begins for our teams.

* Nature Publishing Group has launched Nature Education, a new division that will produce educational resources and tools for science students and teaching staff.  What is the new division’s strategy for this market?

by Kate Worlock, Director

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In recent years, Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has proven itself to be one of the most innovative scientific publishers, with experiments around open peer review and the launch of services such as Naturejobs.com (the first free scientific recruitment facility online), Nature Network Boston and Connotea.  The company has also demonstrated its desire to move into new markets - the launch of Macmillan Medical Communications and its Dissect Medicine service moved NPG into a strong position in medical publishing, building on the success of its relatively new Nature Clinical Practice medical journals division. 

The latest sector to be addressed is education.  Clearly Nature’s content, through its scientific journals, is already widely used by science professors, but Nature Education aims to provide tools for both teachers and students to facilitate access and use of this existing content, as well as content which is to be created specifically for educational purposes.  The new Publishing Director at Nature Education, Vikram Savkar, who was most recently at Pearson, has recognised the difficulties in addressing the undergraduate textbook market, and believes that “instructors and students are thirsty for learning environments that move beyond traditional textbooks and even course management systems to provide a highly interactive and personalised experience”.

While Nature Education is the group’s first attempt to address educational needs directly, there are plenty of valuable best practices that the new division could draw on from elsewhere in the group to support its activities.  For example, Nature has been working, through services like Nature Network Boston and Dissect Medicine, to develop community applications, and through Connotea to understand how tagging can add value for the end users.  It seems likely that Nature Education will follow in the footsteps of these services to create Web 2.0-style offerings likely to appeal to today’s science students, who have been educated in a very PC- and internet-centric manner.  Nature has also recognised the importance of personalised learning, highlighted in the recent 2020 Vision report on teaching and learning in the UK.  While this focuses on the K-12 age range, there is no reason why the teaching methods discussed could not apply effectively to other age groups.

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