ISI - International Statistical Institute
Newsletter Volume 24, No. 1 (70) 2000

The ISI publication, Statistical Theory & Method Abstracts (STMA) has been providing subscribers with world-wide coverage of published articles on mathematical statistics and probability for more than 40 years.

The first edition of STMA appeared in 1959, under the General Editorship of Dr. Wm. R. Buckland, and Managing Editor Prof. R.K. Anderson, with the aid of four regional editors. Produced in the UK by Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh), STMA enjoyed a start-up subsidy from the U.S. National Science Foundation. A pale image of the comprehensive reference resource that we have since come to know, the first annual volume contained 751 abstracts, colour-coded according to a twelve-section classification system. The price of this ISI publication was £5 or US$16.

STMA has crossed many watersheds in its 40-year evolution to its present form. The General Editorship has passed from Wm. R. Buckland (1959-1965) to Jan Vos (1966-1990), then to Piet Roes (1989-1991). The present team includes the General Editors, Constance van Eeden (1990 to the present) and Joop Mijnheer (1991 to the present) and Editorial Assistants Tineke de Boer, Ann Daniels and Margaret de Ruiter.

Technical changes in the way in which STMA is produced have been considerable and continuous. In 1988, STMA moved to a system of in-house typesetting at the ISI Permanent Office in the Netherlands. The software that was used was developed by Piet Roes and Jan Vos in a custom-made database using dBase3 and TeX. In order to accommodate the extra demands that its increased size had created, four students from the Technical University of Delft were contracted to oversee the documentation revision and changeover, including a switch to a FOXPRO and TeX database programme. From its inception in 1959, running up to the previously printed issue (Volume 40, issue 4) STMA can boast of an accumulated total of 113,474 abstracts, with an annual rate now in excess of 6,400 abstracts per year.

Not satisfied to let well enough alone, STMA has recently witnessed a series of technical changes that will help modify the way in which this resource is used, adapting to the existing information technology environment. First, starting with volume 41, issue 1, a new database platform was created by Anco Hundepool (database expert) and Peter-Paul de Wolf (TeX expert), both from Statistics Netherlands. As a result of their work, the STMA database will be based on MS-Access in a Windows 95/98 environment, incorporating the use of TeX/LateX. When this task has been successfully completed, work will begin on the development of a CD-ROM version of STMA, allowing subscribers to search through an accumulation of abstracts running back to 1991 (when STMA was first captured in electronic format), thus benefiting from the search and capture facilities which the new technology provides. It is expected that this new resource will be available to all subscribers (in a combination with the hard copy format) in late 2000.

For those who are not familiar with STMA, a sample page can be viewed on the ISI webpage, as well as a list of publications abstracted by STMA, via the hypertext links that are displayed on the following STMA webpage: http://www.cbs.nl/isi/stma.htm

An impression of the STMA classification scheme can also be viewed on the following webpage: http://www.cbs.nl/isi/classif.htm

Requests for subscriptions can be directed to

The price for ISI and ISI Section members is 175 Dutch Guilders, for institutional subscribers 350 Dutch Guilders (less 10% discount for agents only).