Gowers petition against Elsevier
http://thecostofknowledge.com/ So far includes Andre Joyal, Jamie Vicary and me from category theory. Others may like to join too. Paul [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
I would like to generalize this to include Springer and Bertelsmann (which, I think, includes Springer now). I haven't had any dealings with any of them since about 1995. They are evil and the sooner we get rid of them the better. About a month ago, I asked Springer about permission to reprint something from about 1980 if I recall properly. Not even the courtesy of a refusal. We are doing out bit with TAC, but why can't the mathematical community as a whole see the damage that is being done to our profession? Michael On Sat, 28 Jan 2012, Paul Taylor wrote:
http://thecostofknowledge.com/
So far includes Andre Joyal, Jamie Vicary and me from category theory. Others may like to join too.
Paul
-- An ostrich is more intelligent than the average congressman. The ostrich does not bury its head in the sand. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Eventually generalizing the boycott to Springer might be necessary, but tactically I think it would be a mistake at this point. I am reminded of a story from the days of the "Old West" here in Kansas in which the new Marshall (I think it was Wyatt Earp) set about bringing order to the town (I think it was Abilene) by obliging the Texas cowboys who had driven their cattle north to check their guns before entering a saloon. When the sneered and declined, he picked the biggest, meanest, surliest of the Texans, laid him out with one punch, and repeated his request. The other cowboys complied. The scientific community needs to do the same -- bringing down, or forcing reform at, the most egregiously abusive of publishers will oblige the others to fix the problems, too. And, just like a punch to the jaw delivered to one cowboy was more feasible than fighting the lot of them, it is more feasible: young folk worried about "impact factors" because they don't yet have a job are left with more publication venues from which to chose while avoiding Elsevier. Best Thoughts, D. Yetter On 28 Jan 2012, at 13:56, Michael Barr wrote:
I would like to generalize this to include Springer and Bertelsmann (which, I think, includes Springer now). I haven't had any dealings with any of them since about 1995. They are evil and the sooner we get rid of them the better. About a month ago, I asked Springer about permission to reprint something from about 1980 if I recall properly. Not even the courtesy of a refusal. We are doing out bit with TAC, but why can't the mathematical community as a whole see the damage that is being done to our profession?
Michael
[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
[ Note from moderator: While interesting, this thread is off-topic and list policy does not allow for discussion. Posts sent after tomorrow will not be forwarded. Thanks. ] Dear colleagues, although this petition may be useful, I think there is much more to be done here. For the time being, it is quite difficult to boycott any commercial publisher unless you are an experienced sommité in your domain. For instance, PhD students need to publish in highly-rated journals or conferences, which are almost always associated to a publisher like Elsevier or Springer. To fight this situation, and as in the case of the free software movement, the best strategy is in my view to develop a high-quality alternative to commercial scientific publishing. For instance, the said sommités could join (or create) programme and editing committees of journals and conferences publishing only under a totally-open access scheme (i.e gratis for authors and readers, as well as under a "free" licence, such as the Creative Commons - Attribution - Share-Alike licence). As a matter of fact, as most know, this is already the case with publications such as TAC or LMCS and with conferences relying on the EPTCS proceedings. Besides, it is easy to setup a site as an ArXiv overlay to rely on the long-lastingness of this publication platform. In ten years or so, with such committees and a good editing policy, such journals or conferences will be as well ranked as commercial ones. However the subscription to the Elsevier or Springer electronic library will be needed for a long time, just to be able to get digitized versions of papers from the second half of the last century. This is a second, trickier, battlefield in the sense that the figth here must be carried on the copyright front. First, the copyright now extends far too long after the author's death. Secondly, some publishers, when digitizing some work, state wrongly that they perform a creative step, which prolongs their copyright by "resetting" the creation date. Here, the fight can almost only be solved by advocating politicians. All the best dc -- David Chemouil Onera - DTIM Tel./fax: +33 (0) 5 6225 2936 / 2593 <http://www.onera.fr/staff/david-chemouil> [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Dear collegues, The International Mathematical Union has a blog for dicussing mathematical journals: http://blog.mathunion.org/journals/ The discussion can be continued there. Best, André -------- Message d'origine-------- De: David Chemouil [mailto:David.Chemouil@onera.fr] Date: dim. 29/01/2012 07:04 À: categories@mta.ca Objet : categories: Re: Gowers petition against Elsevier [Note from moderator: While interesting, this thread is off-topic and list policy does not allow for discussion. Posts sent after tomorrow will not be forwarded. Thanks. ] [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
[ For information only; no discussion please ] Following up on what André Joyal wrote recently: The Economist's latest issue (2012 Feb. 04, pp. 82-83) discusses Gowers' blog and the resultant pledge/petition -- cf.: http://www.economist.com/node/21545974 = and = http://www.economist.com/node/21545974/comments . Cheers, -- Fred [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Information: Ingrid Daubechies, president of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) has signed the boycott "the cost of knowledge". -André [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
[ Note from moderator: While interesting, this thread is off-topic and list policy does not allow for discussion. Posts sent after tomorrow will not be forwarded. Thanks. ]
Indeed - for the most part, discussion on this list does seem to be preaching to the choir. Thanks in large part to the efforts of the moderator of this list (and others), the categorical community is well placed online - TAC, this list, arXive, nLab, and many many homepages. It's rare (in my experience, at least) to look for a paper one wants, and not to find it online. SO: to all those out there who are in a position of some influence, your task, should you choose to accept it, is to "move" deans (and tenure committees, hiring committees, promotion committees, etc) to accept on-line journal publications, to encourage other "independant" journals (such as those published by professional associations) to flourish, to establish new quality journals (sponsored by universities, eg), to decouple the notions of "impact" (as measured by indices) and "excellence", and whatever other measures that might dislodge the seeming monopoly of the big 2 (3?) publishers. Everyone would benefit (except those publishers), so the trick is to convince others, beyond this small community, of that. We've had this discussion many times before - it'd be nice if the next time we do, things have measurably improved ... -= rags =- -- <rags@math.mcgill.ca> <www.math.mcgill.ca/rags> [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Bearing the following moderator note in mind, I am happy to discuss off-list the contents of my email, and please direct any replies directly to me (and others you wish to include). I thank the moderator for his tolerance of this extremely off-topic post, and the TAC editors for giving us a quality free journal to publish in.
[ Note from moderator: While interesting, this thread is off-topic and list policy does not allow for discussion. Posts sent after tomorrow will not be forwarded. Thanks. ]
One thing that people can do is be creatively subversive. For example, when publishing in a journal owned by someone you would rather boycott, but can't for various reasons, place the paper on the arXiv in a generic style (e.g. amsart.sty instead of elsevier_generic.sty if such a thing exists), as you are allowed to do (yes, you are), and then put in a sentence "A[n essentially identical] copy of this paper is available [for free] from arxiv.org" at the end of your abstract. Or perhaps one can thank, in the acknowledgements, "Tim Gowers [1] and Terry Tao [2] for their interesting remarks", and reference their recent blog posts: [1] http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/httpthecostofknowledge-com/ [2] http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-cost-of-knowledge/ This might need to be followed up with a sentence expressing agreement with their views, but the impracticality of following through on their suggestions at present. Nice, neutral sentences: if one doesn't look at the actual blog posts. If one wanted to try something really interesting, how about this for a thought experiment (assuming the paper is accepted): * Place paper on arXiv and on own web page * Submit paper to Journal of A, owned by a big commercial publisher. * Receive referee reports. If allowed, post these on your web page, removing trivial stuff like "page 3, line 24, missing 'an', insert comma" * Make changes (if needed). * Receive acceptance email/letter from Journal and place on website * Receive contract * Decline to sign contract and withdraw paper, with explanatory letter about publisher's practices (make this nice to the handling editor, they have done some work for you after all) * Update arXiv version with note 'accepted by Journal of A, but withdrawn by author for [personal reasons here], referee reports, acceptance letter and withdrawal letter available from [website]' * (Optional) - resubmit to an open access journal, together with supporting material (acceptance letter, referee reports, withdrawal letter) Now one has simultaneously: a paper accepted to the journal one 'must' publish in, and a letter to prove it, referee reports stating the quality of the work and a commitment to not use Journal of A. Now this is a perhaps a complete fantasy, and may not work in real life, and someone who needs publications to get a job, and timely ones at that, is not going to do this. Or perhaps one can use the scholastica platform or similar (http://www.scholasticahq.com/) to set up something similar to Rejecta Mathematica, but only accepting papers that have been *accepted* in other journals - Accepta Mathematica? - and then withdrawn by authors because of "moral outrage at publishers", "dislike of anti-open source journals" or such like. (The reasons are complete hyperbole: I just mean that the paper is not withdrawn for reasons of errors). Papers would need to be supplied along with acceptance letters and referee reports, along with original submission and final accepted copy. In any case, those with established careers with 'nothing to fear' should stop publishing in the journals in question so that their quality drops, and publish in other venues (open source/society- or university-published journals) so that their quality rises, and more junior mathematicians can safely jump ship. Humbly, David Roberts [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
participants (8)
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David Chemouil -
David Roberts -
David Yetter -
FEJ Linton -
Joyal, André -
Michael Barr -
Paul Taylor -
Robert Seely