Equitable Mathematics
Mike Barr is raising up an important point. We should look at the problem from an economical point of view. The true buyers of scientific journals are the university librairies, not the scientists. There is a demand for low-price-high-quality scientific journals. The mathematical community is the producer. The publisher is the intermediate. The prices are artificially high. We may need an organisation of Equitable Mathematics. The organisation should be supported financially by the university librairies and the mathematical associations. The editorial board of Topology has resigned to protest the price of the journal. I admire their political gesture but unfortunately, it has a drawback: a prestigious journal has disappeared. I have a crazy idea: Topology could be resurrected as a cloned called Equitable Topology. The new journal could have the same editorial board as late Topology, if the editors agree. Other expensive mathematical journals could be duplicated with an Equitable clone having the same editorial board. I am aware of the organisational difficulties of realising the idea of Equitable Mathematics. To be successful, it will have to be done very seriously. It should be economically sound. Maybe the mathematical associations should be involved in the organisation. Andre ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
I like the idea of publishing ourselves, but I don't like titles like Fair (or Equitable) Topology. You would have to ask a lawyer about this, but in general book titles cannot be copyrighted and I would assume the same is true of journals. Certainly it would seem insane to allow anyone to own a generic name like "Topology". So, assuming it is allowed, why not start a journal called just "Topology". But another thing we can do is just support, in every possible way, journals that are reasonably priced. I have just had a paper accepted for the journal Mathematica Japonica, published by the Japanese Math Soc. I think one way that the whole scene went off the rails was the highly specialized journals like J. Algebra, Topology, and so on. They were and are low-circulation (circulation numbers are trade secrets) and have come to be very expensive. JPAA was up to nearly $4000 for 2100 pages when McGill stopped subscribing about ten or twelve years ago. I don't know what it is now, but I know they were losing subscribers steadily and may be down to a couple hundred by now. Of course, Elsevier is now primarily in the business of selling universities their entire journal selection in electronic form, so subscription numbers are meaningless. But I do know that most of McGill's journal budget is now going to these deals. But when, at some future date, McGill withdraws from this, not only do they lose their access to future publications, but also past. You are not buying access, only renting it. That is why I have copied all my papers that are currently available onto my ftp site. We need not only a McGill J., but also a UQAM J., a U de M J. and a Concordia J. Along with Toronto, York, UBC, .... No one would represent a great deal of work (start-up would involve less work than it did for TAC, since we would make our experience available). I can only hope that Elsevier's days on academic publishing are numbered, along with all the rest of them. Michael On Mon, 18 Dec 2006, joyal.andre@uqam.ca wrote:
Mike Barr is raising up an important point. We should look at the problem from an economical point of view. The true buyers of scientific journals are the university librairies, not the scientists. There is a demand for low-price-high-quality scientific journals. The mathematical community is the producer. The publisher is the intermediate. The prices are artificially high. We may need an organisation of Equitable Mathematics. The organisation should be supported financially by the university librairies and the mathematical associations.
The editorial board of Topology has resigned to protest the price of the journal. I admire their political gesture but unfortunately, it has a drawback: a prestigious journal has disappeared. I have a crazy idea: Topology could be resurrected as a cloned called Equitable Topology. The new journal could have the same editorial board as late Topology, if the editors agree. Other expensive mathematical journals could be duplicated with an Equitable clone having the same editorial board.
I am aware of the organisational difficulties of realising the idea of Equitable Mathematics. To be successful, it will have to be done very seriously. It should be economically sound. Maybe the mathematical associations should be involved in the organisation.
Andre
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The idea which Andre Joyal has put forward is certainly original, although it may not be that practical or someone would have thought of it before?. However, there may be a way to implement it and I am all for it. I would extend the list to include, in additon to Topology, also Advances in Mathematics, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, and Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra. Maybe others where some of us belong to the editorial boards. It so happens that the journals listed above are all published by Reed-Elsevier. A few (foolish?) academics have pledged not to publish in such journals for a different, and in my view, a much more serious, reason -- namely, the involment with arms dealers. The latter affects human lives, whereas the former "just" makes it difficult to access scientific informatin, particularly in Third World countries. http://cage.ugent.be/~npg/elsevier/signatories.html A similar pledge to target all highly-priced journals would make little difference to some of us who have signed the above, but could mean scientific suicide to others. In addition, we do (naively, perhaps) expect to exert enough influence with this and other demarches going on right now (such as a planned letter in the Times), so that we are relieved of the pledge soon enough. If not, well.....there is always TAC and other electronic journals listed in the excellent note by John Baez (which can also be seen in the above website looking at comments by signataries). Something must be done. That much is clear. Marta _________________________________________________________________ Download now! Visit http://www.telusmobility.com/msnxbox/ to enter and see how cool it is to get Messenger with you on your cell phone. http://www.telusmobility.com/msnxbox/
Regarding the discussion about free journals: It seems that people are unaware of Logical methods in computer science: http://www.lmcs-online.org A number of categorically inclined people are involved: http://www.lmcs-online.org/ojs/edBoard.php Are you proposing to set up a similar journal for topology? Bas Spitters
Dear Marta, I fully agree with your suggestion concerning the numerous journals that you mentioned. Having a free on-line version of these journalist would certainly be efficient in solving the problem of access to knowlwdge, which is indeed very important. (My understanding is that the topic of arms trade was closed on this mailing list!) On the shorter run, however, I propose creating an off-shore website, which is outside the reach of US/Canadian/European courts. The declared intent of this website would be to violate the copyright laws by downloading the ready PDF files from ScienceDirect through the library access that we have, and uploading it to this site -- which makes them freely available for anyone interested. The idea would be to accept anonymous uploads, and thus share the burden (and liablity) for maintaining the site. I think it would be much harder to fight the overpriced publishers if we followed all the laws and rules. These laws were made to *maintain* and *stabilize* the current situation, and not to help those who want a change.
Something must be done. That much is clear.
The problem is that profit is a very good organizer, while getting volunteers is never easy. I would be quite interested in hearing the history of TAC, how it started, etc. Best wishes, Gabi
Just a small point about From: Michael Barr <barr@barrs.org> Date: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 9:17 am Subject: categories: Re: Equitable Mathematics
You would have to ask a lawyer about this, but in general book titles cannot be copyrighted and I would assume the same is true of journals.
You cannot copyright a title but you can protect a well known title from infringement. You can title your new book "My travels through the Pyrenees" without worrying whether someone else has already used the title. But you cannot title it "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone." Colin
If I correctly understand what is proposed for an "equitable" or "fair" journal (as you prefer!), I think the "Cahiers de Topologie et Geometrie Differentielle Categoriques" can be so classified. Up to 1975 the "Cahiers" had some support from the CNRS. However for the last 30 years we have published them (at a very cheap price), without any financial nor clerical subvention, with only the revenue of the subscriptions which (scarcely) pay for the printer and the stamps. I do all the material work (preparation of the final version of the volume for the printer, preparation of the envelopes and sending of the volumes, registration of the subscriptions,...) without any help. I even pay personally for the simple computer material necessary to handle them (that explains why I need well prepared .pdf files from the authors...). Though the "Cahiers" seemed forgotten by the French establishment, I have been pleasantly surprised to recently receive an offer from NUMDAM to post them on the Internet (without any cost for me). In fact the 7 first volumes are already posted under the heading "Seminaire Ehresmann" (which was their initial title or sub-title); at the address http://www.numdam.org/numdam-bin/feuilleter?j=SE&sl=0* The following volumes should be numerized in 2007 (I have agreed with the terms of the contract and should incessantly receive its final version to sign). After that NUMDAM will post each volume 2 years after its paper publication. I hope you'll help me by avoiding to substantially decrease the number of subscriptions which are vital for the journal's continuation. With all my best wishes to all Andree Ehresmann
To add some actual data to the discussion, one can find an incomplete list (I estimate 300) of journal prices, with history back to 2000, at: http://www.ams.org/membership/journal-survey.pdf . Best wishes for the holidays, Don
Colin McLarty wrote:
Michael Barr wrote:
You would have to ask a lawyer about this, but in general book titles cannot be copyrighted and I would assume the same is true of journals.
You cannot copyright a title but you can protect a well known title from infringement.
Specifically, you use ~trademark~ law, rather than ~copyright~ law, to do this. So a practical question in the case of the name "Topology" is whether Elsevier claims it as their trademark as a journal title. (They don't have to mark it on the cover to do this, although it helps; trademarks often aren't legally identified until the litigation begins.) Note that such a meaningful and relevant (not arbitrary and fanciful) name is harder to trademark at all, but history and recognition help. --Toby
participants (9)
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Andree Ehresmann -
Bas Spitters -
Colin McLarty -
Donovan Van Osdol -
Gabor Lukacs -
joyal.andre＠uqam.ca -
Marta Bunge -
Michael Barr -
Toby Bartels