[Note from moderator: The article Peter forwards mentions the Public Library of Science whose web site is at http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/ where support is being sought.] Science world in revolt at power of the journal owners James Meek, science correspondent Guardian Saturday May 26, 2001 Scientists around the world are in revolt against moves by a powerful group of private corporations to lock decades of publicly funded western scientific research into expensive, subscription-only electronic databases. At stake in the dispute is nothing less than control over the fruits of scientific discovery - millions of pages of scientific information which may hold the secrets of a cure for Aids, cheap space travel or the workings of the human mind. More than 800 British researchers have joined 22,000 others from 161 countries in a campaign to boycott publishers of scientific journals who refuse to make research papers freely available on the internet after six months. "Science depends on knowledge and technology being in the public domain," said Michael Ashburner, professor of biology at Cambridge University and one of the leading British signatories of the campaign, the Public Library of Science (PLS). "In that sense, science belongs to the people, and the fruits of science shouldn't be owned or even transferred by publishers for huge profits. The fruits of our research - which is, overwhelmingly, publicly paid for - should be made available as widely and as economically as possible." Anger has been simmering for more than a decade in the research libraries of Europe and the US at the massive increase in the cost of subscriptions to scientific journals, which collectively make up the sum of the world's scientific research. As the power of the internet to mine electronically archived journals for data grows, scientists have become increasingly frustrated at the journal publishers' plans to keep tight, lucrative control over decades of their work. Last year the most powerful journal publisher, the Anglo-Dutch firm Reed Elsevier, made a profit of #252m on a turnover of #693m in its science and medical business. Elsevier Science and other journal publishers effectively benefit from the public purse twice: once when taxpayer-funded scientists submit their work to the journals for free, and again when taxpayer-funded libraries buy the information back from them in the form of subscriptions. In Britain, the government is so concerned about the power of Reed Elsevier that it has blocked its #3.2bn takeover of another big journal publisher, Harcourt, while complaints about its market dominance are investigated. Derk Haank, the head of Elsevier Science, protested at the singling out of his company, and portrayed the boycott group as naive idealists. "Everybody would like to have everything available, all the time, and preferably for free," he said. "That's a general human trait, but I'm not sure the business model is realistic. I'm not ashamed to make a profit. I would only be ashamed if people were saying I was delivering a lousy service." He added: "Research is publicly funded, but the cost of publishing it isn't. If the funding authorities were to decide to pay for publication I would provide it for free." You won't find copies of most of Reed Elsevier's 1,100 journals on newsagents' shelves. With titles like Thin Walled Structures, Urban Water, Journal of Supercritical Fluids and Trends in Parasitology, their publications don't have the allure of Elle or FHM but the price of a year's subscription would make mass market publishers drool with envy. A year's subscription to Alcohol - nine issues - comes in at about #100 an issue. One Elsevier journal, Brain Research, costs more than #9,000 a year. Another, Preventative Veterinary Medicine, is now #713 a year, an increase of more than 300% over its 1991 price of #171. Elsevier justifies the increases on the grounds that the number of articles being submitted increases each year, adding to the firm's costs. Each article must be peer-reviewed by fellow scientists to see if it is worthy of publication. Mr Haank added that his firm's price increases forced libraries to cut subscriptions, which in turn cut Elsevier's income, forcing them to increase prices still more. Elsevier wanted to get out of this vicious circle, he said, and was trying to get universities to sign up for electronically archived versions of its journals. The firm has taken on 1,500 people to put its entire journal archive - going back to 19th century editions of The Lancet - on computer databases. But he said the price of subscription to the electronic database would still be tightly linked to the ever rising cost of the paper journals. "Our plan is to make everything available in the academic or professional environment, not just in six months, but on day one," he said. "Somebody has to pay for the cost of the system." Scientific research is not considered real unless it has been published in a recognised journal, and scientists' status and promotion is tied to publication. As a rule, neither the scientists who write the papers, nor their colleagues who peer review them, nor the editorial boards who vet them, are paid. The publishers' costs are printing, the tiny full-time staff on each journal - typically two people - marketing, and distribution. While the feud over the price of journals was between libraries and publishers, the scientists stood aside, but the advent of the internet has changed everything. Powerful search engines trawling computer databases make it possible for scientists to discover groundbreaking links between different research results which would previously have taken years of trawling through a jungle of indexes. The prospect of this incredible new tool being controlled by large private corporations has jerked scientists into action. "The major commercial publishers have every reason to feel threatened," Prof Ashburner said. "They charge very high prices, and they are very insistent on copyright transfer. We are not paid for publication, and we see no reason whatsoever why we should hand over copyright to a commercial publisher, having done the work, both the science and the writing. "The costs these publishers are charg ing are such that even in the wealthy countries we can't always afford to buy the information back, and it's off-limits totally for the developing world." In a letter to the competition commission in March, Clive Field, librarian at Birmingham University and head of the Consortium of University Research Libraries said that the Elsevier-Harcourt merger would give one company control over journals representing 42% of a typical university's spend in that area. He said Elsevier and Harcourt were already trying to drive too tough a deal with their electronic archive. "Neither publisher has yet offered a deal which is recognised to be fair and equitable," he wrote. "It is not unnaturally feared that a merged publisher, operating in a market where the buyer is weak, would be even less subject to the price checks and balances that a more open market would offer." A nice little earner Title Brain Research Publisher Elsevier Annual subscription 1991 #3,713 Annual subscription 2001 #9,148 Increase 146% Title Journal of Virological Methods Publisher Elsevier Subscription 1991 #527 Subscription 2001 #1,555 Increase 195% Title Neuroscience Letters Publisher Elsevier Subscription 1991 #1,125 Subscription 2001 #2,805 Increase 149% Title Preventative Veterinary Medicine Publisher Elsevier Subscription 1991 #171 Subscription 2001 #713 Increase 317% Title Biochemical Journal Publisher Biochemical Society (not-for-profit body) Subscription 1991 #793 Subscription 2001 #1,334 Increase 68% Source: Consortium of University Research Libraries
[Note from moderator: Michael Barr suggested that his contribution to the Newsletter on Serials Pricing be circulated.] ISSN: 1046-3410 NEWSLETTER ON SERIALS PRICING ISSUES NO 229 - July 13, 1999 Editor: Marcia Tuttle CONTENTS 229.1 WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO? Michael Barr 229.1 WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO? Michael Barr, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University, barr@barrs.org I have been reading the prices newsletter for a year and a half and I would like to make some comments, especially to refute some of the more outrageous claims made by publishers. I believe that I have an unusually broad perspective on the publishing business, having witnessed it from several angles. First and foremost, I have been an active researcher (in mathematics), having been author (or occasionally coauthor) of some 70 articles and coauthor of two books, one of which is about to go into its third edition. Second, I have been member and chair of the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) publications committee and have a clear idea of what its publishing costs actually are. Third, I am an editor or associate editor of two print journals, one published by a commercial publisher and one by a university press, as well as editor of two electronic journals, both distributed free. Finally, my daughter worked for two years around 1990 in the journals department of an academic publisher and I have had extensive discussions with her about her experiences and those of people she knows who are still in the field. The CMS journals are not the cheapest journals published by a society but still beat any commercial journal by a factor of 2 to 5, according to the figures collected by Ron Kirby. There used to be page charges, but only about 30% of the authors paid them and they were eventually abandoned as more trouble than they were worth. Despite this, the CMS has a clear profit of perhaps $100,000/year, and this is a major source of income for the society (which has maybe 1000 members). This is real, not paper profit. What expenses do we skip by not being commercial? We have some typesetting costs but most of the articles now come already set in the mathematical typesetting system TeX that has rapidly become the standard for mathematical publication. But this is also true for the commercial journals. As a result, publishing costs have dropped substantially in recent years, although not as much as we were led to believe. Incidentally, twenty and thirty years ago, publishers claimed that the reason mathematics was so expensive to publish was the typesetting costs. Now that most manuscripts come in already typeset, they claim that typesetting was a negligible part of the cost. We have to pay for copy editing costs, printing, binding, mailing, etc. We do little advertising, but advertising is not a major item for established journals in any case. Once upon a time we got free office space, telephone and mailing privileges and even some secretarial services from the university where the editors were, but as university budgets have tightened, we have had to start paying for these just like any commercial journal. The one expense we clearly do not have is a stipend paid the editor-in- chief. I do not know how much that is, but it cannot be significant for a journal that costs $3000 a year and has a subscription base of 1000. So where does all the money go? One answer was supplied by my daughter who informs me that her publisher had five levels of administrators who had no day-to-day contact with the actual publishing, but make decisions increasingly removed from reality and draw six or even seven figure salaries. No doubt, the higher executives travel first class, or perhaps by corporate jet. By contrast, the CMS journals are overseen by a publication committee, the executive committee and board of directors of the society and, ultimately, the membership, all of whom exercise a very light hand and operate gratis. Of course, if societies were to undertake to publish dozens of journals, this structure would no longer work. So one answer is surely that in academic journal publishing, there are few, if any, economies of scale and very serious diseconomies. In that case, the fact that publishing is falling into fewer and fewer hands is even more disturbing. The electronic journal I help edit, _Theory and Applications of Categories_, is free and available to everyone with an internet connection. We have published only about a dozen papers a year, but that's ok; we want to establish a reputation and have it there if the other journals fold. I have announced publicly that I will neither referee for nor submit papers to high priced commercial journals. I quite recently refused to become an editor for a new journal that was to have been published by, I think, Birkhaeuser. Partly for that reason, the to-be editor decided to make it electronic instead. I should add that not all commercial publishers are high priced. There are a couple of small publishers that are publishing good journals at reasonable prices. As an author, I am beginning to feel ill-used. I spend the time doing the research, writing it up and so on and the journals end up owning it. The quid pro quo is forty or fifty "free" reprints? They tell us that copyright acts are there to protect intellectual property, but they certainly don't protect mine. My interests are served by distribution as wide as possible and the publishers' by restricting distribution to the few that can still pay for it. For the last two papers published in a commercial journal, I altered the copyright form to retain the right to post electronically. The publisher accepted it, but would they if a large number of authors did it? I do know that one colleague of mine got a letter from a publisher's lawyer ordering him to remove one of his papers from his electronic archive. Actually, it is only in the last 15 or 20 years that I have been even asked to sign copyright documents; perhaps since the 1976 US copyright act. Before that, the issue never arose. The CMS journals and the electronic journal I edit ask only for a one-time licence. When you ask what a publisher adds to a publication, there is copy editing, printing, binding, mailing, subscription servicing and maybe a tiny bit of publicity (once the journal is established). I think they also add an enormous amount of often useless overhead. When published electronically, only the copy-editing remains. Since our journal is published free, this is not done in any systematic way. It is left to the author and I, on one occasion, returned a paper to the author for serious TeX deficiencies. He had to hire someone to repair it since he refused to learn enough TeX to do it himself. That is unfortunate and I sympathize with him, but think of it as a form of page charge. As an editor, I do for free exactly what I do for the other two journals for free. The editor-in-chief (actually called managing editor) of the electronic journal does more. He spends 3-6 hours on each paper and, so long as we have only a dozen a year, he does not mind. But he and the other editors are aware that there is a serious problem brewing here and we do not know what to do about it. The obvious thing would be for the universities to take some part of their serials budget and simply subsidize these activities that have the potential of enormous savings in the long run. But how do you get there from here? Although this would sap the library's budget, it should not result in loss of jobs in the library since exactly the same (or more) tasks of storage, archival and retrieval would exist. It would only sap the journal acquisitions budget. But what I don't see is how the universities could be made to share these costs in an equitable fashion. Some would subsidize these electronic journals and others would be tempted to sponge off those. This is a problem, but not I think an insuperable one. Why do we publish in journals at all? In fact, all my papers in the last ten years have been distributed electronically and are old hat by the time they are published. We all know the answer. For promotions and tenure (no longer an issue for me) and research grants (I still have a good one and would like to keep it). Thus the only real problem is that of certification. And acceptance of electronic publication is growing. Note that we did not name our journal "Electronic journal .." We decided it would be like naming it "The A4 journal of.." In the end, I think there will be good and poor electronic journals just as there are good and poor print journals. For the time being, however, I am not recommending electronic publication for young researchers. A recent writer to this newsletter made the fatuous suggestion that free electronic journals might be violating the anti-trust laws. An elephant cannot sue a mouse for anti-trust violations. The anti- trust laws are not there to guarantee a business success; they are there to protect consumers from price gouging by a monopolist. If an airline is sued over low prices, it is not the low prices that are the ultimate problem but the likelihood that, once the competitor is driven out of the market, the price will be raised to a much higher level. The history of People's Air shows that this is not just a theory. Much as I would like to see some of the commercial publishers driven out of business, I know this is not likely to happen. Even if did, the publishers of electronic journals could not raise prices the way paper journals have since the barriers to starting new ones are so low. Since anti-trust was mentioned, it is a wonder to me that some state attorneys-general haven't decided that the journals are running a monopolistic business and are engaged in price gouging. After all, a significant part of the state universities' budgets are going to these publishers. The fact that, as recently pointed out in these pages, a few private universities can still afford these journals is irrelevant. But let us engage in some speculation by supposing that it is illegal to do work gratis. Then the most guilty are the researchers who do the work in the first place and give it away to the publishers. Perhaps the publishers ought to be required to pay serious money for the rights to publish. It was one thing when the major journals were non-profit and were performing a service to the profession just by existing. But now it is a big business; why should they not pay for their raw materials. Then there is the free editorial work. I believe the editors-in-chief do get a significant "honorarium." But the remaining editors do not usually get so much as a postage stamp. At least, I never have. The authors and editors at least get some recognition for their work. What about the anonymous referees? Honest refereeing is hard work and there is no payoff, either in money or honor. Yet without it the whole system would come crashing down. It was done free for the good of the profession in the old days, since the journals themselves were non- profit. When commercial journals came along (which started, at least in a big way, in the 1960s), we just went along with free refereeing since, it was what we were accustomed to. What would have happened if the referees had insisted on being paid? I, for one, have just made a personal decision to do no more unpaid refereeing for commercially published journals. No decision I have ever made in my professional career has been less painful. If more of us adopted such a policy, the whole enterprise would collapse. Moreover, it would cost us individually nothing since only the editors would know. As an editor, I will still ask people to referee papers, but if they all refuse, the journal will disappear. One new feature on the publishing scene is that several of the old line journals that used to be published by mathematical societies, especially in Europe, have been taken over by commercial houses. I assume that the societies sell them for a tidy sum. The price usually stays low for a few years and then starts rising often to stratospheric heights. My department is likely to stop subscribing to the oldest mathematical journal in the world, of which we have a complete set. It will be a painful decision, but the journal is very expensive and no longer of much importance. I have not mentioned the actual disparity of costs. I recently calculated the cost per page, for each of the nearly one hundred journals we had a paid subscription to in 1996 (we also have a substantial number of exchange subscriptions, all non-commercial). I realize that this is a crude measure, since not all pages are the same size. But at least it is better than just looking at subscription cost. The costs per page ranged from $.04 to $4.86. If you remove the top and bottom ten, the range is $.18 to $1.37, a factor of over 7. The journal at $.18 happens to be on anybody's list of the top 5 mathematics journals in the world. So does the eighth most expensive, which costs $1.51. There is no correlation between price and quality. There was one commercial journal at $.38 and one society published journal at $.75 and they were the respective extremes. But every journal that cost more than $.75 (a couple of Russian translations excepted) was commercially published and everyone below $.38 was published by a society or a university. The figures show that some of the top journals in the world are among the cheapest. Unfortunately, a couple of the top journals are among the most expensive and this will be our most difficult decision as we have to cut about 10% from our budget, while prices are estimated to rise 13% besides (part of that due to exchange rate fluctuations). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Statements of fact and opinion appearing in the _Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues_ are made on the responsibility of the authors alone, and do not imply the endorsement of the editor, the editorial board, or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Readers of the _Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues_ are encouraged to share the information in the newsletter by electronic or paper methods. We would appreciate credit if you quote from the newsletter. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The _Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues_ (ISSN: 1046-3410) is published by the editor through Academic Technology and Networks at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as news is available. Editor: Marcia Tuttle, Internet: marcia_tuttle@unc.edu; Telephone: 919 929-3513. Editorial Board: Keith Courtney (Taylor and Francis), Fred Friend (University College London), Birdie MacLennan (University of Vermont), Michael Markwith (Swets Subscription Services), James Mouw (University of Chicago), Heather Steele (Blackwell's Periodicals Division), David Stern (Yale University), and Scott Wicks (Cornell University). To subscribe to the newsletter send a message to LISTPROC@UNC.EDU saying SUBSCRIBE PRICES [YOUR NAME]. Be sure to send that message to the listserver and not to Prices. You must include your name. To unsubscribe (no name required in message), you must send the message from the e-mail address by which you are subscribed. If you have problems, please contact the editor. Back issues of the Newsletter are archived on two World Wide Web sites. At UNC-CH the url is: http://www.lib.unc.edu/prices/. At Grenoble the url is: http://www-mathdoc.ujf- grenoble.fr/NSPI/NSPI.html. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[Note from moderator: This and one further posting address the issue in the subject heading. The items from Peter Freyd and Michael Barr were posted for information, but the subject is not directly relevant. Please send replies for T. Leinster and P. Taylor directly to them rather than the list.] I'm writing to seek suggestions. I'd very much like to sign the boycott letter mentioned in the article forwarded by Peter Freyd (relevant bits quoted below). More generally, I'd prefer to avoid perpetuating the more exploitative aspects of commercial publication. But I'm not going to sign the letter just yet. This is because it seems that if I commit myself to only publishing in "enlightened" journals then my options will be severely restricted, to the extent that it might harm my future job prospects. Unfortunately, it's a sacrifice I'm not quite willing to make. What I'd like to find is that it is actually possible to publish in respected journals while keeping my papers free to whoever wants them. So my first question is: which journals have enlightened policies? I know about TAC, and I've seen the list (http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/journals) of journals which accept submission direct from the electronic archive (and so, presumably, are happy for the papers they publish to be freely available). What other enlightened publications - especially category-theoretic - are there? Mike Barr's article also mentioned copyright agreements, and I'd be interested to know of other people's experiences with this. Which journals are happy for you to retain copyright of your papers, or for you to modify the agreement so that you at least retain the right to make your own work electronically available? And how exactly do you make these modifications (e.g. wording)? Is it perhaps easier just to sign the agreement but post it electronically anyway, and hope no-one notices? (I would have imagined this perfectly safe except for a certain experience of a colleague.) Well, I'm eager to hear of positive experiences... Thanks, Tom Leinster
Science world in revolt at power of the journal owners
[...]
More than 800 British researchers have joined 22,000 others from 161 countries in a campaign to boycott publishers of scientific journals who refuse to make research papers freely available on the internet after six months.
I completely agree with the views about commercial journals in - Mike Barr's article in the "Newsletter on serials pricing issues" (29 May), - Peter Johnstone's resignation letter as an editor of JPAA (15 Jan), - James Meek's article ("Guardian", 26 May) on the cost of journals (28 May). (The dates refer to "categories" postings.) As Mike Barr pointed out, but James Meek seems not to know, the journals no longer do the work of typesetting papers, so in the Web age the commercial publishers do NOTHING AT ALL. Without meaning to diminish my agreement that we should stop giving our research and our institutions' money to the commercial publishers, I would like to be "advocatus diaboli" on an issue of management. My question is this: Is a commercial (or university) publisher, being outside the academic community, better able to deal with complaints against editors than an academic managing editor can be? An academic editor is subject to other pressures, which may be summed up as "not falling out with colleagues", whereas a commercial manager can be more ruthless in enforcing the rules. I am thinking of complaints of a management rather than intellectual nature, of course. For example, failing to pass papers from authors to referees and the referees' reports back again within a reasonable time. (This has been a real issue for me, but I have no intention of naming names. I would like to see a discussion of professional standards of editing and refereeing sometime, but not on THIS occasion.) The kind of answer that I'm looking for would be an (anonymised) account of some incident where a commercial publisher has dealt with a complaint better or worse than an academic managing editor would. Paul
Paul raised an interesting question. However, my experience with both kinds of journals leads me to believe that the commercial publishers keep hands off the day-to-day issues of the sort he raises. I could imagine an extreme case in which the publisher might step in, but I have never seen it happen. There is invariably an academic editor-in-chief (who, in the case of a commercial journal, gets paid an amount which was once described to me as "substantial", with no details) and I have never heard of an author going beyond that level, although they could try. I would like to take exception to Paul's "NOTHING AT ALL" comment. As far as I can tell, the value added by commercial publishers is actually NEGATIVE, since by owning the copyright they attempt to keep the papers out of general circulation. An Elsevier flack writing to respond to my posting two years ago tried to justify price increases in the face of falling costs by raising the issue of paper costs. Now I buy a sheet of letter-size paper for about 1 cent (and the shriveled Canadian cent at that). I don't know what Elsevier pays, but I would be surprised if they pay half of that. But maybe the common market supports the price of paper, so take that 1 c as given. JPAA costs about $4000 for 2000 pages (that's Canadian $). So it costs $2 per page. Now tell me how a rise in the cost of paper can be a significant cause in the doubling of the subscription price over the decade? The flack made other, equally spurious claims. In the past five years all my papers have been published in TAC, in Cahiers, and I now have one submitted to the electronic HHA (Homology, Homotopy and Applications). Michael On Wed, 30 May 2001, Paul Taylor wrote:
I completely agree with the views about commercial journals in - Mike Barr's article in the "Newsletter on serials pricing issues" (29 May), - Peter Johnstone's resignation letter as an editor of JPAA (15 Jan), - James Meek's article ("Guardian", 26 May) on the cost of journals (28 May). (The dates refer to "categories" postings.)
As Mike Barr pointed out, but James Meek seems not to know, the journals no longer do the work of typesetting papers, so in the Web age the commercial publishers do NOTHING AT ALL.
Without meaning to diminish my agreement that we should stop giving our research and our institutions' money to the commercial publishers, I would like to be "advocatus diaboli" on an issue of management.
My question is this: Is a commercial (or university) publisher, being outside the academic community, better able to deal with complaints against editors than an academic managing editor can be? An academic editor is subject to other pressures, which may be summed up as "not falling out with colleagues", whereas a commercial manager can be more ruthless in enforcing the rules.
I am thinking of complaints of a management rather than intellectual nature, of course. For example, failing to pass papers from authors to referees and the referees' reports back again within a reasonable time.
(This has been a real issue for me, but I have no intention of naming names. I would like to see a discussion of professional standards of editing and refereeing sometime, but not on THIS occasion.)
The kind of answer that I'm looking for would be an (anonymised) account of some incident where a commercial publisher has dealt with a complaint better or worse than an academic managing editor would.
Paul
From 1967 to 1972, they were printed and distributed by the commercial editor Dunod. When Dunod merged with Bordas, he refused to go on because
As the publisher of the non-commercial category-theoretic Journal "Cahiers de Topologie et Geometrie Differentielle Categoriques" I have read with interest Michael Barr's Newsletter on Serials Pricing and the following postings on the subject. I would like to add some information on the "effective" cost of publishing, and also answer a question of Tom Leinster which could be of interest to the authors who have published or want to publish in the "Cahiers". The "Cahiers" have been created by Charles Ehresmann about 40 years ago. there was no "profit". At that time Charles and I decided to undertake the publication ourselves, and since the death of my husband in 1979, I assume this job alone. I have no support nor material help whatsoever from any institution. If the address is at the Faculte de Mathematique of the Universite de Picardie, it is just because it is my own professional address. As many people of this category list know, to avoid typesetting problems, after the papers have been refereed and accepted, authors are required to send me laser printed copies of the papers in a specific format, to which I add the title, name of authors, headings and page numbers. I give the so prepared volume to a (commercial) printer who prints and binds it. The mailing of the issues as well as the handling of subscriptions is done by myself. The only resources come from the subscriptions (almost all from foreign universities, of which about 100 in the USA). For this year, the price is 460 Francs for 320 pages; thus, depending on the dollar rate, it amounts to less than 0.20 $ for a page. This price is fixed so that if just covers the printing and mailing costs, and a small part of the material costs (printer ink, computer,...). The "Cahiers" have some exchange with "TAC" since each year "TAC" contents are published in the second issue of the "Cahiers" volume, while "Cahiers" contents are mailed to this category list. Now an answer to Tom Leinster who asks:
What I'd like to find is that it is actually possible to publish in respected journals while keeping my papers free to whoever wants them. So my first question is: which journals have enlightened policies?
I don't know if the "Cahiers" are "respected". But I can assert that my policy is to allow the authors to keep their papers free to whoever wants them. Indeed, the papers can be freely posted in any electronic archive (with reference to the volume where they are published) and/or photocopied, if the 50 reprints I send free are not sufficient. Any suggestion to make the "Cahiers" more useful to the category community will be appreciated. Andree C. Ehresmann
I take this opportunity to thank Andree C. Ehresmann for all she has done and is still doing in order to keep the "Cahiers" going and in good health. The contribution of the cahiers to the category theory community is inmense, and even more was so during all those years when there was not electronic printing. We all in this community have a great debt to Mme Andree, and I feel we should let her know explicitly how important her work has been and still is. Personally, every time I have to reference a good article, I never remember in which journal it was published, except if it was the cahiers. It may be that the cahiers is close to my heart. Good job Andree, and keep going ... Eduardo J. Dubuc
participants (7)
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Andree Ehresmann -
Bob Rosebrugh -
edubuc@dm.uba.ar -
Michael Barr -
Paul Taylor -
Peter Freyd -
Tom Leinster