From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/3787 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: rjwood@mathstat.dal.ca (RJ Wood) Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Applied Categorical Structures Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 13:41:32 -0300 (ADT) Message-ID: <20070608164132.EB7FB5C282@chase.mathstat.dal.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241019522 10284 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 15:38:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:38:42 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: rrosebru@mta.ca Mon Jun 11 09:38:58 2007 -0300 Return-path: Envelope-to: categories-list@mta.ca Delivery-date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:38:58 -0300 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1Hxj0N-000229-OM for categories-list@mta.ca; Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:28:19 -0300 Original-Sender: cat-dist@mta.ca Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 15 Original-Lines: 53 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:3787 Archived-At: Well said Mike! Years ago, when we sent type-written material to the journals most of them "added value" by typesetting. About the time we began texing our own papers, journals became prohibitively expensive. Now, many of them subtract value by introducing errors when they reset to a house style and by limiting the author's readership. Most mathematical societies' journals are still good value but surely commercial journals cannot last much longer? (Dalhousie subscribed to Applied Categorical Structures from 1998 to 2003.) Rj Wood Dear colleagues: After thinking about it, I cannot restrain myself from responding to Ross's message that the procedings of CT07 will be published by Applied Categorical Structures. What I say here is what I would do. I cannot recommend what other people should do (especially people without tenure, who are in a peculiar position). I am not going to CT07 (I cannot face crossing the pond in sardine class) nor am I planning to publish a paper in the proceedings. But if I were, I would certainly not publish it in ACS. The proceedings of the Kleislifest in 2000 were published by ACS but my paper went into TAC. ACS is published by Kluwer (now a subsidary of Springer). Kluwer is one of the "gang of five" publishers that are sucking all the life (not to mention money) out of mathematical publication. The journal is not subscribed to by McGill nor by any other university in Montreal. I would actually be surprised if any university in Canada or more than a small handful in the US subscribe. It is no wonder since they charge, as far as I can tell, in the neighbourhood of $3 a page so that the annual subscription of nearly 100 pages costs nearly $3000. The author of a paper published there is legally enjoined from posting it on his own web site. What a perversion of the whole idea of intellectual property (a somewhat dubious concept in any case, especially the way it is practiced today). Imagine, we do all the work, they make all the profit, and then tell us we cannot distribute it freely. When I publish, my interests are served best by the widest possible distribution. If it is category theory, that means TAC. (Unfortunately, my most recent work has been in point-set topology, which has no such alternative.) TAC is freely (in both senses) available and leaves the intellectual property where it belongs, with the author. But even if TAC is unsuitable for your work, there are reasonable alternatives. Two of my recent papers have been published in the Canadian Journal and one in an inexpensive Japanese journal. Even tenure committees might be impressed by those places. Of course, nothing I do would ever be acceptable in "prestige" journals, but that gets into issues that Ronnie Brown has recently expressed better than I can. Michael