Re: Reed Elsevier gives in

Re: Reed Elsevier gives in

[Paul Taylor]

Dear Marta,

Congratulations on the success of your campaign to get Elsevier to
withdraw from the arms trade.  However, I do not understand what
use I am supposed to make of this news.

If you tell your child that s/he will not get any chocolate cake
until s/he tidies his/her bedroom, and then s/he does so, you are
obliged to provide the chocolate cake.

Are you now saying that Elsevier was just a naughty child, whom
we loved all along really, and that we should start "publishing"
(ie privatising) our papers in their expensive journals?

It seems to me that the discussion on this list on this issue around
Christmas completely failed to address the main point of the journals
issue. Well, it nearly got there, but it was at just that point that
Bob cut it off.

The problem lies with the academic establishment, starting from
professors like you who are editors of journals, organisers of
conferences or heads of department, through the managements of
universities, up to the ministers of education in our respective
countries.  These are the people who hold the guns to our heads
while companies like Elsevier rob us of our intellectual property.

If certain of my colleagues want to set up new open-access on-line
journals in topology or whatever subject, then I strongly welcome
that, and am willing to help if they ask me to do so.

However, this does not solve the problem of the pressure that is
put on us by our lords and masters, especially when they specify
lists of "approved" journals, or employ - inherently fraudulent -
methods of bibliometry to "assess" our work.

Best wishes,
Paul

PS Please note the new email address and web site:
pt07@PaulTaylor.EU  and www.PaulTaylor.EU

Re: Reed Elsevier gives in

[Ronnie Brown]

The problems to which Paul refers in his last paragraph seem to me to rest
partly in a lack of analysis by the general mathematical community (and in
this I tend to exclude category theorists who as part of their trade do
analyse directions and foundations) of how mathematics progresses. I make
some remarks on this in a recent article `Promoting Mathematics' in MSOR
Connections Vol 7 No 2
downloadable from http://mathstore.gla.ac.uk/articles/new.asp, and an
analysis of the Research Assessment Exercise Methodology is given on
www.bangor.ac.uk/r.brown/publar.html
The problem seems to be partly that the great and the good go along with the
idea that they can decide which mathematics of today will play a key role in
the future, and therefore there should be funding direction to those
`important' trends.
Paul Adrian Dirac said in one of his last addresses that `You should follow
a mathematical idea wherever it leads, however far from the original
starting point'. Indeed it seems reasonable to say that a professional
methodology is to follow through one's ideas in this way. Many, or some,  of
the  great and the good, however,  will take  opportunities  to use words
like `rubbish' and `nonsense' and to criticise work from a sociological
viewpoint:
Are important others following you?
Is it relevant to the `mainstream'?
They have not realised the `mainstream' flaps around like the sail on a
yacht (to mix metaphors). A visitor to Bangor in 2001 said to me `You are
not mainstream.' I retorted `Not yet!'.  My impression is that the great and
the good in the UK have not heard of the word `pioneering', and are unaware
of the history of important mathematical ideas. Indeed they are quite
prepared to leave out the words `category' and `groupoid' from an evaluation
of 20th century mathematics. (I name no names.) Perhaps this all part of the
fight for funding, and for Governments to prove that money is `well spent'.
For an individual outside a `top centre', the best bet might be to look for
`childish questions'  (Grothendieck) which the `top centres' ignore. The
history of science shows the hazards of this approach for individuals! There
are sociological reasons for this!

Part of my argument is also that mathematicians need to argue strongly for
their subject, not just for its applications. My friend John Robinson was
proud of his last sculpture donation of `Prometheus', to Frome Community
College, and the giving of the name `Prometheus' to their new Mathematics
Centre.
www.fromecollege.somerset.sch.uk/
See also
http://www.popmath.org.uk/sculpture/pages/2hearth.html

That was John's view of the contribution of mathematics to humanity!

Anyone want to argue against it? Or elaborate it?

Ronnie








> The problem lies with the academic establishment, starting from
> professors like you who are editors of journals, organisers of
> conferences or heads of department, through the managements of
> universities, up to the ministers of education in our respective
> countries.  These are the people who hold the guns to our heads
> while companies like Elsevier rob us of our intellectual property.
>
> If certain of my colleagues want to set up new open-access on-line
> journals in topology or whatever subject, then I strongly welcome
> that, and am willing to help if they ask me to do so.
>
> However, this does not solve the problem of the pressure that is
> put on us by our lords and masters, especially when they specify
> lists of "approved" journals, or employ - inherently fraudulent -
> methods of bibliometry to "assess" our work.