Applied Categorical Structures and other overpriced journals

[John Baez <baez@math.ucr.edu>]

Michael Barr wrote:

>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.  [...]

Indeed!  It's a pity that the proceedings of the main international
conference on category theory is going to be buried in this journal.

Why not publish it in 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.

Is that still true?  If so, that's terrible.  Even most Reed-Elsevier
journals allow you to keep your papers on your own website - and more
importantly, on the mathematics arXiv.

However, Reed-Elsevier only officially accepted these practices recently.
Before that, it worked like this: if you demanded the right to keep your
paper on the arXiv, they'd give in and let you do it.  I think they were
trying to avoid public battles, to keep from looking bad.

So, if anybody feels compelled to publish in a Springer/Kluwer/Reed-Elsevier
journal for some reason, they should simply refuse to give away the
complete electronic rights to their papers.  If necessary, amend the copyright
form to say you have the right to keep your article on your website and
the arXiv.  Journals are unlikely to turn away papers for this reason
after they've already been accepted for publication.

You can read the copyright transfer forms for some math journals here:

http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/journals#copyright

and many more here:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

Unfortunately, the information about Springer seems a bit contradictory.

Best,
jb