Re: science_publishers

Re: science_publishers

[Marta Bunge]

Dear Eduardo,

I, too, consult ArXiv quite often, but I do so knowing that the articles in question are unrefereed preprints, as are lectures. This may be stimulating but, even as a way to establish priority, it is quite dubious. For instance, in ArXiv, one has the possibility of updating a posting, and so correct mistakes or add comments received privately. I do not know if the new postings replace the old one or coexists with it. The referee system has its drawbacks, but it is normally of use, not only to the  readers and institutions, but also to the author(s). Posting in ArXiv should always be followed by a publication in a refereed journal, but it not always is. As for journals in which the costs of publishing are nil, we categorists have the fortune of having a reputable journal such as TAC where to send our papers. In this I totally agree with Mike Barr. Cahiers is, to a lesser extent perhaps, another such instance, and it can now be accessed electronically (Numdam). There are also refereed proceedings of festshrifts or conferences which may not be rated as high as some journals, but which are part of our community life and, in some sense, a duty  that we have towards our respected colleagues. As for high cost journals, I once signed a pledge not to publish in any Elsevier journal, and advertised my action in categories. Several people in this forum thought this  was stupid, but others praised me. It is a matter of conscience. I do not have a solution, but asking libraries to stop subscribing to prestigious journals is in my view utopic. I already suggested requesting funding agencies and university policy makers to give higher ratings to journals which  deserve to be so considered, particularly when the author gives reasons for choosing such journals rather than the high end ones. Finally, I (and  so, anyone) can access ArXiv postings without any problem- it is not hard to locate what one wants to read in them. An excellent source of information, but it could never replace refereed journals. 

Regards, 

Marta



> Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2011 15:26:19 -0300
> From: edubuc@dm.uba.ar
> To: categories@mta.ca
> Subject: categories: Re: science_publishers
> 
> Marta Bunge writes:
> 
> "it is (still) a measure of success by grant giving agencies to have
> published in such journals and, in turn, a measure for promotion
> considerations."
> 
> Michael Barr writes:
> 
> "Finally convince granting agencies to find better ways of measuring
> impact."
> 
> This is just the real problem. Michael, it is not "finally", but "first
> of all".
> 
> Once this is changed, high ranked journals will be in trouble.
> 
> But, I am afraid it will be impossible. There is an arrow in evolution,
> and this arrow points into the fact that journals rankings and impact
> factors are going to be more and more determinant for the academic
> career of 99% of the mathematicians (expet for the future few
> Grothendiecks Serres Cartans and the like).
> 
> Something on the other hand can be attempted:
> 
> 1) Make a strong campaign so to popularize and convince all authors to
> send their papers to the arXiv.
> 
> 2) Convince all libraries to stop all subscriptions to journals, and
> install electronic easy to use catalogs of all arXiv papers, have them
> in stock, and furnish the structure for the immediate printing of
> requested papers.
> 
> Personally, most of the reading I am doing recently are from arXiv
> papers, not from published papers.
> 
> On the other hand, the only papers which are considered for grant
> soliciting, promotions (and even worst, here if you stop publishing you
> loose your job, which is at stake every 7 years) are published papers,
> the more high ranked (impact factor) the journal the better.
> 
> So, to read the work of others, and make your own work known, you will
> use the arXiv, to get ahead in your academic career you will publish
> (papers which nobody will need to buy).
> 
> e.d.
> 
  		 	   		  

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Re: science_publishers

[Steve Vickers]

A followup Guardian article, from Ben Goldacre:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/02/bad-science-academic-publishing

In case you don't know him already, Goldacre's weekly "Bad Science"
column is generally a good read. Mostly he writes about media
reporting of medical research, with particular emphasis on how
statistical findings are reported.

Steve.


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Re: science_publishers

[Eduardo J. Dubuc]

Dear Marta, your msage does not contemplate the arXiv under the role I
gave it in my msage. For me, in that msage, the arXiv is only considered
as a meduim to broadcast your work. Only that.


On 03/09/11 07:46, Marta Bunge wrote:
> Dear Eduardo,
>
> I, too, consult ArXiv quite often, but I do so knowing that the
> articles in question are unrefereed preprints, as are lectures.

perfect,whai is the problem ?

> This
> may be stimulating but, even as a way to establish priority, it is
> quite dubious.

I was not thinking at all as a way to establish priority

> For instance, in ArXiv, one has the possibility of
> updating a posting, and so correct mistakes or add comments received
> privately. I do not know if the new postings replace the old one or
> coexists with it.

and so, you read the arXive to see if it is useful for your work. You
have to read the proofs to see if the statements are true. YOU are the
referee in a way.

> The referee system has its drawbacks, but it is
> normally of use, not only to the  readers and institutions, but also
> to the author(s). Posting in ArXiv should always be followed by a
> publication in a refereed journal, but it not always is.

Yes, so as to make any good in your curriculum, the higher the impact
factor (or ISI or whatever) the better. But it is completely IRRELEVANT
for those that will actually understand and use your work. !! .

As for the referee trouble, yes, I agree many times it is useful for
both ends.

> As for
> journals in which the costs of publishing are nil, we categorists
> have the fortune of having a reputable journal such as TAC where to
> send our papers. In this I totally agree with Mike Barr. Cahiers is,
> to a lesser extent perhaps, another such instance, and it can now be
> accessed electronically (Numdam). There are also refereed proceedings
> of festshrifts or conferences which may not be rated as high as some
> journals, but which are part of our community life and, in some
> sense, a duty  that we have towards our respected colleagues. As for
> high cost journals, I once signed a pledge not to publish in any
> Elsevier journal, and advertised my action in categories. Several
> people in this forum thought this  was stupid, but others praised me.
> It is a matter of conscience. I do not have a solution, but asking
> libraries to stop subscribing to prestigious journals is in my view
> utopic.

Probably,

> I already suggested requesting funding agencies and
> university policy makers to give higher ratings to journals which
> deserve to be so considered, particularly when the author gives
> reasons for choosing such journals rather than the high end ones.

This is also utopic. If I said I do not publish this paper in Annals of
mathematics, which I can perfectly do, by a matter of conscience, It is
clear that for nobody in any evaluation comitee (even by peers) this
declaration will have any value.

> Finally, I (and  so, anyone) can access ArXiv postings without any
> problem- it is not hard to locate what one wants to read in them. An
> excellent source of information, but it could never replace refereed
> journals.

Depends for what? . When the matter is to make your work known, it is
even better than refereed journals.


Actually, I think the first reason and "raison d'etre" of the journals
at the time if their creation (19 th century or before) was the
diffusion of correct knowledge. Now it has degenerate in curriculum
build up. To diffusion of knowledge (right or wrong) we have the arXiv.
The interested reader is its own referee. What is the problem ?. To
utilize results (trusting a referee) without having taken the trouble to
verify and understand the proofs it is not a good way to do mathematics.
So, why care if the paper has been refereed or not ?

> Regards,
>
> Marta

many regards    e.d.
>
>

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Re: science_publishers

[Bas Spitters]

Google is joining the citation game. I am not sure whether this is good or bad.

http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B7vSqZsAAAAJ&hl=en

Bas

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 9:46 PM, Jocelyn Ireson-Paine <popx@j-paine.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 1 Sep 2011, Vaughan Pratt wrote:
>
>> The solution of authors voting with their feet is a very long-term one
>> which does not address what's already in the literature but currently
>> behind a paywall.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> This issue has a particularly large impact on the current hot-button
>> topic of global warming, where there are a lot of technically minded
>> people without access to the relevant technical journals being cited on
>> blogs by people on either side of the debate who do have access.
>> Many of you will have noticed that a widespread feeling, particularly
>> strong in the US and Australia, has been developing lately that there's
>> a conspiracy between governments and scientists to tamper with the free
>> market economy by inappropriately steering funding towards alternative
>> energy proponents and providers.  Locking influential articles behind a
>> paywall has the unfortunate side effect of amplifying this feeling.
>>
>> For that and other hot-button topics (vaccination and autism, aluminium
>> and Alzheimer's, safety of nanotechnology, etc.), a more immediate and
>> reliable solution would be welcome, in addition to the solution of
>> voting with your feet.
>>
> Here's my suggestion, inspired by the music-sharing software Napster. Set
> up a Web site to which one can upload images of journal pages. Equip it
> with optical character-recognition software that in these images, can
> identify titles, authors' names, and other bibliographic information, and
> that can recognise whether an article is complete or not. Add a program
> that can assemble complete articles from partial page sets uploaded by
> different people. Call it the "Journal Colimit Construction" site.
> Advertise it to fervent believers in open access who are prepared to do
> something practical to support their belief: the something practical being
> to scan and upload an agreed-on number of pages per week from whatever
> journals they can find in their libraries. It might be a good idea to host
> the site in a country that doesn't recognise world copyright conventions.
>
>> The problem is not merely academic, it's also a serious social problem.
>>

....


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Re: science_publishers

[Marta Bunge]

Dear Zoran,

 

 

I do not disagree entirely with the idea
of just looking up people that we know and trust wherever they post/publish
their work. But this does not apply to a lot of work posted in ArXiv, and  there
is no guarantee of any sort. One would have to do the refereeing oneself if  one
wanted to quote it. 

 

From what you say below, you also think
that some measure for maintaining a level of control over what is posted in
ArXiv is desirable. I refer to your statement 

 

“Thus we need to get overlay boards to
referee and certify certain version of arxiv papers by usual procedures and
without involvement of commercial journals. We should value author's work
according to the theorems and not according to the journals where they appeared
or did not. We should also make available independent criticism of papers in
forms of discussions, reviews etc. independent from weather the paper has  been
published or not.” 

 

I entirely agree. 

 

You also wrote

 

“I know of lots of published nonsense,
and false statements in hi-impact journals, and massive works which are
valuable and correct and are not in the journals. I am not talking only
Perelman's preprints but far much more.”

 

 

I also agree with your statement above.
One can, however, ignore published nonsense, but what to do with false statements in
high-impact journals if the author does not care to offer a correction or even
post a note indicating that an error has unfortunately occurred? Perhaps with a
dynamic ArXiv this state of affairs would most likely improve the situation, as
it would make such actions less problematic. Indeed there is much valuable work
that is not published.

 

Regards,

Marta

 




Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2011 15:55:24 +0200
Subject: Re: categories: Re: science_publishers
From: zskoda@gmail.com
To: martabunge@hotmail.com

Dear Marta,

I have slight doubts about your reservations about the arxiv you posted on the category list.

First of all, all versions are stamped with a date and the sources of all  versions are non-removable from the main archive (though in some mirrors some of old versions may be non-available). Second, while I agree in the importance of refereeing I do not understand insistence on 

being published as a synonym. Einstein's papers are mainly published and unrefereed. The unpublished paper can be reviewed in detail and in public. Finally the arxiv can evolve and host a circle of boards which would place refereed by that and that board to some versions of arxiv paper. So you can have v1 v2 v3 and v4 refereed by journal xyz which exists only as an overlay  of arxiv. There is nothing bad in having v5 which is improved and updated in author's opinion even over certified version 4. I know some people who are in academia and do not send to journals any more, just to some archive  out of their conviction. One of them tells me, why would some board tell  me what to read, I decide whom I trust and whom I will read. Once I know  a name I can look up on line and find an article, he says. Indeed, I trust every paper with the author name Ofer Gabber much more than a paper with stamp Annals of Mathematics. 


Thus we need to get overlay boards to referee and certify certain version of arxiv papers by usual procedures and without involvement of commercial journals. We should value author's work according to the theorems and not according to the journals where they appeared or did not. We should also make available independent criticism of papers in forms of discussions, reviews etc. independent from weather the paper has been published or not. I know  of lots of published nonsense, and false statements in hi-impact journals, and massive works which are valuable and correct and are not in the journals. I am not talking only Perelman's preprints but far much more. 


Sincerely,

Zoran Skoda
  		 	   		  

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Re: science_publishers

[George Janelidze]

[Note from moderator: TAC will indeed be covered by ISI someday, a 
decision revealed in 2010. There was also correspondence from ISI this 
April. Patience may be needed.

While I'm writing, it should be pointed out that the discussion, while 
interesting to the moderator too, is off topic, and needs to end. Thanks.]

Dear Ronnie,

You say:

"...since some countries will consider a journal as worth rating for
research assessment if and only if it is listed by ISI..."

"...I got a nice letter back, and a new letter from Mr Rodney Chonka, which
has led to the listing of TAC."

But what do you mean by "listed by ISI"? I asked about this someone who
decides about (one of aspects of) research assessment at my university. The
answer I got was:

"...I cannot find this journal in the Science Citation Index on the ISI Web
of Knowledge platform accessed from the library website, nor in the PDF list
of ISI journals on the library website. I suspect that you located it on the
Thompson-Reuters so-called "Master list", which I think lists all journals
whether ISI rated or not - i.e. the ISI list is a subset of the "Master
list". So I think that your journal is not an ISI-rated journal..."

I also discussed this with Bob Rosebrugh, and it seems to us that TAC is
"somewhere in ISI", but NOT on the right list, which those countries you
mentioned would use.

A recent message of Michael Barr says (among other things): "...It took TAC
15 years to get ISI to agree to index it...". But again, unfortunately it is
not the list we need.

Dear All,

I wrote about this some time ago, and in particular Jim Stasheff agreed and
tried to help, but let me repeat/add: I think we - meaning hundreds of
people seriously interested in category theory - should try to:

- Persuade Mathematical Reviews to use "Cahiers" and APCS for the citations
(for TAC it is fortunately done, but only this year).

- Persuade Thomsons Reuters to include "Cahiers" and TAC in their RIGHT list
(for APCS it is fortunately done a long time ago).

Please do not conclude that my opinion about Mathematical Reviews and/or
Thomsons Reuters is "good", "bad", or any different from yours.

Regards - George




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Re: science_publishers

[Ronnie Brown]

A further complication is the role of Thomsons Reuters ISI, since some
countries will consider a journal as worth rating for research
assessment if and only if it is listed by ISI.  I believe Thomsons
Reuters is doing very well out of ISI.

In 2003 I did a small survey of editors of small journals from an EMS
list, and they were either ignorant of ISI or antipathetic to the
procedures of the so called `journal assessment'. Usually , requests to
be considered seemed to go into a blank hole.

I was considering a letter to the AMS Newsletter, but in the end decided
to fight for my own corner.  and so  wrote to  Dr James Testa of ISI,
saying that the lack of listing of TAC, JHRS and Cahiers failed to
recognise the importance of thse journals for category theory, and that
editors found the ISI procedures impenetrable and were bitter about
this.  I got a nice letter back, and a new letter from Mr Rodney Chonka,
which has led to the listing of TAC.

Mr Chonka is a  wide ranging editor for ISI, but his qualifications are
unknown.  I felt this contrasted with the well publicised academic
reputations of editors of journals which were being refused listing.

Ronnie Brown

Extract from my letter of 19 Nov 2009.

"By relying on `impact factor' there is no allowance for the slow
acceptance of new ideas, and it seems certain that the use of the ISI
methodology is a brake on scientific progress, and of the development
and influence of new ideas.

This is certainly true in category theory, an area developed in the
second half of the last century, has had  a major influence in unifying
mathematics, and has  developed new methods particularly in higher
dimensional algebra. "


On 01/09/2011 19:55, Steve Vickers wrote:
> I'd like to mention "Journal of Logic and Analysis", free and
> efficiently run by Nigel Cutland at York. It includes good articles
> in that awkward area of non-classical approaches to analysis.
>
> It has published an article of mine and it seemed the right place,
> but should I recommend it to younger researchers?
>
> Steve Vickers.
>

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Re: science_publishers

[Jocelyn Ireson-Paine]

On Thu, 1 Sep 2011, Vaughan Pratt wrote:

> The solution of authors voting with their feet is a very long-term one
> which does not address what's already in the literature but currently
> behind a paywall.
>
> ...
>
> This issue has a particularly large impact on the current hot-button
> topic of global warming, where there are a lot of technically minded
> people without access to the relevant technical journals being cited on
> blogs by people on either side of the debate who do have access.
> Many of you will have noticed that a widespread feeling, particularly
> strong in the US and Australia, has been developing lately that there's
> a conspiracy between governments and scientists to tamper with the free
> market economy by inappropriately steering funding towards alternative
> energy proponents and providers.  Locking influential articles behind a
> paywall has the unfortunate side effect of amplifying this feeling.
>
> For that and other hot-button topics (vaccination and autism, aluminium
> and Alzheimer's, safety of nanotechnology, etc.), a more immediate and
> reliable solution would be welcome, in addition to the solution of
> voting with your feet.
>
Here's my suggestion, inspired by the music-sharing software Napster. Set
up a Web site to which one can upload images of journal pages. Equip it
with optical character-recognition software that in these images, can
identify titles, authors' names, and other bibliographic information, and
that can recognise whether an article is complete or not. Add a program
that can assemble complete articles from partial page sets uploaded by
different people. Call it the "Journal Colimit Construction" site.
Advertise it to fervent believers in open access who are prepared to do
something practical to support their belief: the something practical being
to scan and upload an agreed-on number of pages per week from whatever
journals they can find in their libraries. It might be a good idea to host
the site in a country that doesn't recognise world copyright conventions.

> The problem is not merely academic, it's also a serious social problem.
>
I completely agree.

By the way, the problem once hit my teaching. I used to teach Artificial
Intelligence at Oxford, in the department of Experimental Psychology. I
lectured, ran tutorials, and gave practicals: but was brought in as a
part-timer rather than being employed as a full-time lecturer. (There
wasn't enough AI in the course to warrant full-time employment.) This
mattered, because the department had subscriptions to various academic
bibliographic databases. Like the journals, these were horribly expensive
- except that the department had a free site licence. But _this was only
available to full-timers_. So I was in the odd position of teaching, but
having my adminstrator deny me materials that other staff members were
allowed to use.

> Vaughan Pratt
>
Jocelyn Ireson-Paine
http://www.j-paine.org

Jocelyn's Cartoons:
http://www.j-paine.org/blog/jocelyns_cartoons/


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Re: science_publishers

[Steve Vickers]

I'd like to mention "Journal of Logic and Analysis", free and
efficiently run by Nigel Cutland at York. It includes good articles
in that awkward area of non-classical approaches to analysis.

It has published an article of mine and it seemed the right place,
but should I recommend it to younger researchers?

Steve Vickers.


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

Re: science_publishers

[Eduardo J. Dubuc]

Marta Bunge writes:

"it is (still) a measure of success by grant giving agencies to have
published in such journals and, in turn, a measure for promotion
considerations."

Michael Barr writes:

"Finally convince granting agencies to find better ways of measuring
impact."

This is just the real problem. Michael, it is not "finally", but "first
of all".

Once this is changed, high ranked journals will be in trouble.

But, I am afraid it will be impossible. There is an arrow in evolution,
and this arrow points into the fact that journals rankings and impact
factors are going to be more and more determinant for the academic
career of 99% of the mathematicians (expet for the future few
Grothendiecks Serres Cartans and the like).

Something on the other hand can be attempted:

1) Make a strong campaign so to popularize and convince all authors to
send their papers to the arXiv.

2) Convince all libraries to stop all subscriptions to journals, and
install electronic easy to use catalogs of all arXiv papers, have them
in stock, and furnish the structure for the immediate printing of
requested papers.

Personally, most of the reading I am doing recently are from arXiv
papers, not from published papers.

On the other hand, the only papers which are considered for grant
soliciting, promotions (and even worst, here if you stop publishing you
loose your job, which is at stake every 7 years) are published papers,
the more high ranked (impact factor) the journal the better.

So, to read the work of others, and make your own work known, you will
use the arXiv, to get ahead in your academic career you will publish
(papers which nobody will need to buy).

e.d.

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Re: science_publishers

[Vaughan Pratt]

The solution of authors voting with their feet is a very long-term one
which does not address what's already in the literature but currently
behind a paywall.

Furthermore the authors with the highest impact are also the ones most
likely to operate in a community all of whose members belong to
institutions with subscriptions.  Some of them (I have no idea what
fraction) may even prefer the additional ivory-tower isolation provided
by paywalls, so as not to have deal with outsiders, and many more will
not be strongly motivated to change the status quo.  I recall a meeting
a few years ago at which Andy Odlyzko, who'd looked into the problem in
some detail, offered economic reasons for why the status quo was hard to
change, though I don't recall any calibration by him on where to draw
the line at gouging.

This issue has a particularly large impact on the current hot-button
topic of global warming, where there are a lot of technically minded
people without access to the relevant technical journals being cited on
blogs by people on either side of the debate who do have access.
Many of you will have noticed that a widespread feeling, particularly
strong in the US and Australia, has been developing lately that there's
a conspiracy between governments and scientists to tamper with the free
market economy by inappropriately steering funding towards alternative
energy proponents and providers.  Locking influential articles behind a
paywall has the unfortunate side effect of amplifying this feeling.

For that and other hot-button topics (vaccination and autism, aluminium
and Alzheimer's, safety of nanotechnology, etc.), a more immediate and
reliable solution would be welcome, in addition to the solution of
voting with your feet.

The problem is not merely academic, it's also a serious social problem.

Vaughan Pratt

On 9/1/2011 7:11 AM, Mike Stay wrote:
> Another page with the same viewpoint:
> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html
>

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Re: science_publishers

[Mike Stay]

Another page with the same viewpoint:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 11:48 AM, Eduardo J. Dubuc <edubuc@dm.uba.ar> wrote:
> Just thought some in the list may not be aware.  Greetings  e.d.
>
> ===============================================================
> Von: David Mumford [mailto:dbmumford@gmail.com]
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 31. August 2011 18:11
> An: Caroline Series; Rob Kirby; Don McClure; Peter J Olver; Martin
> Groetschel; John Ball; Ingrid Daubechies; Jeremy Mumford;
> notices@math.wustl.edu; vicente.munoz@mat.ucm.es; Peter Michor
> Betreff: Fwd: Elsevier
>
>
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> My son sent me the link below to a very strong and very clear article in
> the Guardian about the huge fees charged by technical publishers for
> access to journals. It represents how I have felt for a long time, how
> the math community among others is being outrageously exploited. I feel
> it ought to galvanize scientists/mathematicians to react and would like
> to suggest reprinting it in e.g. the Notices of the AMS, the Newsletter
> of the EMS, the news email from the IMU, etc. The simple response for
> mathematicians is to cease submitting any papers to Elsevier or Springer
> journals. (Excuse me but I am sending this to a somewhat random sample
> of people that occurred to me and whose email address I had -- eg I
> don't have an address for Ewing or Friedlander.)
>
> yrs faithfully,
>
> David
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist
> =================================================================
>

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RE: science_publishers

[Marta Bunge]

Dear Eduardo, 


The problem is well known, and there has been much protest in academic circles - so far as I know, to no avail. Rich institutions can certainly afford to subscribe electronically to most journals, but the fees are too high for universities and research centers in countries with a weak currencies or without support from their administrations. 
Some academics (for instance some mathematicians) are currently abstaining from publishing in such journals. However, the problems with this are, first, that scientific publishers could not care less and, second, that it is still a measure of success by grant giving agencies to have published in such journals and, in turn, a measure for promotion considerations. 
Solutions? One could try to change that attitude (say in Canada with NSERC, in Argentina with CONICET, etc) and, at the same time, request a reduction (say, from Academic Press, Springer, etc) for those institutions which cannot pay the fees. Perhaps all of this has been at least attempted. 
In any case, the case still stands and it is important to remind us that it is.
Regards from Buenos Aires,Marta
************************************************
Marta Bunge
Professor Emerita
Dept of Mathematics and Statistics 
McGill UniversityMontreal, QC, Canada H3A 2K6Home: (514) 935-3618
marta.bunge@mcgill.ca 
http://www.math.mcgill.ca/~bunge/
************************************************



> Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:48:59 -0300
> From: edubuc@dm.uba.ar
> To: categories@mta.ca
> Subject: categories: science_publishers
> 
> Just thought some in the list may not be aware.  Greetings  e.d.
> 
> ===============================================================
> Von: David Mumford [mailto:dbmumford@gmail.com]
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 31. August 2011 18:11
> An: Caroline Series; Rob Kirby; Don McClure; Peter J Olver; Martin
> Groetschel; John Ball; Ingrid Daubechies; Jeremy Mumford;
> notices@math.wustl.edu; vicente.munoz@mat.ucm.es; Peter Michor
> Betreff: Fwd: Elsevier
> 
> 
> 
> Dear Friends,
> 
> My son sent me the link below to a very strong and very clear article in
> the Guardian about the huge fees charged by technical publishers for
> access to journals. It represents how I have felt for a long time, how
> the math community among others is being outrageously exploited. I feel
> it ought to galvanize scientists/mathematicians to react and would like
> to suggest reprinting it in e.g. the Notices of the AMS, the Newsletter
> of the EMS, the news email from the IMU, etc. The simple response for
> mathematicians is to cease submitting any papers to Elsevier or Springer
> journals. (Excuse me but I am sending this to a somewhat random sample
> of people that occurred to me and whose email address I had -- eg I
> don't have an address for Ewing or Friedlander.)
> 
> yrs faithfully,
> 
> David
> 
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist
> =================================================================
> 
> 
> 
> [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
  		 	   		  

[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

Re: science_publishers

[Michael Barr]

This is interesting, but should not be news to any of us.  Anyone who is
not aware of this situation in academic publishing simply has not been
paying attention or doesn't care.  I have a colleague who publishes all
his papers in high-prestige high-cost journals.  He was receptive to my
plea to use cheaper or free journals but said his coauthors were not.

But governments are complicit too.  It took TAC 15 years to get ISI to 
agree to index it.  I have forgotten, but there was something funny about 
AMS Reviews indexing TAC papers, although they do at least review them. In 
Europe they use indicators such as ISI to determine what they call "impact 
factors".  Non-indexed journals have, ipso facto, no impact.  I don't know 
about NSF, but NSERC committees make their own judgments (or did when I 
was on the grant selection committee, 92-95).

It is not well known, but Elsevier at least will accept a one-time license
in lieu of a full copyright transfer.  At least they did in 1995, which is
the last time I published in a journal of restricted access (JPAA).  I
don't know if anyone has paid to download one of the two papers I
published then, but if so they owe me the copy fee.  Naturally, they've
made no such attempt.

As you know TAC is free to all.  There are no charges to authors or
readers.  The editors and reviewers are not paid, but no journal pays
them.  The only costs are the storage space at Mt. A. (a totally trivial
cost which Mt. A. donates) and time and effort Bob spends on it, which is
his contribution.  I know from Peter Freyd when he was managing editor of
JPAA that he got enough money from them to pay a part-time assistant.  So
much for their costs.  Once upon a time, it was certainly the case that
typesetting was costly.  Now the authors do that.  And author-submitted
TeX has vastly improved over the years and now most submissions need only
a trivial amount of copy editing.

As it happens, my daughter used to work for Wiley.  She started out with a
small (she was employee #8) publisher in a niche market.  When she needed
a new copy editor or proofreader, she went to the owner, made her case,
and got an instant yes or no answer.  They occupied a brownstone in
Brooklyn and made a tidy profit.  But the owner needed capital to expand
and raised it by selling half the company to Wiley.  After disagreements,
Wiley took it over and (mis)managed it their own way.  When the lease
expired, they moved the operation to their Manhattan offices (later the
whole operation moved to Hoboken).  But a funny thing happened.  Even
though they saved on the Brooklyn lease (which could not have been less
than $10,000 a month--it was all four floors of what had been a large
house near Prospect Park) the division was accounted as losing money.
Why?  Well, they got charged a proportionate share of the costs of being
downtown and similarly a share of administrative costs.  When my daughter
needed something, it had to go through five levels of management above her
and took weeks or months.  Then there were corporate jets to pay for,
executive bonuses, all the diseconomies of scale.  Managers are fond of
going on about economies of scale, but nore reticent over the
diseconomies.

What is to be done.  First the libraries should drop the subscriptions to
the big academic journals.  This will be painful at first, but eventually
researchers will learn that no one is reading their articles and maybe
choose cheaper, if temporarily lower, prestige.  Start our own online
publications.  Many in other fields charge authors page charges; this
seems to be less needed in math because we mostly don't need costly
illustrations.  For diagrams we have xy-pic (and, dare I mention it,
diagxy) which do everything I need.  Second, get the libraries to use the
money they save on the outrageous subscriptions and give a bit of it to
subsidize these new journals.  Also there are print journals that are
relatively inexpensive, a few hundred a year.  Use them.  Finally convince
granting agencies to find better ways of measuring impact.  At least
temporarily until this all gets sorted out.  How do we get there from
here?  Damfino!

Michael

[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

science_publishers

[Eduardo J. Dubuc]

Just thought some in the list may not be aware.  Greetings  e.d.

===============================================================
Von: David Mumford [mailto:dbmumford@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 31. August 2011 18:11
An: Caroline Series; Rob Kirby; Don McClure; Peter J Olver; Martin
Groetschel; John Ball; Ingrid Daubechies; Jeremy Mumford;
notices@math.wustl.edu; vicente.munoz@mat.ucm.es; Peter Michor
Betreff: Fwd: Elsevier



Dear Friends,

My son sent me the link below to a very strong and very clear article in
the Guardian about the huge fees charged by technical publishers for
access to journals. It represents how I have felt for a long time, how
the math community among others is being outrageously exploited. I feel
it ought to galvanize scientists/mathematicians to react and would like
to suggest reprinting it in e.g. the Notices of the AMS, the Newsletter
of the EMS, the news email from the IMU, etc. The simple response for
mathematicians is to cease submitting any papers to Elsevier or Springer
journals. (Excuse me but I am sending this to a somewhat random sample
of people that occurred to me and whose email address I had -- eg I
don't have an address for Ewing or Friedlander.)

yrs faithfully,

David

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist
=================================================================



[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]