Re: Gowers petition against Elsevier

[David Roberts <david.roberts@adelaide.edu.au>]

Bearing the following moderator note in mind, I am happy to discuss
off-list the contents of my email, and please direct any replies
directly to me (and others you wish to include). I thank the moderator
for his tolerance of this extremely off-topic post, and the TAC
editors for giving us a quality free journal to publish in.

> [ Note from moderator: While interesting, this thread is off-topic and list
> policy does not allow for discussion. Posts sent after tomorrow will not be
> forwarded. Thanks. ]

One thing that people can do is be creatively subversive. For example,
when publishing in a journal owned by someone you would rather
boycott, but can't for various reasons, place the paper on the arXiv
in a generic style (e.g. amsart.sty instead of elsevier_generic.sty if
such a thing exists), as you are allowed to do (yes, you are), and
then put in a sentence "A[n essentially identical] copy of this paper
is available [for free] from arxiv.org" at the end of your abstract.

Or perhaps one can thank, in the acknowledgements, "Tim Gowers [1] and
Terry Tao [2] for their interesting remarks", and reference their
recent blog posts:

[1] http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/httpthecostofknowledge-com/
[2] http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-cost-of-knowledge/

This might need to be followed up with a sentence expressing agreement
with their views, but the impracticality of following through on their
suggestions at present. Nice, neutral sentences: if one doesn't look
at the actual blog posts.

If one wanted to try something really interesting, how about this for
a thought experiment (assuming the paper is accepted):

* Place paper on arXiv and on own web page
* Submit paper to Journal of A, owned by a big commercial publisher.
* Receive referee reports. If allowed, post these on your web page,
removing trivial stuff like "page 3, line 24, missing 'an', insert
comma"
* Make changes (if needed).
* Receive acceptance email/letter from Journal and place on website
* Receive contract
* Decline to sign contract and withdraw paper, with explanatory letter
about publisher's practices (make this nice to the handling editor,
they have done some work for you after all)
* Update arXiv version with note 'accepted by Journal of A, but
withdrawn by author for [personal reasons here], referee reports,
acceptance letter and withdrawal letter available from [website]'
* (Optional) - resubmit to an open access journal, together with
supporting material (acceptance letter, referee reports, withdrawal
letter)

Now one has simultaneously: a paper accepted to the journal one 'must'
publish in, and a letter to prove it, referee reports stating the
quality of the work and a commitment to not use Journal of A.

Now this is a perhaps a complete fantasy, and may not work in real
life, and someone who needs publications to get a job, and timely ones
at that, is not going to do this. Or perhaps one can use the
scholastica platform or similar (http://www.scholasticahq.com/) to set
up something similar to Rejecta Mathematica, but only accepting papers
that have been *accepted* in other journals - Accepta Mathematica? -
and then withdrawn by authors because of "moral outrage at
publishers", "dislike of anti-open source journals" or such like. (The
reasons are complete hyperbole: I just mean that the paper is not
withdrawn for reasons of errors). Papers would need to be supplied
along with acceptance letters and referee reports, along with original
submission and final accepted copy.

In any case, those with established careers with 'nothing to fear'
should stop publishing in the journals in question so that their
quality drops, and publish in other venues (open source/society- or
university-published journals) so that their quality rises, and more
junior mathematicians can safely jump ship.

Humbly,

David Roberts


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