Gowers petition against Elsevier

Gowers petition against Elsevier

[Paul Taylor]

http://thecostofknowledge.com/

So far includes Andre Joyal, Jamie Vicary and me from category theory.
Others may like to join too.

Paul


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Re: Gowers petition against Elsevier

[Michael Barr]

I would like to generalize this to include Springer and Bertelsmann
(which, I think, includes Springer now).  I haven't had any dealings with
any of them since about 1995.  They are evil and the sooner we get rid of
them the better.  About a month ago, I asked Springer about permission to
reprint something from about 1980 if I recall properly.  Not even the
courtesy of a refusal.  We are doing out bit with TAC, but why can't the
mathematical community as a whole see the damage that is being done to our
profession?

Michael

On Sat, 28 Jan 2012, Paul Taylor wrote:

> http://thecostofknowledge.com/
>
> So far includes Andre Joyal, Jamie Vicary and me from category theory.
> Others may like to join too.
>
> Paul
>
>

-- 
An ostrich is more intelligent than the average congressman.  The
ostrich does not bury its head in the sand.


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Re: Gowers petition against Elsevier

[David Yetter]

Eventually generalizing the boycott to Springer might be necessary, but 
tactically I think it would be a mistake at this point.  

I am reminded of a story from the days of the "Old West" here in Kansas in which
the new Marshall (I think it was Wyatt Earp) set about bringing order to the
town (I think it was Abilene) by obliging the Texas cowboys who had driven
their cattle north to check their guns before entering a saloon.  When the
sneered and declined, he picked the biggest, meanest, surliest of the 
Texans, laid him out with one punch, and repeated his request.  The other
cowboys complied.

The scientific community needs to do the same -- bringing down, or forcing
reform at, the most egregiously abusive of publishers will oblige the others
to fix the problems, too.  And, just like a punch to the jaw delivered to one
cowboy was more feasible than fighting the lot of them, it is more feasible:
young folk worried about "impact factors" because they don't yet have a
job are left with more publication venues from which to chose while
avoiding Elsevier.

Best Thoughts,
D. Yetter


On 28 Jan 2012, at 13:56, Michael Barr wrote:

> I would like to generalize this to include Springer and Bertelsmann
> (which, I think, includes Springer now).  I haven't had any dealings with
> any of them since about 1995.  They are evil and the sooner we get rid of
> them the better.  About a month ago, I asked Springer about permission to
> reprint something from about 1980 if I recall properly.  Not even the
> courtesy of a refusal.  We are doing out bit with TAC, but why can't the
> mathematical community as a whole see the damage that is being done to our
> profession?
> 
> Michael
> 

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Re: Gowers petition against Elsevier

[David Chemouil]

[ 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. ]

Dear colleagues,


although this petition may be useful, I think there is much more to be 
done here.

For the time being, it is quite difficult to boycott any commercial 
publisher unless you are an experienced sommité in your domain. For 
instance, PhD students need to publish in highly-rated journals or 
conferences, which are almost always associated to a publisher like 
Elsevier or Springer. To fight this situation, and as in the case of the 
free software movement, the best strategy is in my view to develop a 
high-quality alternative to commercial scientific publishing. For 
instance, the said sommités could join (or create) programme and editing 
committees of journals and conferences publishing only under a 
totally-open access scheme (i.e gratis for authors and readers, as well 
as under a "free" licence, such as the Creative Commons - Attribution - 
Share-Alike licence). As a matter of fact, as most know, this is already 
the case with publications such as TAC or LMCS and with conferences 
relying on the EPTCS proceedings. Besides, it is easy to setup a site as 
an ArXiv overlay to rely on the long-lastingness of this publication 
platform. In ten years or so, with such committees and a good editing 
policy, such journals or conferences will be as well ranked as 
commercial ones.

However the subscription to the Elsevier or Springer electronic library 
will be needed for a long time, just to be able to get digitized 
versions of papers from the second half of the last century. This is a 
second, trickier, battlefield in the sense that the figth here must be 
carried on the copyright front. First, the copyright now extends far too 
long after the author's death. Secondly, some publishers, when 
digitizing some work, state wrongly that they perform a creative step, 
which prolongs their copyright by "resetting" the creation date. Here, 
the fight can almost only be solved by advocating politicians.

All the best

dc

-- 
David Chemouil
Onera - DTIM
Tel./fax: +33 (0) 5 6225 2936 / 2593
<http://www.onera.fr/staff/david-chemouil>


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discussing journals

[Joyal, André]

Dear collegues,

The International Mathematical Union has a blog
for dicussing mathematical journals: 

http://blog.mathunion.org/journals/

The discussion can be continued there.

Best,
André




-------- Message d'origine--------
De: David Chemouil [mailto:David.Chemouil@onera.fr]
Date: dim. 29/01/2012 07:04
À: categories@mta.ca
Objet : categories: Re: Gowers petition against Elsevier
 
[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. ]


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Re: discussing journals

[FEJ Linton]

[ For information only; no discussion please ]

Following up on what André Joyal wrote recently:

The Economist's latest issue (2012 Feb. 04, pp. 82-83) discusses Gowers'
blog and the resultant pledge/petition -- cf.:

http://www.economist.com/node/21545974  = and =
http://www.economist.com/node/21545974/comments .

Cheers, -- Fred



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the IMU president signed

[Joyal, André]

Information:

Ingrid Daubechies, president of the International Mathematical Union (IMU)
has signed the boycott "the cost of knowledge".

-André


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Re: Gowers petition against Elsevier

[Robert Seely]

> [ 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. ]

Indeed - for the most part, discussion on this list does seem to be
preaching to the choir.  Thanks in large part to the efforts of the
moderator of this list (and others), the categorical community is well
placed online - TAC, this list, arXive, nLab, and many many homepages.
It's rare (in my experience, at least) to look for a paper one wants,
and not to find it online.

SO: to all those out there who are in a position of some influence,
your task, should you choose to accept it, is to "move" deans (and
tenure committees, hiring committees, promotion committees, etc) to
accept on-line journal publications, to encourage other "independant"
journals (such as those published by professional associations) to
flourish, to establish new quality journals (sponsored by
universities, eg), to decouple the notions of "impact" (as measured by
indices) and "excellence", and whatever other measures that might
dislodge the seeming monopoly of the big 2 (3?) publishers.  Everyone
would benefit (except those publishers), so the trick is to convince
others, beyond this small community, of that.

We've had this discussion many times before - it'd be nice if the next
time we do, things have measurably improved ...

-= rags =-


-- 
<rags@math.mcgill.ca>
<www.math.mcgill.ca/rags>


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Re: Gowers petition against Elsevier

[David Roberts]

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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