Publication price and value

By Jens Rademacher
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The Elsevier boycott call has opened another round in the debate on subscription costs, publisher profit and open access. Over the past 20 years the discussion about the cost of journal subscriptions has been going on with varying intensity (See, for instance, John Baez' statements from last year). This editorial is intended to bring this issue to the attention of our community and provide relevant links to recommended further reading.

In January 2012, an illustrious group of mathematicians issued the mentioned boycott call on Elsevier. Over 10,000 scientists have answered the call and vowed not to publish, review or edit articles for Elsevier journals. Very recently, Douglas Arnold and Henry Cohn wrote this extension with many links, including the reactions from Elsevier. Various discussion threads followed the call (e.g. here). However, already 15 years ago Rob Kirky wrote this open letter to Elsevier. And looking back, I vividly recall Laurette Tuckermann's urge at Snowbird 2005.

When it comes to providing alternative access for publications, author rights should not be forgotten or dismissed, as emphasized recently by the University of Minnesota mathematics librarian Kristine Fowler. Open access is a growing publication scheme, which has its roots partly in Soros' Budapest Open Access Initiative that started 10 years ago. Indeed, open access journals solve the subscription cost problem; here is a list of such in math - but beware, publishing an open access article can easily cost several thousand dollars and as a consequence some funding agencies provide extra (?) money. Moreover, with this new publishing model, a number of predatory, for-profit publishers have also appeared. See also here and here.

As the authors of the call to boycott Elsevier and many others allude to, the issues of publication/subscription cost and journal choice are linked to the pressure to publish in "high quality" journals. While this is and has been more dramatic in other fields, internet technology has added some flavors also for mathematics, such as to statistically measure quality by doubtful indices (e.g. here and here) and excessive plagiarism. In 2009 Douglas Arnold, then SIAM president, wrote this on the problem.

Here is another starting point for reading in case you wonder about the "Future of mathematical publishing".

And by the way, SIAM publishes many excellent journals with low subscription rates...

Jens Rademacher

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