Subject: Springer-Verlag again Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 20:16:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Joan Birman To: DON DAVIS Dear Don, Since you said you would hold my letter for a few days, I reread it and would like to make one tiny change. The revised letter follws: ****** You might be interested in the fact that, as of September 16, 2003, the former Springer-Verlag (more recently BertelsmannSpringer) was merged with Kluwer Academic Publishers. As the press release says, "the merger will create the second largest professional publisher in science, technology and medicine". What's the other one: Elsevier, of course! In August Kluwer was taken over by Cinven and Candover, who are described in the press release as "a leading European firm". The new CEO is Derk Haank. This is, I think, a sad day for mathematics. Springer-Verlag has played a major role in the development of our literature. But as anyone who has bought a Kluwer book recently knows, they are among the absolutely top priced books in the field. As for their journals, they are destroying our library. But what's done is done. The good news is that there is no way that these two giants can succeed in destroying our literature if we don't contribute our books and articles to them and work for them as Editors! Without our cooperation, they have bought something that has no real value. There are lots of alternatives--the professional societies, the university presses, the independent publishers (e.g. International Press and Geometry and Topology Publications, but NOT, for example, Hindawi Press) and the myriad of privately owned journals such as Annals of Mathematics and the Pacific Journal of Mathematics. There is also the possibility of like-minded individuals in the community pooling their talents to start a new journal, in the same way that some of us did with GT and AGT. There is support for that these days from the Soros Foundation's `Open Access' project. I assure you that the task is very rewarding. Or we can just keep working for Kluwer and Elsevier, until one of them kills the other, and rethink it then.