Subject: Re: posting about journal prices: the role of ISI From: Ronnie Brown Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 15:18:10 +0100 Responding to: > One result of this is the rise of electronic journals, > in which there may be no profits, or any small ones go to help the journal. Disadvantages are: 1. Arxiving over a long period. 2. Recognition: will research assessments take account of the general standing of the Editorial Board, or not? 3. Citation indices: a major one is controlled by the Institute for Scientific Information, (ISI), http://www.isinet.com/ which is run by Thomson. They list journals run by major publishers, and by learned societies, and some others. They claim to have a process of assessing new journals for their list, but this process is unclear, and from my enquiries, requests to be on their list often disappear into a black hole. See their reference to `Bradford's Law' " It has been demonstrated that a relatively small number of journals publish the bulk of significant scientific results. " http://www.isinet.com/essays/selectionofmaterialforcoverage/199701.html/ So that's OK then! Some countries require a journal to be on the ISI list for it to be recognised. This should be deplored, since ISI is a commercial, not an academic, organisation. It seems to have done well for itself and its directors. Ronnie Brown www.bangor.ac.uk/r.brown www.popmath.org.uk _____________________________________________________________________ Subject: Re: posting about journal prices From: Walter Neumann Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:02:36 -0400 (EDT) In response to Dev Sinha's post on journal pricing, there is something we can do, which is vote with our feet. There was a recent discussion of this at a conference in Banff, summarized in my email to Topology attached below (which has not yet been replied to), announcing a personal boycott of that Journal (and other journals). --walter neumann :: Begin included message :: Date: September 6 2005 Dear Beverly (and Topology Editors) I just emailed you, Beverly, a referee's report on [details omitted]. If [it] is resubmitted to Topology, I am afraid that I will not be able to referee it. I'd be glad if you could pass on this email, which gives my reasons for this, to the editorial board of Topology. At a recent Topology meeting in Banff the participants met for an evening to discuss the issue of journal pricing. The feeling of many participants was that the overpricing of journals and the bundling policies instituted by many publishers are putting financial pressures on our libraries that are severely compromising them. Over twelve years ago, when I was involved in the purchasing decisions of the library at Ohio State University, the rising price of journals was already putting painful pressure from the books budget, although most important journals were still subscribed. Five years later I was in Melbourne, Australia, and subscription cuts due to price increases had come to the point that Australian university libraries could no longer assure that each important journal was available by interlibrary loan within Australia. As publishers' sense of responsibility moves from one of service to their customers to one of maximizing profits for their stockholders, the free service that we provide by refereeing and editing is no longer being returned to the academic community. At the meeting at Banff a "Banff Protocol" was proposed whose signers would agree not to submit papers nor provide service to journals whose pricing was seen as excessive. One proposal for what "excessive" would mean was a per page cost exceeding the average of the 25 mathematics journals at the top of the ISI list by "impact factor" (approx 52 cents/page). Other measures were proposed that led to somewhat higher figures, but ultimately the meeting did not come to an agreement. Despite this failure of agreement, several of us at the meeting agreed to abide by the spirit of the "Banff Protocol." I am therefore resigning from the editorial board of one journal and will refuse to referee papers for several. In particular, since the price of Topology is above all the proposed measures discussed at the time (and indeed, Elsevier was cited as one of the worst offenders regarding predatory pricing), I will no longer submit papers to nor referee papers for Topology until the pricing comes down to a reasonable level. Regards, Walter Neumann :: End included message :: ___________________________________________________________________ Subject: posting about journal prices (fwd) From: "Nicholas J. Kuhn" Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:00:28 -0400 To: Don Davis This is in response to Dev Sinha's message about the cost of journals. We've had big problems with this issue at U Virginia in recent years, and from my experiences, here are a few thoughts: (1) No other `science' department cares much about older journal literature. So physicists are happy with the ArXiv, med school researchers are happy only having online journals, and only the recent stuff, etc. (2) Along with `bad' publishers (and they ARE bad), university library administrators should be viewed with suspicion. Along with the high cost of journals, they dislike the space journals take up. At my school (and thus probably many others), they are also fond of trying to measure `usage' quantitatively. As far as they can tell, our journals are hardly used at all. Papers on, say, topological modular forms or motivic homotopy are of no particular importance, based on user numbers. (3) Many universities have set themselves up to be screwed by publishers, by accepting slightly lower cost `bundled' deals, that cut across disciplines (including big money medicine). It seems to me that these bundled deals make it very hard for libraries to negociate, and also force them into a `one size fits all' deal, which always is bad for we outliers in math. Similar comments apply to bundled deals with other universities with very different profiles (e.g. state consortiums). (4) Why do we tend to accept it, when our university says it can't pay an extra $10,000 for our library needs, when in the next building over, a $500,000 lab is being outfitted for a small group of researchers, and up the street, three new `diversity officers' have just been hired, and over by the football stadium an assistant coach has just been given a $40,000 raise, etc., etc. The truth is, universities can pay: they just choose not to. Nick Kuhn ________________________________________________________________________ Subject: Re: posting about journal prices From: "John Baez" Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:41:36 -0700 (PDT) There's a lot of information and suggestions here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html Briefly: 1. Don't publish in overpriced journals. 2. Don't do free work for overpriced journals (like refereeing and editing). 3. Put your articles on the arXiv before publishing them. 4. Only publish in journals that let you keep your articles on the arXiv. 5. Support free journals by publishing in them, refereeing for them, editing them... even starting your own! 6. Help make sure free journals and the arXiv stay free. Only items 5 and 6 require serious work; item 2 is downright fun. I have a standard rejection letter for overpriced journals that ask me to do free work. It's easy to find out which journals are bad and which ones are good. As Dev pointed out, journal price information is listed here: http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/~rehmann/BIB/AMS/Publisher.html Briefly, publishers whose names end in "-er" are ripoffs: Elsevier, Kluwer, Springer, Birkhauser. Don't use them, don't referee papers for them. If you have a sentimental fondness for them, just remember: they don't have a sentimental fondness for you. The following journals allow you to submit papers simply by listing their arXiv number: http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/journals To see if other journals let you keep your work on the arXiv, go here: http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/journals#copyright More energetic people should learn about Mathematical Sciences Publishers and get involved: http://www.mathscipub.org/ There are lots of other relevant links on my webpage. Best, jb