Subject: mass resignations From: "Dr A. J. Baker" Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 21:00:07 +0100 (BST) Dear Andrew, Greetings from the warmer side of Scotland. I understand that the issue of costs seemed not to be the whole story behind the resignation of the K-theory board. However, there was certainly some suggestion that costs had played a part. For example, in the statement issued by the board it says "The price is 380 British pounds, which is significantly less than half that of the old journal." and no other reason is given for this abrupt event. Furthermore, in the discussions at http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=581 http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=585 there is mention of the comparative prices and Bak's letter responding to yours is entitled "Springer: Large backlogs, poor production of manuscripts and high prices" and refers to the majority of the former editors of K-Theory feeling that Springer was charging "much too high a price". But I am aware of the clarifications by you and others which imply that there was much more going on than simply the cost of the journal. I apologise if I have misrepresented the facts but feel I was making a reasonable connection between the issues. Anyway, the main point of my email was simply to draw attention to the Banff Protocol and it seemed worth linking this to recent events that highlighted the issue of cost. Following my posting I have had some interesting emails, some supporting the Banff Protocol and some pointing out the possible bad consequences, in particular the effect on young people or others awaiting tenure decisions who may suffer from delays in publishing articles. I hope that mathematicians will collectively come up with some effective answers to the difficult problems we are faced with, on the one hand inexorably rising costs, and on the other reductions or inadequate rises in journal purchasing budgets. I believe there are some sound alternatives to the traditional profit making commercial publishing, and these may well prove far more important than somewhat negative and perhaps self defeating protest actions, but sometimes dramatic actions focus attention on issues in ways that quieter activity fails to do. Best wishes, Andy ****************************** Dr A. J. Baker Department of Mathematics University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QW Scotland phone (0141) 330 6140 fax (0141) 330 4111 a.baker@maths.gla.ac.uk http://www.maths.gla.ac.uk/~ajb/