refusing to support Elsevier

[Ilana Gershon]

I know that a number of people on this list are unhappy with Elsevier, 
and in particular with how exorbitant its costs are, and how restrictive 
its access is.
Mathematicians have decided to protest this in a bottom-up campaign, 
signing a petition that they will not support any of its journals until 
Elsevier changes
the way it operates.  This protest is beginning to cross disciplines, 
and in the interest of encouraging that, I am posting the link to the 
petition here:

http://thecostofknowledge.com/index.php


To entextualize, Tim Gowers, a Fields medalist,  lists the reasons he is 
protesting their practices:

1. It charges very high prices --- so far above the average that it 
seems quite extraordinary that they can get away with it.

2. One method that they have for getting away with it is a practice 
known as "bundling", where instead of giving libraries
  the choice of which journals they want to subscribe to, they offer 
them the choice between a large collection of journals
  (chosen by them) or nothing at all. So if/some/Elsevier journals in 
the "bundle" are indispensable to a library, that library
  is forced to subscribe at very high subscription rates to a large 
number of journals, across all the sciences, many of
  which they do not want. (The journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals is a 
notorious example of a journal that is
  regarded as a joke by many mathematicians, but which libraries all 
round the world must nevertheless subscribe
  to.) Given that libraries have limited budgets, this often means that 
they cannot subscribe to journals that they
would much rather subscribe to, so it is not just libraries that are 
harmed, but other publishers, which is of course
part of the motivation for the scheme.

3. If libraries attempt to negotiate better deals, Elsevier is ruthless 
about cutting off access to all their journals.

4. Elsevier supports many of the measures, such as theResearch Works Act 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act>, that attempt to stop 
the move to
  open access. They also supported SOPA and PIPA and lobbied strongly 
for them.


If you want to read the full blog post, it is here: 
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-downfall/


Best,
Ilana