
Timothy Gowers is bent on proving academic journals can cost nothing - robertwalsh0
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/4/11160540/timothy-gowers-discrete-analysis
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unchocked
It's a testament to the skill of publishers' FUD that we're still having this
conversation. Authors don't get paid, reviewers don't get paid, product is
disseminated via pdf, and there is still a "debate" outstanding such that a
Fields Medal winner has to get involved to push things forward a bit.

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shas3
A real estimate is available for JMLR, a reputed machine learning journal,
about $10 per article (!): [https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-
efficient-j...](https://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-
journal/)

~~~
Blahah
See also scholastica
([https://scholasticahq.com/](https://scholasticahq.com/)) which is also
around $10 per article before you add bells and whistles.

~~~
bitJericho
Actually for high quality scientific research, that doesn't seem to bad when
you consider people will drop 10-20 dollars to go see a movie. Too bad the
authors don't see any of it.

~~~
new299
In the case of JMLR it's not 10USD per-view. It's 10USD per article published.
I'm not sure if that was clear from the comment above.

Commercial journals generally charge far more than that per-view. JMLR charge
nothing per-view.

When open access, commercial journals will often charge 1000s to publish an
article (compared to the 10USD JMLR says it costs them).

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adenadel
Here's two of Gowers' blog posts about Discrete Analysis, the journal:

[https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-
an...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-
overlay-journal/)

[https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-
la...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-launched/)

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logicrook
>"Timothy Gowers's first big assault on academic publishing started almost by
accident.

In 2012, the Cambridge mathematician took to his blog to write a post
bemoaning the exorbitant prices that journals charge for access to research.
Gowers vowed to stop sending his papers to any journal from the world's
largest academic publisher, Elsevier. tim gowers

To his surprise, the post went viral — and spurred a worldwide boycott of
Elsevier, [...]"

>Be top scientist

>Publish a statement of intent on your widely followed blog

>People who have felt the same way but could not express their opinion without
damaging their career follow

>be surprised

How much is this article insulting the reader's intelligence?

~~~
nkurz
> How much is this article insulting the reader's intelligence?

I didn't get that sense. Could you explain why you feel it's insulting?

~~~
logicrook
Well, Gowers went at great length explaining its motivations [0] (see the
following quote, from [1]). So saying that Gowers started attacking Elsevier
"by accident" and "was surprised that it grew as a movement" is very
disrespectful to Gowers, to truth, and also a bit to the reader.

>"Once I did hear about Elsevier’s behaviour, I made a conscious decision not
to publish in Elsevier journals and I started to feel bad about cooperating
with them in any way. [...] Now, however, I have decided that my previous
quiet approach was not enough."

[0]
[https://gowers.wordpress.com/category/elsevier/](https://gowers.wordpress.com/category/elsevier/)

[1] [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-
in-...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-
downfall/)

