Fields Medalist Tim Gowers Takes Action To Stop Cooperating with Anti-Open Science Cartel

Posted on January 26, 2012  Comments (2)

The Fields medal is know as the Nobel of mathematics. Tim Gowers was awarded the Fields medal in 1998 for contributions to functional analysis, making extensive use of methods from combinatorial theory. Tim Gowers is currently the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He posted recently on his decision to stop supporting (with his actions, such as submitting paper and reviewing papers) the anti-open-science behavior of Elsevier (a particularly aggressive anti-open-science publisher that also has very bad pricing practices).

Elsevier — my part in its downfall

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.) Of course, 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.

Elsevier supports many of the measures, such as the Research Works Act, that attempt to stop the move to open access. They also supported SOPA and PIPA and lobbied strongly for them.

I also don’t see any argument at all against refusing to submit papers to Elsevier journals.

So I am not only going to refuse to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on, but I am saying so publicly. I am by no means the first person to do this, but the more of us there are, the more socially acceptable it becomes

Good for him. All we need is for more and more scientists, mathematicians and engineers to support open science with thier actions and open science will be the way things are. It is as simple as that. The outdated business practices of the old journals will die. Either the existing publishers will finally give up on their extremely outdated practices or they will be replaced.

Related: The Architecture of Access to Scientific KnowledgeMerck and Elsevier Publish Phony Peer-Review JournalThe Future of Scholarly Publication (2005)Science Journal Publishers Stay Stupid (2007) “It is time for the scientific community to give up on these journals and start looking to move to work with new organizations that will encourage scientific communication and advancement”

2 Responses to “Fields Medalist Tim Gowers Takes Action To Stop Cooperating with Anti-Open Science Cartel”

  1. Nobel Prize Winner Criticizes Role of Popular Science Journals in the Scientific Process » Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog
    December 10th, 2013 @ 7:41 am

    Overall, the study found that about 20 percent – or 900,000 – of the 4.5 million children currently identified as having ADHD likely have been misdiagnosed…

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    August 4th, 2015 @ 3:38 pm

    For professors that have “made it” you will do a great service to others (and help promote the ideas in your field that you have devoted your life to) by refusing to submit to closed science journals (or closed professional society journals etc.). For those trying to secure full professorships I wish they would too, but I realize the hard choices they face…

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