j’s scratchpad

The Board of Directors of the Journal of Algorithms, a publication popular among mathematicians and computer scientists, announced its resignation and intention to focus on a new journal, Transactions on Algorithms, because of their frustration that Elsevier makes the publication too expensive for many college libraries to afford. According to the subscriber-restricted Chronicle of Higher Education article, an annual subscription cost $700 last year, almost $100 more than when the journal debuted in 2001.

One member of the editorial board realized they could reach more scholars if they used a different publisher that charged less money. Another member of the board observed that the production costs of the journal have not risen recently, so Elsevier did not seem to have any good reason to increase the subscription price. “Basically, we do all the work and the company makes all the profit,” he said.

Some of the issues outlined in the article map to points professors made in a recent Harvard University Gazette article about Harvard University’s decision to cancel many of its Elsevier subscriptions.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2004 at 11:02 am and is filed under Scholarly Communication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.