Re:French Universities Cancel Subscriptions to Springer Jour...
by FabHK on Monday April 02, 2018 @08:05PM
(#16740642)
It's a coordination problem - if all scientists in a given field moved away from the established Elsevier journal to a new one, everyone (except Elsevier) would be better off. However, if any individual academic tried to move, he'd be much worse off.
Historically, coordination has worked sometimes. In 2003, after prodding by Don Knuth [1], the editorial board of the Elsevier Journal of Algorithms resigned en masse [2] and started a new cheaper journal, ACM Transactions on Algorithms. A few years later the Elsevier journal was shut down.
But I agree, it seems we can't rely on this process, and the solution must involve regulation.
Historically, coordination has worked sometimes. In 2003, after prodding by Don Knuth [1], the editorial board of the Elsevier Journal of Algorithms resigned en masse [2] and started a new cheaper journal, ACM Transactions on Algorithms. A few years later the Elsevier journal was shut down.
But I agree, it seems we can't rely on this process, and the solution must involve regulation.
[1] https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf
[2] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2004/02/09/journal-algorithms-...