Elsevier boycott gathers pace
Timothy Gowers is surprised and delighted that thousands of mathematics and other researchers have joined him in a public pledge not to have anything to do with Elsevier, the Amsterdam-based academic publishing giant. He is leading a boycott because of company practices that he says hinder the dissemination of research.
But he is not expecting a big response from Elsevier. “The goal of the boycott is not to get Elsevier to change how it does things, but rather to change how we in the mathematics community behave, and in that way to rid ourselves of major commercial publishers,” he says.
*Sigh*
Librarians in the science community have been telling the scientists about how much it costs and how much the taxpayer is having to pay for years even before the requirement for excessive open access fees. And they didn’t care. What’s different now? Why are they now jumping on the bandwagon?