A statement on the cost of knowledge declaration « What’s new

“It has been a little over two weeks now since the protest site at thecostofknowledge.com was set up to register declarations of non-cooperation with Reed Elsevier in protest of their research publishing practices, inspired by this blog post of Tim Gowers.   Awareness of the protest has certainly grown in these two weeks; the number of signatories is now well over four thousand, across a broad array of academic disciplines, and the protest has been covered by many blogs and also the mainstream media (e.g. the Guardian, the Economist, Forbes, etc.), and even by Elsevier stock analysts.    (Elsevier itself released an open letter responding to the protest here.)  My interpretation of events is that there was a significant amount of latent or otherwise undisclosed dissatisfaction already with the publishing practices of Elsevier (and, to a lesser extent, some other commercial academic publishers), and a desire to support alternatives such as university or society publishers, and the more recent open access journals; and that this protest (and parallel protests, such as the movement to oppose the Research Works Act) served to drive these feelings out into the open. The statement of the protest itself, though, is rather brief, reflecting the improvised manner in which the site was created.  A group of mathematicians including myself therefore decided to write and sign a more detailed explanation of why we supported this protest, giving more background and references to support our position...”