Journal divorce with a happy ending | May 11, 2001 | Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
ab1630's bookmarks 2018-08-03
Summary:
"Suppose the editors of print journal are unhappy with their for-profit publisher and the exorbitant price it charges subscribers. What can they do about it? They can try to negotiate, but if the publisher owns the journal title and copyright, then it may refuse to budge.
How about walking away? Imagine all the members of editorial board resigning from their jobs and forming a new journal with the same mission and a different title. The old publisher retains ownership of an unstaffed journal. The new journal picks up where the old one left off and may make many new friends with its lower subscription price.
This is what happened in November 1999 with the _Journal of Logic Programming_. After 16 months of fruitless negotiation with its publisher, Elsevier Science, the entire 50-person editorial board resigned and created a new journal, _Theory and Practice of Logic Programming_ (TPLP), published by Cambridge University Press at 60% of the price of the Elsevier journal. TPLP will appear both in print and on the web...."