Changes at the Journal of Algorithms | Donald E. Knuth, David S. Johnson, Zvi Galil, Former Co-Editors | 2004

"For several years we and many of our colleagues have become more and more concerned about the fact that libraries are increasingly unable to afford the prices being charged by commercial publishers of scientific journals. In October of 2003, Don Knuth wrote a long letter to the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms, attempting to explain the current state of affairs as comprehensively and accurately as he could. His letter has now been posted online at

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/joalet.pdf

and we hope it will be read also by everyone else who is concerned with publication of computer-science journals. In response to Knuth’s letter, the entire editorial board ultimately decided to resign from the Journal of Algorithms in favor of launching a new journal to be called ACM Transactions on Algorithms (see next page).

Elsevier, the publisher of the Journal of Algorithms, intends to continue publishing the journal, and papers currently in the pipeline will continue to be handled by the outgoing editors. Here is Elsevier’s official statement. 'The Managing Editors and the Publisher announce that the Editorial Board of the Journal of Algorithms has resigned...'"