The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Gowers and Mr. Hyde | AMS Graduate Student Blog

"Last year at this time, Timothy Gowers famously used his blog to voice discontent towards the publishing practices of Elsevier. Two posts in recent days provide a glimpse into the work he’s contributed towards correcting the issues he recorded. This work is not without criticism, which he addresses in the first post: Why I’ve joined the bad guys. This article defends his involvement in a new open access journal funded by article processing charges, fees paid upon acceptance of a work. A more radical solution emerges in the second post, Why I’ve also joined the good guys, where he announces development of a platform that will 'make it very easy to set up arXiv overlay journals.' In October 2012, Cambridge University Press began accepting submissions to two new open-access journals Forum of Mathematics, Pi and Forum of Mathematics, Sigma. Both Timothy Gowers andTerence Tao discussed their involvement with this project in July of last year.  Perhaps the least controversial aspect of this story–Forum of Mathematics will be published electronically to lower costs. Additionally, it will be open-access; a term with many meanings. According to the FAQ, articles published in the Forum of Mathematics will be freely available in PDF form under a Creative Commons license (though a specific license is not mentioned) with the author retaining copyright. The author also maintains the right to repost the work elsewhere provided the journal is attributed. If you recall, one of the issues Professor Gowers highlighted about Elsevier was their support for the Research Works Act. This piece of legislation would have supplanted public access policies of US federal agencies such as the National Institute of Health, which requires that investigators submit a final version of any publication to PubMed. So it is not surprising that Prof. Gowers contributed effort towards a journal following the open-access model... With authors performing a majority of typesetting, mathematicians volunteering as editors and reviewers and the arXiv hosting PDFs, what is stopping those interested in boycotting Elsevier from setting up a journal ala the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics? The not quite unveiled Episciences Project aims to provide a technological solution to this question. An official statement is still forthcoming, but this Nature story provides a few more details."