Letter from Donald E. Knuth to Journal of Algorithms editorial board | October 25, 2003

"...Dear Board member,

I hope you don't mind receiving this somewhat extraordinary letter.... The growing turmoil in the world of scholarly publishing has been weighing heavily on my mind for several years, and I've finally decided to ask for your collective wisdom on what future direction our beloved journal should take....

Academic Press built its reputation on producing high-quality scientific books and journals at reasonable prices. That is why Wilf and I were attracted to them initially, and why we continued to be satisfied as the years went by. Academic Press was acquired in 1989 by Harcourt Brace Javonovich, later to become known as Harcourt X for various other values of X, but at first their publishing team stayed fairly intact. I became concerned about journal pricing in 1990...

at the end of the 90s, when the cost of the Journal of Algorithms began to increase substantially. Then, in May 2001, Reed Elsevier purchased Harcourt General for $4.5 billion, and the price of JoA has continued to increase in spite of my protests....

Birman went on to make a useful classification into journals of four types:

• (i) owned by universities...
• (ii) owned by a learned society...
• (iii) owned by a university press...
• (iv) owned by a commercial publisher...

I'd like each of you to rate the desirability of each of options (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) as described above...

get your vote to me by Monday, November 24..."