Letters from Dev Sinha to Elsevier re Topology editors' resignation | November 2006

"10 Nov 2006 ...

Dear Mr. Ross, Be advised that mathematicians can be a skeptical audience, especially when presented with cherry-picked facts and statistics. A couple instances: "Our price increase is among the lowest in the industry" Well, increasing 5% on a $2000 title hurts a lot more than a 7% increase on a $300 title. We'd need to see a full picture here for this sentence to be meaningful. ..."more available"... Maybe, with the advent of predominant use of electronic sources. But compare your usage totals to those of open access journals after they get established and the comparison is usually not favorable. "invested $160 million in digitizing and maintaining the digital archive of our entire program" Yes, we appreciate efforts of publishers here. Our issue isn't with what you are doing, but what you are charging for it (and reaping in profits). The Annals of Mathematics is having all of its articles where they have the (La)Tex source moved to the arXiv, and have (most? all?) of its further-back issues on JStor. The Annals cost much less for libraries than Topology. They may be subsidized by Princeton University, but almost certainly not the tune where the discrepancy between what they charge and what you charge can be accounted for. Given the tenor of your letter, I am not surprised that the former editors of Topology have severed their relationship with Elsevier. 

Sincerely, Dev Sinha Associate Professor and University Library Committee Member, University of Oregon....

13 Nov 2006...

Dear Mr. Ross,

You said to the topology e-mail list that you welcomed alternate views. The alternate view here at the University of Oregon is that access to journals is being restricted by price. We cancelled our subscription to "Topology" last year because it was too pricey - $1558 in 2004 (vs. for example $170 for the same year of "Geometry&Topology"). This wasn't an easy decision - roughly 1/4 of our faculty and graduate students have a strong interest in topology. While we may be in the minority in having to do without "Topology", may I ask you how "Topology and Its Applications" is doing? Are universities lined up around the block to buy it at $3000/yr? Perhaps once it is packaged with other journals it costs $2800 or even $2000 (six times the price of G&T!) - is it selling like hotcakes yet? Will it continue to do so?..."