A Look Inside the Boycott of Elsevier: A Q&A with Tim Gowers and Tyler Neylon

“Proponents of Open Access have long criticized the business practices of Elsevier, the largest publisher of academic journals in the world. But in late January, Timothy Gowers, the accomplished Cambridge mathematician, took things to a new level, issuing a call for researchers to enact a boycott of Elsevier-run journals in his blog.   After reading the post, Tyler Neylon, a mathematician running a start-up company in Silicon Valley, offered to start a website devoted to the cause. Within a day, it was up and running.  The Cost of Knowledge website opens with a listing of objections to Elsevier: [1] They charge exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions to individual journals. [2] In the light of these high prices, the only realistic option for many libraries is to agree to buy very large "bundles" ... [3] They support measures such as SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, that aim to restrict the free exchange of information.  Scholars are invited to declare publicly that they will not support any Elsevier journal unless they radically change how they operate.  To date, more than 7,700 have joined the boycott, with the number rising daily. Here are some highlights of two separate interviews with Gowers and Neylon. Gowers, 48, is a Royal Society Research Professor in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at Cambridge University. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge. In 1998, he was awarded the Fields Medal for his research. Gowers broke new ground recently with his "Polymath project," challenging mathematicians to collectively solve a math problem online.  Neylon, 32, is Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Zillabyte, a data analysis start-up in Mountain View, California. He earned his PhD in applied math from New York University in 2006. Neylon started his career as a computer programmer and worked as a software engineer at Google for two years before launching Zillabyte.  Q: What motivated you to call for the boycott? Gowers: For a long time, I’ve been aware that Elsevier was annoying to many mathematicians. For this reason, I have avoided publishing with them and refereeing for them. However, it occurred to me recently that it could make a difference if, rather than just privately avoiding Elsevier, I were to go public. I felt it would be easier for people to decide to boycott Elsevier if they knew a lot of other people were doing the same thing, which could be done via a website. I knew that if I suggested this, there would be somebody out there who would be able to produce a website very quickly – and Tyler was that person. Q: When did you become an advocate for a change in the journal publishing system, and for Open Access?  Neylon: I have two major interests: math research and software. With both, you are aware of how easy it is to disseminate information on the Internet. Throughout my career I have been painfully aware of the inefficiency of scholarly publishing. If you know what technology can do, you are always seeing better ways of doing things. When I left NYU, it got harder for me to access research. I either had to sneak into, or pay $500 per year for access to an academic library. You shouldn’t have to pay if researchers don’t want you to pay. Q: What was your reaction to reading Tim Gowers’s blog pledging a boycott of Elsevier? Neylon: I thought it was a great idea. I really wanted to help out. I feel I can’t do research right now as an individual. It’s very difficult to do the background work. I knew it was a problem I wanted to solve. When I read the blog, I thought ‘I can actually make a difference’. Tim is a superstar. If he is taking a stand, it would generate enough publicity and interest to get something started. I knew it was a great opportunity – I wanted to help build awareness and a community. Q: What are your roles and how do you collaborate on the project? Neylon: Tim had the key idea. His role was to communicate his position and to publicize it. My role was to build and maintain the website. After I read his blog post, I wrote in the comments that I was interested in helping. He responded by email with some suggestions for the site. Within 24 hours, the site was up. It was extremely simple. Q: Did you know Gowers before this? Neylon: No. I did participate in his Polymath experiment and knew about what he’d done, but we never met. Q: What is your goal for this movement?  Neylon: I think there is an awareness of how much better things could be through a nonprofit publishing system. People want to get rid of high-profit publishing. The ultimate goal is that the current Elsevier business model becomes irrelevant – that there would be a switch to a free-to-read model where authors retain copyrights of their papers. PLoS is one example of this. Q: What can you tell us about the traffic on the website? Neylon: There are thousands of views a day. The highest was 15,000 in one day. Now the average is about 4,000 a day. There have been spikes with publicity such as when the National Public Radio piece on the boycott ran in mid-February...”