Researchers Boycott Elsevier Journal Publisher - NYTimes.com

“More than 5,700 researchers have joined a boycott of Elsevier, a leading publisher of science journals, in a growing furor over open access to the fruits of scientific research. The protest grew out of a provocativeblog post by the mathematician Timothy Gowers of Cambridge University, who announced on Jan. 21 that he would no longer publish papers in any of Elsevier’s journals or serve as a referee or editor for them. Last week 34 mathematicians issued astatement denouncing “a system in which commercial publishers make profits based on the free labor of mathematicians and subscription fees from their institutions’ libraries, for a service that has become largely unnecessary...’ The statement was also signed by Ingrid Daubechies, president of the International Mathematical Union, who then resigned as one of the unpaid editors in chief at the Elsevier journal Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis... The defecting scientists represent a small fraction of the roughly 600,000 authors Elsevier says it publishes. In an open letter responding to some of the grievances, Elsevier said it was “proud of the way we have been able to work in partnership with the research community to make real and sustainable contributions to science.” Still, David Clark, the senior vice president in charge of Elsevier’s mathematics journals, acknowledged that the boycott had drawn attention... For 2010, Elsevier reported a 36 percent profit on revenues of $3.2 billion. “It’s a secure, viable business, which is a good thing,” Mr. Clark said. The most recent flashpoint in the dispute was the Research Works Act, a bill introduced in Congress in December that would prohibit federal agencies from requiring open access to research, even if it is financed by taxpayers. On Thursday, a competing bill, the Federal Research Public Access Act, first drafted in 2006, was reintroduced in Congress.Dr. Daubechies said she was contacted by Mr. Clark and was willing to talk, but did not want the company to think, “now we have vented and now we have calmed down...”