Math2.0 - An Amicable Separation

“At the time of writing, I have yet to sign the Boycott of Elsevier. It's not that I'm not going to, but just that there were a few comments that I wanted to make... Listing the reasons at the top of the page makes it look, at least at first glance, as if this is the first stage in a negotiation. If, so the inference goes, Elsevier stopped indulging in those practices, we'd happily all go back to submitting, refereeing, and editing with Elsevier journals. I won't... Moreover, the practices that have been outlined, whilst bad for me and other academics, don't seem like particularly bad business practices: buy low, sell high - isn't that the canonical business motto? That we've gotten ourselves into a sticky situation is our fault: and our responsibility to get ourselves out of it... What really is scandalous is not the prices they charge for journals now, but the fact that they hold the copyright to so much of our ancestry. As pointed out in an article on Forbes, it's the back catalogue that provides them with the leverage. So the gesture that I would like from Elsevier - and the other publishers - is related to that. What I would like is for them to declare that they would not pursue anyone who makes available a copy of a published work, providing it was done with proper attribution...”