The Cost of Knowledge

The Cost of Knowledge is a 2012 initiated by the mathematician William Timothy Gowers boycott initiative against the scientific publisher Elsevier. Gowers calls on all scientists to boycott the journals of the Elsevier group.

History

For some time it bothered many scientists that the Elsevier journals are sold at very high prices.

The most important point of criticism is that although the research work of the editors and reviewers, as well as, ultimately, the acquisition of the magazines is essentially financed by public funds, but the publications are not freely accessible to all.

" The last straw " finally brought the latest business practices of the publishing house, after the libraries magazines only in "bundling " can subscribe. Libraries must therefore be ordered Elsevier front Magazines such as the Cell -journals in the package with a number of unwanted " shop keepers ".

Boycott

Beginning of 2012, the scientists Gowers started its own website under the title "The cost of knowledge". On this platform, he is particularly critical of Elsevier practice, scientific journals to only sell as a complete bundle. The main consumer of journals, libraries are forced by this bundling of journals to relate not only the desired journals including those that are not of interest. Another major criticism was that the publisher supports the U.S. legislation. The Research Works Act (RWA ) prohibits, for example, U.S. public research institutions to publish their findings freely. Elsevier is not the only publisher of the "guilty" do, so Gowers. However, the publishing house was the most aggressive pursuers of these practices ( "worst offender ").

Basis of the initiative are three main accusations against Elsevier:

Response and reactions

Due to the initiative, now 9758 (Updated: April 16, 2012), scientists from various disciplines itself obliged to publish either in journals from Elsevier, still working as an editor or reviewer. The commitment to sign scientists from different disciplines and thus take in the scientific community but also some limitation on their reputation back, which in " leading scientific journals " results after the mainstream scientific understanding on the number of journal articles.

In addition to Tim Gowers now signed the renowned mathematician Ingrid Daubechies in professional circles, Juan J. Manfredi, Terence Tao, Wendelin Werner, Scott Aaronson, László Lovász and John Baez calling.

The Austrian FWF - Fund for Scientific Research holds the concerns of the initiative in principle, be justified, but added four points:

In May 2012, the Department of Mathematics at the Technical University of Munich announced from 2013 any magazines of the publisher Elsevier to obtain more.