Boycott of Elsevier Journals Shows Rapid Growth. (February 2, 2012)

University of Cambridge Fields Medallist and blogger Timothy Gowers has been boycotting the scientific publishing giant Elsevier for many years (They publish over 2,500 scientific journals). His reasons being:

1. They charge exorbitantly high prices for their journals.

2. They sell journals in very large "bundles," so libraries must buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all. Elsevier thus makes huge profits by exploiting their essential titles, at the expense of other journals.

3. They support measures such as SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, that aim to restrict the free exchange of information.

Then on January 21^st while making it public: "Only while I was writing did it occur to me that it would be good to have a place where everybody who wanted to could make a similar declaration, so I mentioned that."

Within two days Tyler Neylon, a blogger and Ph.D. student in maths at New York University had The Cost of Knowledge up and running.

Elsevier's journals can cost up to $20,000 a year and according to its annual report its 2010 profit margin was 36%.

So far, i.e. since January 23^rd The cost of Knowledge has garnered over 3,000 signatories including well over several dozen Australians, with Terry Tao leading the pack.

ScienceInsider reports it received: "a written statement [from Elsevier] yesterday saying that its price increases 'have been among the industry's lowest for the past ten years,' and that Elsevier has made several other efforts to increase access to its information, such as the introduction of optional packages and a large contribution to the PubMed Central database. 'We respect the freedom of authors to make their own decisions,' the statement says. 'We hope the ones who sign the boycott reconsider their position however, and we are keen to engage to discuss their concerns.'"

Professor Gowers emphasizes that other big publishers—such as Springer and Wiley - apply similar business models. The focus is on Elsevier mainly because of its strong support for the Research Works Act which would undo the US National Institutes of Health's "public access" policy.