Cambridge University Press Launches Open Access Maths Journals. (July 6, 2012)

Cambridge University Press (CUP) have announced the publication this month of two mathematical journals Forum of Mathematics, Pi which is to be an "open access alternative to the leading generalist mathematics journals. Papers published will be of a high quality and of real interest to a broad cross-section of all mathematicians" and Forum of Mathematics, Sigma which will be an open access alternative to the leading specialist mathematics journals*.

_________________________________________________________________

The list of editors:

Rob Kirby - Managing editor, University of California, Berkeley

Doug Arnold, University of Minnesota

Henry Cohn, Microsoft Research New England

Ingrid Daubechies, Duke University

Tim Gowers, University of Cambridge

Arieh Iserles, University of Cambridge

Bruce Kleiner, NYU

Peter Olver, University of Minnesota

Gilles Pisier, University of Paris, Pierre et Marie Curie

Andrew Pitts, University of Cambridge

Terence Tao, UCLA

Richard Taylor, Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton

Ravi Vakil, Stanford University

Günter M Ziegler, Freie Universität Berlin

The journals will be gold access with free online access while the cost to authors would be in the order of £500-£700 pounds. CUP is expected to seek philanthropic support to keep charges low. However, CUP will initially bankroll the journals by waiving charges to authors for three years.

According to Terence Tao: "The initial planning for this (CUP) journal happened to precede the Cost of Knowledge boycott, but the philosophy behind the journal is certainly aligned with that of the boycott, which I believe is further evidence that the time has come for mathematical journal reform," while Tim Gowers fellow Fields Medalist says it is: "potentially a very important development in the campaign for a better system of academic publishing. It greatly weakens what was previously quite a strong argument for some people against participating in the Elsevier boycott: that the best specialist journal in their area is an Elsevier journal so joining the boycott would harm their career. It is of course unlikely that the Forum of Mathematics will change the face of mathematical publishing in three years. To be a serious direct threat to Elsevier's mathematics journals, for example, it would need to cause a reduction of their quality by enough to make libraries consider cancelling their subscriptions, which is very difficult when mathematics journals are bundled together with journals from other subjects. However, the Forum of Mathematics can still have a big influence. For one thing, it will demonstrate that a major publishing house can produce a high-quality journal with high-quality formatting and editing with (author publication charges) of around £500. I hope that people in charge of funding bodies who are considering open-access mandates will ask some tough questions of publishers who continue to charge four times that.''

To access the list of FAQs click here.

____________________________________________

*According to CUP: Editorial decisions are made by dedicated clusters of editors concentrated in the following areas: foundations of mathematics, discrete mathematics, algebra, number theory, algebraic and complex geometry, differential geometry and geometric analysis, topology, analysis, probability and stochastics, differential equations, computational mathematics, applied analysis, mathematical physics, and theoretical computer science. This classification exists to aid the peer review process. Contributions which do not neatly fit within these categories are still welcome.