This will probably be the last entry of the blog in this format, as the IMU is working to open a more general IMU blog site, at which it hopes members of the mathematical community will still bring up issues of wider concern that they encounter in their interaction with mathematical journals. This first […]

Tim Gowers’s excellent blog posting focused the long-standing discontent of the search community with Elsevier and nucleated a boycott which may prove to be a historic moment in scholarly publishing. I urge others to join the thousands of researchers who have signed on at the website Tyler Neylon created at thecostofknowledge.com. Recent articles in publications […]

The electronic era of publishing presents an opportunity to move far beyond merely adapting the current journal model.  In my September, 2011 column in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, I noted that, of the four original benefits offered by traditional journals — enhancement, dissemination,archiving, and validation — in the electronic era only the […]

Following the suggestions from Richard Taylor and from Teresa Krick, we would like to gather your statements pertaining to pricing for mathematical journals. Quoting Richard, “Maybe instead the IMU could consider what if anything it can do about the unreasonable prices of some mathematics journals that are taking badly needed money from our universities? And, […]

Mathematical journals are an important and precious resource for our community. They embody, to some extent, our joint “intellectual property”. They provide a way for mathematical researchers to distribute the results of their work. The peer reviewing process, when it works well, gives some guarantee to readers that the published papers are worthwhile and (most […]