Breaking away:

Success Stories

New Cheap Refereed Electronic Journals in Economics

In January, 2007, the entire editorial board of the Springer-published mathematics journal, K-Theory resigned. In August, 2007 the editorial board announced that they will start a new journal, Journal of K-Theory, published by Oxford University Press. Here is a copy of the open letter sent by the board of editors to the mathematics community. The old journal cost $1560 per year. As of August 14, 2007, Springer's K-Theory still lists the now-resigned editorial board as their editors and makes no mention of their departure. K-Theory has published no issues since April, 2006. So far, there has been no price cut. The new journal will be less than half that price. More information and discussion can be found at Not Even Wrong.

In August, 2006, the entire editorial board of the Elsevier-published journal Topology resigned. According to the announcement: "It is based at Oxford, its first issue was in 1962 and it has published many of the most important papers in the the field of topology. Since 1994 it has been published by Elsevier, and many mathematicians have been concerned over the high price that Elsevier has been charging for the journal ($1665/year)." The former Topology editors have launched a replacement journal called the Journal of Topology published by the London Mathematical Society. Apparently Elsevier plans to find a new set of editors and continue publishing Topology. The board announced in August, 2006 that it would resign as of December 31, 2006. Here is a story with more details and a copy of the board's resignation letter. Update: As of August, 2007, Elsevier continues to list the resigned editors on Topology's web site. Does this mean they haven't found new editors or simply that the new editors don't want their names known?

In June 2005, editors Charles and Marie-Louise Steele along with 21 of 23 members of the board of editors abandoned Elsevier's International Journal of Solids and Structures, and founded a new journal, the Journal of Mechanics of Materials and Structures which was launched in January 2006. The Elsevier journal is priced at $7685 per year at a price of about $1 per page. The new JOMMS expects to publish about 2000 pages in 2006 and is priced at $500 per year for a per page price of about $0.20. The Steeles were strongly motivated to leave Elsevier by a pricing policy that they viewed as unreasonable.

On December 31, 2003, the entire editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms resigned due to the pricing policies of its publisher, Elsevier. An announcement of this move appears on Hal Gabov's home page.The editors will start a replacement journal, called Transactions on Algorithms, to be published by the professional society, Association for Computing Machiery (ACM). Don Knuth, one of the editors, initiated this change and explains his readings in this thoughtful and detailed letter.

On September 22, 2003, Compositio Mathematica announced that it was leaving Kluwer to be published by the London Mathematical Society and distributed by Cambridge University Press (starting in January 2004). The journal's editor of 20+ years, Gerard van der Geer, explained in a public note that the move was triggered by a long series of unwanted Kluwer price increases. The LMS edition of the journal is not free, but priced one-third below the former price. Here is Gerard van der Geer's public statement of the reasons for the move, published in the May 2004 issue of the Notices of the AMS. (news item taken from Peter Suber's web list of declarations of independence)

The European Economic Review, which is owned by Elsevier, has been the official journal of the European Economic Association for several years. The library price of the EER was $1225 per year. Because of dissatisfaction with Elsevier's pricing policies, the EEA decided in Dec. 2001 not to renew its contract with Elsevier. The EER is no longer EEA's official journal after Jan 1, 2003 and all of the original editors have resigned. The EEA has created a new association journal the Journal of the European Economics Association published by MIT Pres, with a distinguished board of editors. The JEEA is priced at $325 a year to libraries. Individuals (even non-Europeans) can join the EEA for 75 Euros per year and receive the EEA. After the Association dropped the EER as its official journal, Elsevier reduced its price to $950. The first issue of the new JEEA is now in print. Check out the lineup of authors in this announcement. The announcement includes a little form that you can send to your university librarian, recommending that it subscribe to the JEEA. If money is a problem at your university, suggest that they drop the EER. The net savings from this switch is $625, and you will be getting a much better journal.

Over a nine month period in 2001, forty members of the editorial board of the Machine Learning Journal (published by Kluwer, library price $1050 per year) have resigned and moved their support to the new Journal of Machine Learning Research which is published by MIT Press and which is available online to everyone for free. Institutions may order print copies plus electronic access for $195 per year. The resigning editors declare that "times have changed" and that they "see little benefit accrruing to our community from a mechanism that ensures revenue for a third party by restricting the communication channel between authors and readers." A story about this breakaway can be found in the FOS newsletter.

In January, 1999, the editor and editorial board of a high-priced commercial journal, Evolutionary Ecology jumped ship and started the low-priced Evolutionary Ecology Research. The editor, Michael Rosenzweig has written a series of informative essays on the experiences of the new journal and his thoughts on the economics and ethics of academic journal publishing. Rosenzweig has written a very interesting account of this successful endeavor: Reclaiming what we own (Address by Michael Rosenzweig, April, 1999 ) A more recent address by Rosenzweig Present and Future Threats to Journal Accessibility . includes an amusing and incisive debunking of publishers' rationalization for 10% journal price increases in 2001.

In 1999, after a long dispute about prices charged to libraries, the editors and editorial board of Elsevier's Journal of Logic Programming, resigned and started a new and much cheaper journal with Cambridge UniversityPress, Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. Here is a copy of their announcement to the libraries of the world.

Geometry and Topology ,founded in 1997, is a refereed journal made available in free electronic format by a non-profit group at the University of Warwick. Print copies are made available. Libraries are asked to subscribe at a flat rate of 10 cents per page

Here is a news story from Nature about journals that have broken away from expensive publishers, and an interesting table, comparing the success of breakaways with that of their expensive predecessors.

NAJEcon Not a Journal of Economics! This is a new non-journal. The board of editors will post capsule reviews of and links to new papers that they find on the web and like. Authors don't submit their papers, editors find them.
Will you get cited more if you put your papers on the web? This paper says so.