Re: math journal wars

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Need to know the particulars, but holding onto the articles may 
be an actionable offense.  This sounds screwy.  If the journal is 
worth anything financially, Springer will probably do something. 
They will be concerned about making it look as though other 
editors can abscond with papers.

Springer is not being wise if their own editors don't like their 
trade practices.  It's poor management.

Quite a time, eh?  Academics as renegades.  If John Wayne were 
alive today, he would play a disgruntled researcher, fighting for 
open access.

Joe

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ann Okerson" <ann.okerson@yale.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 6:19 AM
Subject: math journal wars

> NOTE:  The editor's behavior seems a little tacky... or what am I
> missing here?  Ann
>
> > From CHE, 8/23/07:
> Editor's Calculation in Starting New Math Journal Divides His
> Editorial Board
>
> After holding onto accepted manuscripts for more than a year, the
> managing editor of a mathematics journal has announced he will
> begin a competitor, according to the new issue of Nature.
>
> The editor, Anthony Bak, a mathematician at the University of
> Bielefeld, in Germany, was fired in January, having not published
> any issues of the monthly journal K-Theory since April 2006. Mr.
> Bak told Nature that he had left the journal because its
> subscription costs were too high and because of production
> problems at Springer, the journal's publisher.
>
> The journal's Board of Editors resigned en masse with Mr. Bak,
> echoing a move by the editors of another math journal, Topology,
> who quit to protest its pricing policies and later announced
> plans to create a cheaper rival. Springer did not learn of the
> board resignations until May.
>
> This month Mr. Bak announced that he would launch the Journal of
> K-Theory, to be published by Cambridge University Press, at a
> cheaper subscription rate.
>
> But several of the editors who resigned with Mr. Bak declined to
> follow him to the new journal because of his withholding of the
> manuscripts, and two have even returned to the Springer journal.
> However, they told Nature that the discipline was too small to
> support two journals, and so they would publish in K-Theory only
> the papers that had already been accepted.
>
> Lila Guterman