In late October, founding member and well known computer science scholar Donald Knuth (I can remember studying his work as an undergrad) urged the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms to resign in response to high pricing of the journal by Elsevier and the exclusive copyrights they demand of scholars' texts (see Knuth's open letter to the board). For example, as Knuth explains, library subscriptions in 1996 of $312 have gone to $700 for 2003.
The three members of the editorial board have since published a statement of resignation with their intentions to start a new journal, Transactions on Algorithms, through the ACM.
Links courtesy of Open Access (Another declaration of independence and More on the Journal of Algorithms resignations).
Wow.
This rocks. I love to see occasional flare ups of integrity in academia. Maybe computers and composition will be next! $20 an issue? Why? It could be thrown up on some instant publishing site for half that price, or even put online.
C&C
I had the same thought, Craniac. I can't afford a subscription to it, and that's the very journal I'd like to have.
re: computers and composition
Yep. But regardless of what CC costs, given Elsevier's business practices, shouldn't there be a debate as to whether it's right for Computers and Composition to be published by Elsevier at all?
CC
I have a lot of respect for the people putting the journal out, and it gets some good work, but I've just been feeling really unenthralled by most composition scholarship lately. maybe blogs have ruined me. I'm just finding a lot more juicy stuff outside the discipline. maybe it's time for a paradigm shift. Anyone?
yup
I'm doing philosophy as a tools of research requirement...I always have this strange feeling of "this is what most compositionists want to do, but they have to twist it at the end to say something about freshman composition..blah."
Can we really say that there is a body of composition scholarship? Seems more like fragments from other disciplines to me, anyway--most of it poorly digested and slapped together.
Heh.
Yeah, I feel the same way. Somebody wants to read and write about Deleuze or someone, and they slap on a reference to student writing. (this is not a dig at anyone in particular, and I have Deleuze on the brain right now.)
There's composition scholarship, but it does get to feel a little confining at times. Plus there's the fawning over theorists who don't know that comp. even exists. I find that annoying as well.