Through blogs, I am aware of a call from Timothy Gowers for boycotting Elsevier publisher. A few days ago I was asked by friends to join this campaign by signing to a pledge. Today, visiting library.nu and reading this article prompt me to write a few words.
Elsevier is really bad: The journal Topology was discontinued many years ago because of a boycott from the mathematics community, yet as of now Elsevier is still not enlightened enough to open free access to old issues of that journal.
But other publishers charge very high prices to journals too, where do I draw a line?
For me a more pressing issue is that of availability of books. The current prices of textbooks and research monographs are formidable to students and academics in my country. Respecting copyright means very few students can read Munkres’s Topology (USD 152), or Rudin’s Real and Complex Analysis (USD 94). Very few books are freely available at this time. This is odd, since at a higher level (higher than Calculus), a book is now usually completely finished by its authors in electronic form. A publisher’s contribution to such a book is only to print and bind paper copies.
Although I have spent a small fortune purchasing books, I myself cannot afford and cannot legally access all the books I need for teaching and research.
I think the situation would improve greatly if more practicing mathematicians post not only their papers but also their books in preprint form on the web for free access.
For my part, I intend to continue to keep my papers and lecture notes freely available on the web.