• MathOA played a very small  role (but our board member Sylvie Benzoni was very important) in the announced decision (2021-03-31) of Annales de l’IHP C (Analyse Nonlineaire) to leave Elsevier and move to EMS Press.
  • An updated press release about Algebraic Combinatorics (2017-09-18) is here. The key new information:

‘We have had about 46 submissions in the last two months, of which roughly 12 or so were withdrawn from JACO and resubmitted to us, and 4 of those have already been accepted– the rest are in process, and that seems to be going smoothly’, says Vic Reiner. ‘The volume of submissions has been pretty exciting, and we are of course maintaining our high standard. We are confident that we can have the first issue in January 2018. And, of course, there is the fact that now all of the editorial board have resigned from JACO with the EiC’s, and all but two re-joined the ALCO board, with the two resigning due to age. Also, community support remains strong. Everyone I talk to at meetings is very happy about it, and thanks us.’

  • The original press release for Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics (2017-07-27):

At the end of June 2017, the four editors-in-chief of the Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics informed Springer that they will not renew their contracts, which terminate on 31 December 2017. Nearly all of the editorial board members will also resign, to form the editorial board of a new journal that will be called Algebraic Combinatorics, run according to Fair Open Access Principles. The new journal Algebraic Combinatorics will be up and running very shortly, with interim editors-in-chief Satoshi Murai and Vic Reiner. The transition to Fair Open Access is supported by the organisation Mathematics in Open Access (MathOA). The editors of the Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics are Akihiro Munemasa, Christos Athanasiadis, Hugh Thomas and Hendrik van Maldeghem. Once their contracts with Springer expire, they will become editors-in-chief at Algebraic Combinatorics.

Why now? ‘There wasn’t a particular crisis. It has been becoming more and more clear that commercial journal publishers are charging high subscription fees and high Article Processing Charges (APCs), profiting from the volunteer labour of the academic community, and adding little value. It is getting easier and easier to automate the things that they once took care of. The actual printing and distribution of paper copies is also much less important than it has been in the past; this is something which we have decided we can do without’, says Hugh Thomas.

‘We were inspired by the Linguistics in Open Access (LingOA) project that flipped 4 journals in linguistics last year. We therefore also started a foundation Mathematics in Open Access (MathOA), that will help other journals in mathematics flip to Fair Open Access’ says Mark Wilson, one of the founding members of MathOA.

Followup articles by others: