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Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]

cs.stanford.edu

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Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]

#4

Post by b800h »

It's interesting to note that in the context of this letter about the Journal of Algorithms, that there is now an open-access journal called "Algorithms" which looks like it launched five years after this letter:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/algorithms

Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]

#5

Post by TOMDM »

> P. S. Im sending copies of this letter to several friends who are interested in journal publishing but are not members of our board. But this is not an "open letter"; I would prefer not to have my remarks circulated widely. I'm emphatically not a revolutionary. I just want our journal to do the right thing.

:/

EDIT: as others have pointed out the letter is now hosted publicly by Knuth himself.

Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]

#7

Post by _delirium »

b800h wrote: post #4

It's interesting to note that in the context of this letter about the Journal of Algorithms, that there is now an open-access journal called "Algorithms" which looks like it launched five years after this letter: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/algorithms

With a different set of problems imo. MDPI is a for-profit publisher with a "pay-to-publish" model, charging authors $1800 per accepted paper. And also a mixed reputation on quality, verging on a "paper mill" where they accept anything just to maximize their publication fees. Not a great model imo. There are non-profit Platinum OA journals that don't charge publication fees, like JMLR (https://www.jmlr.org/), which is the only kind of OA I consider interesting.

Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]

#8

Post by TylerE »

TOMDM wrote: post #5

> P. S. Im sending copies of this letter to several friends who are interested in journal publishing but are not members of our board. But this is not an "open letter"; I would prefer not to have my remarks circulated widely. I'm emphatically not a revolutionary. I just want our journal to do the right thing. :/ EDIT: as others have pointed out the letter is now hosted publicly by Knuth himself.

(2003) (@dang too)

Re: Don Knuth letter about libraries increasingly unable to afford prices (2003) [pdf]

#10

Post by jf »

"I love my library and the other libraries that I visit frequently, and my blood boils when I see a library being overcharged."

Given the topic and my love for Knuth, I went into this paper ready to agree with him. But Knuth does a great job at stating his case.

This sentence caught my eye: "Elsevier, however, ignored my letter and did not reply" - who in their right mind would ignore a letter from Knuth?!

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