[GOAL] launch of new free and fair overlay mathematics journal

[Kathleen Shearer]

Today, a new journal in mathematics was launched by Timothy Gowers and Dan 
Kral. The journal, called ‘Advances in Combinatorics 
’, is an overlay journal, 
built entirely on articles contained in the arXiv repository. It is free to 
read and will not charge authors to publish. The relatively low costs of 
running the journal are being covered by Queen’s University Library in Ontario, 
Canada, which is also providing administrative support.

COAR  and Queen’s University Library were 
very keen to participate in the launch of this journal as it offers a model of 
overlay services on top of repositories, a model that could eventually be 
generalized beyond arXiv. “This aligns really well with our vision for next 
generation repositories”, says Kathleen Shearer, executive director of the 
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), “on top of which we can build 
services such as peer review”. 

According to the journal’s founder , Timothy 
Gowers, research professor at the University of Cambridge, ‘Advances in 
Combinatorics’ was created in order to “give people the option... to submit to 
a journal that is not complicit in a system that uses its monopoly power to 
ruthlessly squeeze library budgets”.

The extreme profit seeking of some of the commercial publishers (it has been 
reported 

 that Elsevier made profits of approximately $1.2 billion US dollars in 2017) 
is stretching library budgets to the limit. In addition, it has created 
significant barriers in access to research and -with the advent of article 
processing charges (APCs)- it is exacerbating inequalities in researchers' 
ability to publish.

Martha Whitehead, vice-provost (digital planning) and university librarian at 
Queen’s University says, “As libraries, we need to nurture and invest in new 
models that will contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive system for 
research communications. We are delighted to be able to support this innovative 
approach to journal publishing.”

The journal plans to set a high bar for acceptance. Currently there are no 
non-commercial publishing venues that cater for combinatorics articles at the 
level envisaged. The aim is to offer an ethical alternative by launching a 
journal that publishes high quality papers, but does not charge publishing fees 
or for subscriptions.

---


Kathleen Shearer
Executive Director, Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)
m.kathleen.shea...@gmail.com  - +1 514 992 
9068
Skype: kathleen.shearer2 - twitter: @KathleeShearer
www.coar-repositories.org





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[GOAL] Blog - What's new in OA?

[Danny Kingsley]

Hi all,

A new blog published today on Unlocking Research summarises some recent events 
in the always changing open access landscape. 
https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2011

Including:

  *   Sweden draws the line
  *   Europe no-deals
  *   Springer sinks
  *   ResearchGate shenanigans
  *   All together now – UKRI
  *   Wellcome Trust consultation
  *   Responsible metrics?
  *   Data monetisation
  *   Ecosystem takeover

Get up to date!

Danny


Dr Danny Kingsley
Deputy Director - Scholarly Communication & Research Services
Head, Office of Scholarly Communication
Cambridge University Library
West Road, CB3 9DR
e: da...@cam.ac.uk
p: 01223 747 437
m: 07711 500 564
t: @dannykay68
w: www.osc.cam.ac.uk
b: https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk
o: orcid.org/-0002-3636-5939

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