scitech library question

:: On December 31, 2003, the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms resigned, in protest of Elsevier pricing policies. George Porter from CIT posted this message to a number of listservs today:

Lance Fortnow (University of Chicago) maintains a computational complexity
weblog wherein he noted the gathering furor over the emigration of the editorial board of the Journal of Algorithms.

Michael Nielsen (University of Queensland) makes a brief mention in his quantum information blog. If the name looks familiar to librarians, it should. Nielsen is co-author of perhaps the best book on the topic of quantum computing and quantum information:

Quantum computation and quantum information
Michael A. Nielsen & Isaac L. Chuang
Cambridge University Press, 2000
http://www.cup.org/titles/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521635039

Nielsen, in turn, cites Crooked Timber as the source of his information. Crooked Timber attributes the news to Ed Felten's (Princeton) weblog (of DMCA/RIAA opposition fame), where a great deal of discussion has taken place. (NOTE: DCMA = Digital Millenium Copyright Act; RIAA = Recording Industry Association of America).

Suffice it to say, the computer science community is experiencing heightened
sensitivity to scholarly communication issues at the moment, thanks to Donald Knuth and the editorial board of JoA, the ACM, and the forthcoming ACM Transactions on Algorithms. This is an outstanding outreach opportunity for librarians to engage an interested audience in a dialog, while the relevance of the issues is directly apparent.

To quote a bumper sticker: Think global, Act local!

George S. Porter

:: Stanford University has received support from its Faculty Senate, which has approved a resolution that encourages the boycott of "pricey journals."

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