The boycott against Elsevier has been interesting so far. I have had some discussions with colleagues, most of whom have not signed. I am still struggling to detect any principled reason: worry about destroying the “brand” of the journal (from members of an editorial board of an Elsevier journal) is the only one I can sympathize with, although the fact (opinion, at least) that Elsevier has subtracted value from these brands after buying them from other publishers should be noted. Very few people have stated their reasons for not signing – Ariel Procaccia is a welcome exception. I suspect many researchers don’t give the issue more than a passing thought, others are too timid, and others like a free ride. Perhaps a few really think the current system is good, but in that case I would have to question their fitness for research work. The main feedback I have had informally is that it is all too hard, since they own the “best” journals in my field, I am an editor of one of their journals and I like it, etc. One interesting opinion is that although it is a problem, it will soon be fixed by advances in technology. I wish I could be confident of that.

In any case Elsevier has made some grudging concessions, so I guess that this will mean fewer people feel pressure to sign up. However, researchers shouldn’t have to waste their time to get such small concessions. The current system is clearly unsustainable and it seems almost impossible to imagine the commercial incentives of a company such as Elsevier ever allowing them to do what is right for society, or science/scholarship as a whole. Thus alternatives must be explored, and now is an important time for discussion. One forum for such discussions is Math2.0, which I read often and recommend highly.

Separating out the many related issues takes time and I will write several posts. For now, I have some concrete recommendations for mathematical researchers, none of them original to me. Many take very little effort.

• Sign the boycott petition, or at least don’t work for journals that are exploiting free labour to make large profits.
• Practice self-archiving rigorously. Use the arXiv and update your paper to the final accepted version. List all your papers on your own webpage. Encourage all colleagues to do the same – if you want to read their paper and can’t find it on their website, ask them to put it there.
• Familiarize yourself with the policies of the publisher on author self-archiving. Stand up for your rights as an author (see this important article by Kristine Fowler in Notices of the American Mathematical Society).
• When citing a journal publication, also give the arXiv version of the paper (if they are essentially the same).
• Encourage those involved in hiring and evaluation at your institution to ignore journal impact factors and use article-level metrics and other more nuanced measures.
• Encourage granting agencies you deal with to require open access to all publications associated with grants they award.
• If you are on an editorial board of a journal run by Elsevier or the like, talk to your co-editors about moving to another publisher with better practices, or at least registering your displeasure to the current publisher and tell them they need to change if they want to keep you. Discuss with other editors of other journals, and share approaches that work.
• Find out what your professional society (AMS, IMU, …)  is doing about these issues, and whether its publishing arm is helping the cause of open access, or harming it. Get involved on committees in the organization where possible.
• Talk to your institution’s librarians. Find out what they can offer in terms of institutional repositories, hosting journals, etc.