A petition effort to boycott Elsevier, the journal publisher, was inspired by a blog posting by Timothy Gowers (above), a prominent mathematician at the U. of Cambridge.
By Josh Fischman
http://chronicle.com/article/As-Journal-Boycott-Grows/130600/
A protest against Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific journal publisher, is rapidly gaining momentum since it began as an irate blog post at the end of January. By Tuesday evening, about 2,400 scholars had put their names to an online pledge not to publish or do any editorial work for the company’s journals, including refereeing papers. The boycott is growing so quickly—it had about 1,800 signers on Monday—that Elsevier officials on Tuesday broke their official silence to respond to protesters’ accusations that they charge too much and support laws that will keep research findings bottled up behind a company paywall.
Mathematician and Fields Medalist Tim Gower has boycotted Elsevier and started a website for others to publicly declare their own boycott.
Gower’s blog article in which he declares his boycott
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its-downfall/
The boycott site – it currently lists some UQ, ANU, RMIT, and Griffith researchers
http://thecostofknowledge.com/
