Previous post: The role of the problems
Back in August Tamas Gabal asked me about my favorite graduate level textbooks in mathematics; later Ravi joined this request. I thought that the task will be very simple, but it turned out to be not. In addition, my teaching duties during the Fall term consumed much more energy than I could predict and even to imagine.
In this post I will try to explain why compiling a list of good books is so difficult. It is much easier to say from time to time “This book is great! You should read it.” Still, I will try to compile a list or lists of the books I like in the following post(s).
If one is looking for good collection of graduate level textbooks, there is no need to go further than the Springer series “Graduate Texts in Mathematics”. The books in the Springer “Universitext” series are more varied in their level (some are upper level undergraduate, others are research monographs), but one can find among them a lot of good textbooks. There is a more recent series “Graduate Studies in Mathematics” by the AMS. From my point of view, this series includes some excellent books, but is too varied both in terms of the level and in terms of quality. If you are looking for something on the border between an advanced graduate level textbook and a research monograph, the Cambridge University Press series “Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics” is excellent. The bizarre economics and ideology of the modern scientific publishing resulted in the fact almost all good books in mathematics (including textbooks) is published by one of these 3 publishers: AMS, Springer, and Cambridge University Press. You will not miss much if will not go any further (but you will miss some book, certainly).
I cannot suggest a sequence of good books to study any sufficiently broad area, even not necessarily a sequence of my favorite books. If you want to be a research mathematician, you will have to learn a lot from bad books and badly written papers. It would do a lot of good for mathematics if afterwards you will write a good book about things you learned from badly written books and papers. Unfortunately, writing a book is not a really good idea at the early stages of the career of a mathematician nowadays. Expository writing is hardly valued. On the one hand, expository writing does not help to get grants and grants is the only thing valued by administrators at the level of deans and higher. It seems that the chairs of the mathematics departments started to follow this approach. Deans and chairs are the ones who have the last word in any hiring or promotion decision. Sometimes a mathematician is essentially forced to write a book in order to continue research. For example, the foundation of a theory may be absent from the literature, or some “known to everybody” results may require clarification. But this is rare.
Some freedom of what to do, in particular, the freedom to write books, arrives only with a tenured position. Still, a colleague of me gave me many years ago the following advise: “Do not write any books until you retire”. Right now I am not sure that any mathematical books will be written or used when I retire. I actually had abandoned a couple of projects because I don’t see any efficient and decent way to distribute mathematical books. I don’t think that charging $100.00 for a textbook is decent given that the cost of production is about $5.00—$20.00 per copy.
On the other hand, there is a lot of good textbook introducing into a particular sufficiently narrow branch of mathematics. It hardly make sense to list all of them. All this leads me to chosing “my favorite” as the guiding principle. And, after all, this is what Tamas Gabal asked me to do.
Next post: Graduate level textbooks II
Showing posts with label mathematical publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mathematical publishing. Show all posts
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Friday, August 17, 2012
The twist ending. 3. R. Kirby
Previous post: The twist ending. 2. A Cambridge don
R. Kirby (UC at Berkeley) is the Managing Editor of Gowers's journals. This justifies the following digression into Kirby's past achievements in scientific publishing.
In the 90ies he declared a war on the main journal in his field, namely “Topology”. Originally published by “Pergamon Press”, it was sold in early 90ies to Elsevier by late Robert Maxwell when his financial empire started to face serious problems. Of course, this wasn’t a good development, but it remained an excellent journal due, most likely, to its excellent and small editorial board. It was moderately expensive. I still fail to see any reason to single it out (as I don’t see any convincing justification for singling out the Elsevier in the recent boycott).
R. Kirby launched a new journal “Geometry&Topology” specifically intended to compete with “Topology” (and to eventually bring it down). It was published both online and in paper version. Online version was free; the paper version was very cheap initially. In contrast with “Topology”, the editorial board of “Geometry&Topology” was big and growing with time. The journal was also growing, and with the number of pages the price of the paper version was growing (the libraries were encouraged to subscribe to it; technically, for libraries the electronic access never was free). “Geometry&Topology” succeeded in diverting a lot of papers from “Topology”, and the editorial board of “Topology” was constantly pressured to attempt to lower the price (even when the individual subscription price to the paper version of “Topology&Geometry” surpassed that of “Topology”). Elsevier argued that the list price of a subscription is not relevant anymore (by the reasons I explained above using the example of “Inventiones”). The purpose of a relatively high list price, I believe, was to encourage participation in “package deals”. Eventually, the editorial board and Elsevier made a quite reasonable deal substantially lowering the price, but it was too late (and the list price already was not relevant).
On August 10, 2006 the whole editorial board of “Topology” resigned. Elsevier continued to publish the already accepted papers and managed to fill by them the 2007 volume. The subscription to 2007 volume was free for subscribers to the 2006 one. But the journal was, of course, dead.
Within a month (if I remember correctly, already in August 2006) “Geometry&Topology” closed free access to its electronic version or at least announced the imminent closing. Since then the access to the electronic version is by subscription only. Well, this is how much one can trust promises to be freely accessible in perpetuity. At the same time, “Geometry&Topology” doubled the subscription price, and invented some convoluted reason for quadrupling the subscription price for year 2007 (for any form of subscription, electronic or paper, individual or library). Being a member of our Library Committee, I attempted to understand their reasoning, but failed.
Nobody saved any money as a result of success of Kirby’s project. A slightly modified editorial board of “Topology” launched a replacement, “Journal of Topology” (apparently, Elsevier own the rights to the trademark “Topology”). “Geometry&Topology” is not a part of any package deal. I don’t know if the Oxford UP, the publisher of “Journal of Topology”, offers package deals, but our library had to subscribe to it as a standalone journal. So, the cost of subscription to specialized journals in the field of topology for our library substantially increased. If anybody was subscribing to “Geometry&Topology” or “Topology” as an individual, she or he, most likely, lost these subscriptions because of much higher prices.
During this struggle with “Topology” mathematicians gradually started to consider “Geometry&Topology” as the journal of choice for paper in topology and related fields.
So, the main result of Kirby’s ten-year effort is the fact that he now controls the main journal in his field (topology, of course). It seems that he had no chances to get into the editorial board of “Topology”. The co-author of his most famous papers, L. Siebenmann, was a member of the editorial board for decades, first as a regular member, then as a honorary one.
Next post: The twist ending. 4.
R. Kirby (UC at Berkeley) is the Managing Editor of Gowers's journals. This justifies the following digression into Kirby's past achievements in scientific publishing.
In the 90ies he declared a war on the main journal in his field, namely “Topology”. Originally published by “Pergamon Press”, it was sold in early 90ies to Elsevier by late Robert Maxwell when his financial empire started to face serious problems. Of course, this wasn’t a good development, but it remained an excellent journal due, most likely, to its excellent and small editorial board. It was moderately expensive. I still fail to see any reason to single it out (as I don’t see any convincing justification for singling out the Elsevier in the recent boycott).
R. Kirby launched a new journal “Geometry&Topology” specifically intended to compete with “Topology” (and to eventually bring it down). It was published both online and in paper version. Online version was free; the paper version was very cheap initially. In contrast with “Topology”, the editorial board of “Geometry&Topology” was big and growing with time. The journal was also growing, and with the number of pages the price of the paper version was growing (the libraries were encouraged to subscribe to it; technically, for libraries the electronic access never was free). “Geometry&Topology” succeeded in diverting a lot of papers from “Topology”, and the editorial board of “Topology” was constantly pressured to attempt to lower the price (even when the individual subscription price to the paper version of “Topology&Geometry” surpassed that of “Topology”). Elsevier argued that the list price of a subscription is not relevant anymore (by the reasons I explained above using the example of “Inventiones”). The purpose of a relatively high list price, I believe, was to encourage participation in “package deals”. Eventually, the editorial board and Elsevier made a quite reasonable deal substantially lowering the price, but it was too late (and the list price already was not relevant).
On August 10, 2006 the whole editorial board of “Topology” resigned. Elsevier continued to publish the already accepted papers and managed to fill by them the 2007 volume. The subscription to 2007 volume was free for subscribers to the 2006 one. But the journal was, of course, dead.
Within a month (if I remember correctly, already in August 2006) “Geometry&Topology” closed free access to its electronic version or at least announced the imminent closing. Since then the access to the electronic version is by subscription only. Well, this is how much one can trust promises to be freely accessible in perpetuity. At the same time, “Geometry&Topology” doubled the subscription price, and invented some convoluted reason for quadrupling the subscription price for year 2007 (for any form of subscription, electronic or paper, individual or library). Being a member of our Library Committee, I attempted to understand their reasoning, but failed.
Nobody saved any money as a result of success of Kirby’s project. A slightly modified editorial board of “Topology” launched a replacement, “Journal of Topology” (apparently, Elsevier own the rights to the trademark “Topology”). “Geometry&Topology” is not a part of any package deal. I don’t know if the Oxford UP, the publisher of “Journal of Topology”, offers package deals, but our library had to subscribe to it as a standalone journal. So, the cost of subscription to specialized journals in the field of topology for our library substantially increased. If anybody was subscribing to “Geometry&Topology” or “Topology” as an individual, she or he, most likely, lost these subscriptions because of much higher prices.
During this struggle with “Topology” mathematicians gradually started to consider “Geometry&Topology” as the journal of choice for paper in topology and related fields.
So, the main result of Kirby’s ten-year effort is the fact that he now controls the main journal in his field (topology, of course). It seems that he had no chances to get into the editorial board of “Topology”. The co-author of his most famous papers, L. Siebenmann, was a member of the editorial board for decades, first as a regular member, then as a honorary one.
Next post: The twist ending. 4.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
The twist ending. 1
Previous post: T. Gowers about replacing mathematicians by computers. 2.
I thought that I more or less exhausted the topic of T. Gowers's mathematics and politics. I turned out to be wrong. The only aspect of Gowers's (quasi-)political activity which I supported was the initiated by him and supported by him boycott of Elsevier, the most predatory scientific publisher; namely the "Cost of Knowledge boycott". I had some reservations about the tactics (why Elsevier only, for example?), but felt that they are concerned with secondary issues and that the motives of Gowers are pure.
Well, in early July T. Tao published in his blog post "Forum of Mathematics, Pi and Forum of Mathematics, Sigma", which shed a lot of light on this political campaign. Further details were provided by T. Gowers himself in "A new open-access venture from Cambridge University Press".
It turned out that Gowers is also behind a project to establish a new electronic mathematical journal, or rather a system of new electronic journals, which will directly compete with the best existing journals, for example, with "Annals of Mathematics", which is usually regarded as simply the best one. In the words of T. Gowers:
Out of mentioned three journals, only the "Inventiones Mathematicae" (published by the second biggest scientific publisher after Reed-Elsevier, namely, Springer) is expensive. "Annals of Mathematics" is very cheap by any standards, and at the same time the most prestigious. One may suspect that it is subsidized by Princeton University, but I don't know. Why does it need any competition?
There is a buzz-word here: open access. Even the "Gold Open Access", which sounds great (this is what the buzz-words are for). Indeed, these journals are planned to be open for the readers, everybody will be able to download papers. But somebody is needed to pay at the very least for running a website, databases, for the servers. The "Gold" means that the authors pay. It is suggested that publishing an article in these "open" journals will cost the author $750.00 in current dollars, and the amount will be adjusted for inflation later. In order to attract authors, during the first three years this charge will be waived. Note that any new journal initially publishes mostly articles by the personal friends of the members of the editorial board; they will get a free ride. Gowers considers these three years free ride being really good news; I disagree and consider it to be a cheap trick to help launching his new journal(s).
I believe that it completely wrong to charge authors for publication. In the real world it is the authors who are paid if they done something good, be it a novel, a movie, or a painting. And what they will be paying for in this internet age? Not for the distribution of their papers, as before. Posting a paper at the ArXiv does this more efficiently than any journal. They will be paying for the prestige of the journal, i.e. for a line in CV which may increase their chances to get a good job, a salary raise, etc. This will introduce a new type of corruption into the mathematical community.
The idea of "gold open access" is very popular in the bio-medical sciences. If you work in a bio-med area, you need a big grant paying for your lab, equipment, lab technicians, etc. Adding to these huge costs only $750.00 per article is hardly noticeable (in fact, standard price for gold open access there is between two and three thousands depending on publisher). But mathematics is different. It is a cheap science. A lot of good mathematicians do not have any grants (about two thirds by an NSF estimate). In the current financial and political climate one cannot expect that their employers (the universities, except, perhaps, for a dozen of truly exceptional researches) will pay for publications. And $750.00 is not a negligible amount for a university professor, not to say about a graduate student.
I must mention that the idea of charging the author for the publication was realized in the past by some journals in the form of "page charges". The amount was proportional to the number of pages, since the typesetting costs were proportional; nowadays typesetting is done by the authors (which is, in fact, a hidden cost of publishing a paper), and only final touches are done by the publisher. Such journals existed about 30-something years ago. The author was never responsible for the payment, and if there was nobody to pay (no grant, the university has no such line in the budget) the paper was published anyhow. Still, the idea was abandoned in favor of the traditional publishing model: the one who wants to read a journal, pays for it. Exactly like in a grocery store: if you want an apple, then you pay for it, and not the farmer growing apple trees.
I believe that this idea of charging the authors for publications is much more morally reprehensible than anything done by Elsevier and is a sufficient ground for boycotting this Tao-Gowers initiative.
But this is not all...
Next post: The twist ending 2. A Cambridge don.
I thought that I more or less exhausted the topic of T. Gowers's mathematics and politics. I turned out to be wrong. The only aspect of Gowers's (quasi-)political activity which I supported was the initiated by him and supported by him boycott of Elsevier, the most predatory scientific publisher; namely the "Cost of Knowledge boycott". I had some reservations about the tactics (why Elsevier only, for example?), but felt that they are concerned with secondary issues and that the motives of Gowers are pure.
Well, in early July T. Tao published in his blog post "Forum of Mathematics, Pi and Forum of Mathematics, Sigma", which shed a lot of light on this political campaign. Further details were provided by T. Gowers himself in "A new open-access venture from Cambridge University Press".
It turned out that Gowers is also behind a project to establish a new electronic mathematical journal, or rather a system of new electronic journals, which will directly compete with the best existing journals, for example, with "Annals of Mathematics", which is usually regarded as simply the best one. In the words of T. Gowers:
"Thus, Pi papers will be at the level of leading general mathematics journals and will be an open-access alternative to them. Discussion is still going on about what precisely this means, but it looks as though the aim will probably be for Pi to be a serious competitor for Annals, Inventiones, the Journal of the AMS and the like."
Out of mentioned three journals, only the "Inventiones Mathematicae" (published by the second biggest scientific publisher after Reed-Elsevier, namely, Springer) is expensive. "Annals of Mathematics" is very cheap by any standards, and at the same time the most prestigious. One may suspect that it is subsidized by Princeton University, but I don't know. Why does it need any competition?
There is a buzz-word here: open access. Even the "Gold Open Access", which sounds great (this is what the buzz-words are for). Indeed, these journals are planned to be open for the readers, everybody will be able to download papers. But somebody is needed to pay at the very least for running a website, databases, for the servers. The "Gold" means that the authors pay. It is suggested that publishing an article in these "open" journals will cost the author $750.00 in current dollars, and the amount will be adjusted for inflation later. In order to attract authors, during the first three years this charge will be waived. Note that any new journal initially publishes mostly articles by the personal friends of the members of the editorial board; they will get a free ride. Gowers considers these three years free ride being really good news; I disagree and consider it to be a cheap trick to help launching his new journal(s).
I believe that it completely wrong to charge authors for publication. In the real world it is the authors who are paid if they done something good, be it a novel, a movie, or a painting. And what they will be paying for in this internet age? Not for the distribution of their papers, as before. Posting a paper at the ArXiv does this more efficiently than any journal. They will be paying for the prestige of the journal, i.e. for a line in CV which may increase their chances to get a good job, a salary raise, etc. This will introduce a new type of corruption into the mathematical community.
The idea of "gold open access" is very popular in the bio-medical sciences. If you work in a bio-med area, you need a big grant paying for your lab, equipment, lab technicians, etc. Adding to these huge costs only $750.00 per article is hardly noticeable (in fact, standard price for gold open access there is between two and three thousands depending on publisher). But mathematics is different. It is a cheap science. A lot of good mathematicians do not have any grants (about two thirds by an NSF estimate). In the current financial and political climate one cannot expect that their employers (the universities, except, perhaps, for a dozen of truly exceptional researches) will pay for publications. And $750.00 is not a negligible amount for a university professor, not to say about a graduate student.
I must mention that the idea of charging the author for the publication was realized in the past by some journals in the form of "page charges". The amount was proportional to the number of pages, since the typesetting costs were proportional; nowadays typesetting is done by the authors (which is, in fact, a hidden cost of publishing a paper), and only final touches are done by the publisher. Such journals existed about 30-something years ago. The author was never responsible for the payment, and if there was nobody to pay (no grant, the university has no such line in the budget) the paper was published anyhow. Still, the idea was abandoned in favor of the traditional publishing model: the one who wants to read a journal, pays for it. Exactly like in a grocery store: if you want an apple, then you pay for it, and not the farmer growing apple trees.
I believe that this idea of charging the authors for publications is much more morally reprehensible than anything done by Elsevier and is a sufficient ground for boycotting this Tao-Gowers initiative.
But this is not all...
Next post: The twist ending 2. A Cambridge don.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)