Appendix to Opinion 156: A more Efficient algorithm for convincing Journals' editorial boards to break away from Elsevier

By Doron Zeilberger

Written: July 5, 2017

More and more people are agreeing, at least in principle, with the justified campaign of Timothy Gowers and Mark Wilson (and others) to convince the editorial boards of Elsevier's journals to resign en masse, and to turn their journal into a free electronic jounral, but otherwise keep the same editorial peer-reviewed system.

There is one fatal flaw with this algorithm. Going to the Editor-In-Chief. The Editor-In-Chiefs (that in many, perhaps most, cases) are below-par mathematicians (copmpared to the average quality of the members of the editorial board), have very little incentive to secede, since they are paid quite handsomely (for academic standards) by Elsevier, while the rest of the members of the editorial board do it pro bona.

A much better algorithm is to write email to the members of the set

{Editorial Board} \ {CurrentPaidEditorsInChiefs}   ,

and pick a young and energetic member of the editorial board and ask them to volunteer to be the new editor-in-chief, but without financial gain. Then pick an electoronic venue. It can be even the new (volunteer) editor-in-chief's own website, there is plenty of disk-space nowadays!


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