Recent searches
Search options
Another one bites the dust! The editorial board of the journal Mathematical Logic Quarterly have resigned en masse, complaining about the publisher, Wiley:
"The managing editors and editors of MLQ believe that the academic editorial process guaranteeing scientific quality control should be entirely in the hands of an editorial team consisting of members of the academic research community that are entirely free from pressure or influence of commercial and profit-oriented interests."
They've started a new journal of mathematical logic that's "diamond open access". This means simply that it's free to publish in and free to read.
Because they're German, they decided to call this new journal Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik. But they'll forgive you if you call it ZML:
https://blog.tib.eu/2025/04/07/mlq-walk-out/
This move is part of a trend. The Open Access Tracking Project now lists more than 200 articles on such "declarations of independence":
https://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/3/tag/oa.declarations_of_independence
If you're on an editorial board, you should want to convert your journal to diamond open access. And there are resources to help you do it:
https://www.openaccess.nl/en/diamond-open-access/resources
https://toolsuite.diamas.org/
@johncarlosbaez Small correction: the journal is called "Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik". Still easier to abbreviate as ZML. The "Deutsche Vereinigung für Mathematische Logik und für Grundlagenforschung der Exakten Wissenschaften" is not the name of the journal, but the name of the society that sponsored the old journal and cancelled their sponsorship.
@11011110 Also, the editors are mostly not German.
@archernikov - I was just joking about how Germans like long words. But thanks, @11011110: I mixed up the name of the journal and the even longer name of the society. Fixed.
@johncarlosbaez Also relevant: https://axbom.com/dont-fake-bold-and-italic-text-with-unicode/
At least I assume that's what the illegible boxes between "new journal of mathematical logic that's" and "This means simply" were intended to be.
@11011110 Good point! It reads “diamond open access” in ‘mathematical bold‘ characters. In general, I'm grateful for reminders that some niche styling affectations can really mess you up if you rely on slightly non-standard software. But I'm especially thinking about things like abusing random characters that vaguely look alike. In a case like the above, I also wish that everyone's software were better about supporting that—by falling back to unstyled characters, at least.
@11011110 I mean, in this particular case, I'd definitely go with plain text, as forcing the style through the Unicode character substitution isn't worth the trouble, but surely there's _some_ good use cases for maths bold letters, and you shouldn't get ‘illegible boxes’ instead? Not sure that swapping out Unicode code points is the best solution, vs. using some other form of markup. But, damn, still struggling with something that basic in 2025 … makes me ashamed of being a programmer.
Eckhofer @johncarlosbaez Small nitpick: The journal is called "Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik" ("Deutsche Vereinigung..." is the name of the society)
@johncarlosbaez
Dare I say, that's a logical move on the part of the former ed board.
@amcooper
Yeah it's really gratifying that this is a trend. I'm no expert but it seems like these academic publishers are contributing less and less to the core mission [?] of disseminating knowledge. May Aaron Swartz's ghost haunt them to the end of their days.
@amcooper
It is great to see new examples of humans with actual ethics, but maaaaan, it underscores how fucked up things are in soooo many industries and the ongoing attempts to augment the definition of "truth."
@johncarlosbaez
@johncarlosbaez ach wie schön. Diamonds are an academic’s best friend.
@johncarlosbaez full journal title: Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik mit Blackjack und Nutten
@johncarlosbaez Or you could talk to @telescoper who edits @OJ_Astro