The editorial board of the Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics have announced they’re leaving Springer and setting up a new journal called Algebraic Combinatorics. The new journal will follow the principles of Fair OA – the key points are that the journal will be free to read, fees will be low, and acceptance won’t depend on ability to pay.

Hugh Thomas, one of the editors of Algebraic Combinatorics, said of the move,

“There wasn’t a particular crisis. It has been becoming more and more clear that commercial journal publishers are charging high subscription fees and high Article Processing Charges (APCs), profiting from the volunteer labour of the academic community, and adding little value. It is getting easier and easier to automate the things that they once took care of. The actual printing and distribution of paper copies is also much less important than it has been in the past; this is something which we have decided we can do without.”

Another victory for fair and sensible maths publishing, brought about by a small group of OA advocates set up by Mark Wilson and including Timothy Gowers. There’s much more about what’s happened and why you should support the new journal on Gowers’s weblog.

Algebraic Combinatorics lives at algebraic-combinatorics.org (can you believe that was available?!)