“The growing turmoil in the world of scholarly publishing has been weighing heavily on my mind for several years”
Editorial Board, Journal of Algorithms
Dear Board member,
Let me begin with some background information from my personal perspective. I “grew up” professionally with Academic Press journals: Part of my thesis was printed in Volume 2 of the Journal of Algebra
(1965); soon afterward I published an article about trees in the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Volume 3. I was eventually destined to publish six more papers in the latter journal, and one each in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, the Journal of Number Theory, and the Journal of Computer and System Sciences. Those papers were typeset so beautifully, I used Academic Press style as the model in my first demo of TEX to the American Math Society in 1978.
Therefore I was pleased when Herb Wilf approached me later that year with the idea to start a new Academic Press publication, to be called the Journal of Algorithms. On January 4, 1979, 1 replied to him that “Journal of Algorithms is a great title. Surely there must be a journal of that name someday.” We agreed that computer science had matured to the point where such a journal would be an ideal outlet for some of the explosive growth in high-quality algorithmic research.
Over the years the issues of this journal have accumulated to fill nearly five feet of shelf space in my office at home, and I couldn’t be more proud of the quality of many of the articles they contain. The experience of compiling and typesetting the index to Volumes 1-20 that appeared on pages 634 660 of the May 1996 issue gave me a special pleasure; and next year we shall reach Volume 50.
Academic Press built its reputation on producing high-quality scientific books and journals at reasonable prices. That is why Wilf and I were attracted to them initially, and why we continued to be satisfied as the years went by. Academic Press was acquired in 1989 by Harcourt Brace Javonovich, later to become known as Harcourt X for various other values of X, but at first their publishing team stayed fairly intact.
I became concerned about journal pricing in 1990, and I wrote a two-page letter asking them to do their best to minimize the effect on libraries; they promptly sent me a completely satisfactory reply, and indeed they kept price increases below the level of inflation during the next few years.
