Mathematicians' Views on Current Publishing Issues: A Survey of Researchers

Abstract

This article reports research mathematicians’ attitudes about and activity in specific scholarly communication areas, as captured in a 2010 survey of more than 600 randomly-selected mathematicians worldwide. Key findings include: • Most mathematicians have papers in the arXiv, but posting to their own webpages remains more common; • A third of mathematicians have published papers in Open Access journals, with speed of publication being seen as the primary advantage over traditional journals, but there is substantial philosophical opposition to OA journal models that charge author fees; • Tenure and promotion criteria influence publishing decisions even among most tenured faculty members; • Mathematicians want to keep more rights to their publications than they’ve been allowed, but they have a high success rate in negotiating with publishers for more; • Online collaboration tools, such as Google Groups, are not yet widely used for research but their use is expected to rise in the near future. Reasons behind the mathematics culture of openness were also explored.