Academic spring: how an angry maths blog sparked a scientific revolution | Science | The Guardian.
“It began with a frustrated blogpost by a distinguished mathematician.Tim Gowers and his colleagues had been grumbling among themselves for several years about the rising costs of academic journals…..
So, in January this year, Gowers wrote an article on his blog declaring that he would henceforth decline to submit to or review papers for any academic journal published by Elsevier, the largest publisher of scientific journals in the world.
He was not expecting what happened next. Thousands of people read the post and hundreds left supportive comments. Within a day, one of his readers had set up a website, The Cost of Knowledge, which allowed academics to register their protest against Elsevier.
The site now has almost 9,000 signatories, all of whom have committed themselves to refuse to either peer review, submit to or undertake editorial work for Elsevier journals.”