• Agenda for the discussion and Tally of Votes
• Don Knuth's letter to the JALG Editorial Board , analyzing the choices for scientific publication
• Statements by absentee colleagues, read at the Business Meeting
• Laci Babai's slides on pricing policies of journals.
• Email opinions received after the meeting.

a. The 2004 Special Issue will appear in SICOMP. This is consistent with the decisive vote at the Business Meeting and it ensures timely publication of the issue. It proved impossible to organize an 04 special issue in JCSS.

b. The EC will continue to consider the future of susequent Special Issues.

Regarding b, SIGACT Members may send opinions on the future of the Special Issue (not the 04 Issue) to

hal@cs.colorado.edu

with the subject heading

Special Issue

before July 31.

Addition made July 22: Emails sent previously to the alias chair@sigact.acm.org were not received! Please resend them to the above address. Because of this malfunction, the deadline for comments on the Special Issue is extended to August 31. Please send all emails to the above address hal@cs.colorado.edu.

The Business Meeting was recorded so there is no need to restate opinions expressed at that meeting. Emails received will be posted on this website at the above link. If the volume of email warrants it this site will convert to allow interactive discussion.

Additions

• Lance Fortnow's summary of the Conference on Computational Complexity Business Meeting.

• Position statement of the online journal Theory of Computing : Includes links to Cornell's Faculty Senate declaration on university library policies and negotiations with Elsevier, open archives (Computing Research Repository (CoRR), Electronic Library of Mathematics, etc.), open journals (Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, etc.), the open access movement (Peter Suber's history, Association of Research Libraries, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, etc.), economics of open access publishing (by Andrew Odlyzko).

• More on open access: Budapest Open Access Initiative ; Nature's focus on open access

• Contradicting the above, in the late 20th century scientific journal publishing was one of the fastest growing sectors in the media industry. "A market to die for?"

• Mergers of journal publishers and increasing prices ; Office of Fair Trading's comments on proposed Reed Elsevier merger

Conclusion

Following the opinions expressed throughout the discussion by the overwhelming majority of participants in the TCS community, the SIGACT Executive Committee decided that the STOC Best Paper Issue will appear in the SIAM Journal on Computing.

FOCS has also decided to move its special issue to SICOMP. FOCS also has the same policy for Best Paper Awards. So FOCS and STOC will operate under identical policies.