LINGUA → GLOSSA

In a move that is making waves around the world, all 6 editors and all 31 editorial board members of the journal Lingua resigned two weeks ago in protest over the publisher Elsevier’s refusal to turn the journal into a completely free open-access journal, with no charges for authors or readers. Once the resignations take effect (at the end of 2015), the editors plan to start a new open-access journal to be called Glossa, which will be funded for five years by the Association of Dutch Universities (VSNU) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The resignations are the latest move in the larger debate over whether, and to what extent, commercial publishing houses should benefit financially from scholarly research. Articles on the resignations appear in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and the Independent. A statement of support was issued by the Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities. Johan Rooryck, the (future former) executive editor of Lingua, posted a description of the new open-access organization that will host Lingua, LabPhon, and the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics here.