New Publishing Model in Mathematics

I think mathematicians and physicists are most likely to lead us to future of publishing, because their research does not get showered with NIH money. Therefore, they have to make sure every extra money they spend on publishing and other communication aspects is absolutely necessary. High-energy physicists adopted arxiv in the 1990s after they lost a bunch of funding due to end of cold war.

Discrete Analysis an arXiv overlay journal (h/t: @lpachter)

This post is to announce the start of a new mathematics journal, to be called Discrete Analysis. While in most respects it will be just like any other journal, it will be unusual in one important way: it will be purely an arXiv overlay journal. That is, rather than publishing, or even electronically hosting, papers, it will consist of a list of links to arXiv preprints. Other than that, the journal will be entirely conventional: authors will submit links to arXiv preprints, and then the editors of the journal will find referees, using their quick opinions and more detailed reports in the usual way in order to decide which papers will be accepted.

Part of the motivation for starting the journal is, of course, to challenge existing models of academic publishing and to contribute in a small way to creating an alternative and much cheaper system. However, I hope that in due course people will get used to this publication model, at which point the fact that Discrete Analysis is an arXiv overlay journal will no longer seem interesting or novel, and the main interest in the journal will be the mathematics it contains.