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A pot-pourri of comments. A quick reply to Terry: "Is therefore acceptable for me to publish a journal article by you under my name?" That's normally called plagiarism. I'd have thought you knew that! I'm certainly not condoning plagiarism, or theft—or even flattery. The academic world is based on honesty: we may not always achieve it, but that's the ultimate academic standard for behaviour. My point is that publishers actually PREVENT the dissemination of our findings. They sell at outrageous prices, demand (in rights) what is not theirs, and have (often) tiny readerships. However we do it, we should move away from these people who actually mitigate against what we are supposedly involved in. I loved Klaus's comment about his publisher charging themselves! Typical and quite wonderfully inventive. Klaus talked about not completing copyright agreements as presented to us. I recently rewrote a copyright agreement with a particularly restrictive and unpleasant US publisher before signing it. The CEO of the company concerned spent a lot of time telling me what a good job they did, then sent the book with printing outside the margins. It was dreadful. Eventually, I signed the copyright agreement because the editor had put in a lot of work, and have told myself I will never publish with them again. Copyright is a catastrophe. It doesn't do what it was intended to do, any more. Perhaps once. Now, it's just a mess. We should abandon it. We who have academic jobs are supposed to publish. It's not a matter of making money: we were paid to do our research. We need to find something else. And here's another point: if we are going to support journals, then we should support the small ones. That means, all those with a reputation should avoid publishing in the big journals, to increase the credibility of the small journals. Leave the big ones for the up and coming, who need the recognition. And develop good relationships with smaller journals, so we have more options and also more influence. I think that's enough from me. Ranulph