There’s a new entry in today’s arXiv listings:
Entropy and Diversity: The Axiomatic Approach, a viii + 442 pages book to be published by Cambridge University Press in April 2021.
Congratulations Tom! This is really something.
And even more impressively, this is the second published book that Tom has made freely available on the arXiv! His wonderful Basic Category Theory is there as well.
Posted at December 4, 2020 1:56 PM UTCTrackBack URL for this Entry: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/MT-3.0/dxy-tb.fcgi/3273
After I wrote this, it occurred to me that Higher Operads, Higher Categories might be there as well. I’m very happy to be corrected!
Thank you very much, Emily and Mark!
I did a double-take when I arrived at the Cafe just now, because I’d come in order to write a post with more or less the same title as yours, Emily :-) I’ll do so anyway.
Let me take the opportunity to say (again) how great CUP have been on this front, allowing authors to make versions of their works freely available. Their thinking on the matter has changed a bit over the years (and no two of mine have had the same arrangement), but they’ve always been very progressive and author-friendly.
Can you say how their thinking has changed? I know these things can be touchy, so don’t feel pressured to say publicly… but of course, everyone should be trying to figure out ways to do what you’re doing with your books.
I can’t really say, not because I’m a discreet person but because I don’t know. All I know is that when I first got in touch with CUP about the possibility of doing this book with them, I asked two questions: (1) will I be able to arXiv it? and (2) will I be able to keep control of the Latex source (that is, only send PDF to CUP)? The answer to (2) was a straight yes. The answer to (1) was also a yes, but with some phrase such as “our thinking on this has changed a bit over the years” (that’s from memory, not a quote).
I don’t know the nature of the change. All I can say is how it’s worked for my own books:
For Entropy and Diversity, the arrangement is that I can arXiv a pre-copyediting version, as I’ve done. I’ll only update it to add the publication details, once it’s out. The copyediting will make only the tiniest changes, so I’m not bothered by that.
For Basic Category Theory (2014), the arrangement was that I could arXiv it one year after publication (I think a post-copyediting version, though I forget now). But given that that was a textbook rather than a research work, I wasn’t in such a hurry to make a free version available. I don’t know what arrangement CUP would have offered if it had been a research monograph that I was jonesing to share with the world.
For Higher Operads, Higher Categories (2004), I was allowed to (1) arXiv a pre-copyediting version, then (2) a certain period after publication (18 months?), arXiv a post-copyediting version (which I never got round to doing).
In any case, I’ve never had to persuade or argue or bargain with CUP. I’d encourage any authors who want to do something similar to simply get in touch with them and ask.
John Baez wrote,
but of course, everyone should be trying to figure out ways to do what you’re doing with your books.
The thought occurred to me the other day that there are arXiv overlay journals like Quantum and Discrete Analysis, but I don’t think anyone has tried an arXiv overlay book publisher — an organization that would stamp a quality seal upon an eprint book so that it a tenure committee would see it as “published”.
Wow! It’s great to have such a comprehensive reference to point people to. Congratulations, Tom!
Thanks!
Everyone who’s commented so far has their name somewhere in the book :-)
I got very giddy when I saw this drop on the arXiv!
Looks wonderful, congratulations!
Re: Entropy and Diversity on the arXiv
Congratulations, Tom!
And a slight addition to the post: Tom’s earlier book Higher Operads, Higher Categories is also on the arXiv!