The cost of journal prices has long been an issue, with the American Math Society keeping an up to date survey of prices . The disparities can be very striking. And this is an issue that will continue to effect the sciences until some proactive steps are taken. This is a significant issue for mathematics, which is a discipline that can be done very well with a relatively low level of technology, provided the most recent results are freely availible. Other members of the Math community, like Rob Kirby of UC Berkeley has long championed the more open access to math publications.
This has been easier with the rise of the ArXiv the free math preprint database. (Some will prefer the Front at UC Davis .)
Putting papers here is great way to communicate your results, free to a world wide audience. You can subscribe to get email notification in your areas of interest. And a few journals are overlays, meaning that all of their published papers appear there. The most well known of the overlay journals is the Annals of Mathematics. All of this has made it a very important--even indespensable--research tool in a number of areas, most famously String Theory.
The trend towards free publication of journals will undoubtably increase, with some more recent momentum and press going to the iniative known as Public Libary of Science which will publish its first freely availble journals PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine in October of this year.
An editorial in the NYT reads in part "The aim is to create a freer flow of data about research and results. The journals will pay for themselves by charging a small fee to the organizations and institutions that support the research." (Registration required. Use the login "gtmath" with pass "Atlanta")
The PLOS has an open letter which begins "We support the establishment of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form."
While the gist of the open letter is very much towards the biosciences, the letter has attracted the signature of many people who list Mathematics as their primary home. Most prominent in the list of names is Rob Kirby, Greg Kuperberg, associated with the ArXiv, Dylan Thurston, the well known topologist, and a math biologist Michael Waterman, among others. The list of mathematicians that I extracted from all US signers is below.
| Vasilios Alexiades | Professor, Mathematics, University of Tennessee, United States |
| Alexandra Athanassiou | Faculty, Mathematics, University of Missouri, United States |
| Laurent Bartholdi | Associate Professor, Mathematics, U.C. Berkeley, United States |
| Rachid Benkhalti | Professor, Mathematics, Pacific Lutheran University, United States |
| Mathew Bowersox | graduate student/ NIH fellow, Toxicology, university of rochester, United States |
| Dieter Braun | Postdoc, Center for Mathematics and Biology, Rockefeller University, United States |
| Peter Casazza | Professor, Mathematics, University of Missouri, United States |
| Stephen Clark | Associate Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, University of Missouri-Rolla, United States |
| William Edwin Clark | Professor, Mathematics Department, University of South Florida, United States |
| Mohamed Elhamdadi | Mathematics, University of South Florida, United States |
| Russell Francis | Research Assistant, Mathematics, Ohio University, United States |
| Fritz Gesztesy | Professor, Mathematics, University of Missouri, United States |
| Loukas Grafakos | Professor, Mathematics, University of Missouri, United States |
| Vahan Grigoryan | Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, United States |
| James Hefferon | Associate Professor of Mathematics, Mathematics, Saint Michael's College, United States |
| Jan Hlavacek | Assistant Professor, Mathematics, Univ. of Saint Francis, United States |
| Michael Jury | Research Assistant Professor, Mathematics, Purdue University, United States |
| Rinat Kedem | Assistant Professor, Mathematics, U. Massachusetts, United States |
| Robion Kirby | Professor, Mathematics, Univ. ofCalifornia, Berkeley, United States |
| R. Kit Kittappa | Professor, Mathematics, Millersville University, United States |
| Mile Krajcevski | Instructor, Mathematics, University of South Florida, United States |
| Vijay Krishnamoorthy | Senior Consultant, Mathematics, computer, United States |
| Greg Kuperberg | Mathematics, University of California, Davis, United States |
| Boris Kupershmidt | Professor of Mathematics, Space Institute, University of Tennessee, United States |
| Matilde Lalin | Graduate Student, Mathematics, Princeton University, United States |
| David Lerner | Professor, Mathematics, University of Kansas, United States |
| Irakli Loladze | Research Assosiate, Mathematics, Arizona State University, United States |
| Juan Manfredi | Professor, Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh, United States |
| Florin Manolache | Mathematical Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, United States |
| Lawrence Mathes | Professor, Center for Retrovirus Research, Ohio State University, United States |
| Bernard Mathey-Prevot | Associate professor, Pediatric Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, United States |
| Raymond Mejia | Mathematician, Nhlbi, National Institutes of Health, United States |
| Lucas Monzon | Research Associate, Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado at Boulder, United States |
| Claudio Morales | Professor of Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, University of Albama in Huntsville, United States |
| Paul Myers | Professor, Division of Science and Mathematics, University of Minnesota, Morris, United States |
| Mark Olah | Student, Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon University, United States |
| Marvin Ortel | Professor of Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, University of Hawaii, United States |
| Jim Pitman | Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, Unoversity of California, United States |
| Steve Prehoda | Professor Mathematics, Mathematics, Frederick Community College, United States |
| Lee Rudolph | Professor, Mathematics, Clark University, United States |
| Daniil Sarkissian | Instructor, Mathematics and Statistics, Mississippi State University, United States |
| John Sullivan | Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois, United States |
| Juergen Symanzik | Assistant Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, Utah State University, United States |
| Dylan Thurston | NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mathematics, Harvard University, United States |
| Marie Vitulli | Professor, Mathematics, University of Oregon, United States |
| Wei-hong Wang | Full Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, The College of New Jersey, United States |
| Daniel Warner | Professor, Mathematical Sciences, Clemson University, United States |
| Michael Waterman | Professor, Biological Sciences AND Mathematics, University of Southern California, United States |