You're reading the public-facing archive of the Category Theory Zulip server.
To join the server you need an invite. Anybody can get an invite by contacting Matteo Capucci at name dot surname at gmail dot com.
For all things related to this archive refer to the same person.
John Baez (Jul 07 2020 at 19:36):I got a nice email today saying my book Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity will become available open-access through CERN:
Dear Prof. Baez and Dr Muniain,
I am writing to you (as the team leader for physics) regarding your bestselling book with World Scientific - Gauge Fields, Knots, and Gravity published in 1994.
Apparently, CERN has selected a few of our books that they wish to include in their Open Access package. We will be charging them an amount, and if agreed, we shall allocate the due percentage of royalty as per your contract with us.
Print on demand will continue as usual. Please let us know if you are agreeable with this arrangement.
Looking forward to your response.
Best regards, LakshmiNB: Also, if you are interested in updating the contents as a separate project, feel free to write to me. Thank you!
Lakshmi Narayanan
Deputy Director (Physics)
World Scientific Singapore
Nikolaj Kuntner (Jul 08 2020 at 08:55):A bunch of Springer book in various subjects were made public a few months ago here
https://hnarayanan.github.io/springer-books/#Mathematics%20and%20Statistics
Antonin Delpeuch (Jul 10 2020 at 20:00):Nowadays, there are also options to publish books as open access resources in the first place :) If only more people could follow the example of the HoTT book!
Jules Hedges (Jul 10 2020 at 20:04):Of course you could always "publish" a book on arXiv, as several are. Only downside is your promotion committee are in the pockets of Big Book and won't count it
Antonin Delpeuch (Jul 10 2020 at 20:08):Yeah, if people are fine with publishing books to add lines on their CV rather than to be read, it's not my problem ^^
Cole Comfort (Jul 10 2020 at 20:10):The problem with publishing a book on the arxiv is that there is no editors at all. But then again, many publishers don't do any actual editting either.
Mike Shulman (Jul 11 2020 at 02:29):The HoTT Book has been "edited" by numerous drive-by github contributors who have fixed lots of mistakes and typos. I would venture to say that taken together they've probably done as good a job as a professional editing house. Of course due to hype it's probably had more readers overall than the average math book.
Fabrizio Genovese (Jul 11 2020 at 02:31):Yeah, the HoTT book is probably the best example of collaborative, "open source" academic writing I can think of
Mike Shulman (Jul 11 2020 at 02:31):And on the other hand, my experience interacting with "professional" copyeditors for journal articles and book chapters has NOT made me at all enthusiastic about going to the mat with them for an entire book.
Cole Comfort (Jul 11 2020 at 05:22):I think that contributing to open source projects is largely a thankless endeavour, and should be considered by hiring committees in the same regard as writing books---because of the positive effect is has on research. For example, how much time has the nlab saved mathematicians.
James Wood (Jul 11 2020 at 10:29):Whereas the typically published book has one or two, maybe up to four, authors, the HoTT Book had dozens of authors. I imagine this was crucial in them each doing it basically for free.
Nikolaj Kuntner (Jul 11 2020 at 17:34):Then again, wasn't it the case that Voevodsky really didn't like how the more computational community took that over and put their spin on the HoTT brand? I remember reading he was upset and then tried hard to coin Univalent Foundations for the related notion he had in mind.
সায়ন্তন রায় (Aug 19 2020 at 03:56):Topology: A Categorical Approach by Tai-Danae Bradley, Tyler Bryson, and John Terilla has been made available for free access here.