It was founded in 1997 by a group of topologists who were dissatisfied with recent substantial rises in subscription prices of journals published by major publishing corporations. The aim was to set up a high-quality open-access journal, capable of competing with existing journals, but with substantially lower subscription fees.
The journal has grown to be well-respected in its field, and has in recent years published a number of extremely important papers - in particular proofs of the Property P Conjecture and the Birman Conjecture .
Full-text PDF and Postscript versions of all journal articles are available via the journal's website, and are also deposited in the ArXiv . A traditional printed version is also published, at present on an annual basis.
