Short answers, pulled from the story.
Machine Learning began publication in 1986 as a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The first issue appeared that year to serve researchers in the field of artificial intelligence and data analysis.
Forty editors and members of the editorial board resigned from Machine Learning in 2001 because they argued that expensive journals with pay-access archives harmed research progress during the internet era. They believed authors should retain copyright over their own work and protested the traditional subscription model where readers paid high prices to access content.
Kluwer Academic Publishers altered its publishing policy regarding author rights following the mass resignation by allowing writers to self-archive their papers online after peer-review completion. This new rule permitted researchers to upload final versions of accepted articles to personal websites or institutional repositories without legal permission from the publisher.
The journal appears in several databases designed for abstracting and indexing scientific literature including Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. These systems catalog titles, authors, and keywords to help scholars locate relevant studies within the field of machine learning.
The 2001 resignation influenced long-term models of scientific communication by demonstrating that communities could organize against restrictive publishing practices effectively. The event inspired similar movements in other fields like physics and biology and led publishers to eventually adopt open access options to remain competitive with free repositories.