Elsevier Ramps Up Its War On Access To Knowledge
from the shameful-behavior-from-a-shameful-company dept
We just recently wrote about the terrible anti-science/anti-knowledge/anti-learning decision by publishing giant Elsevier to demand that Academia.edu take down copies of journal articles that were submitted directly by the authors, as Elsevier wished to lock all that knowledge (much of it taxpayer funded) in its ridiculously expensive journals. Mike Taylor now alerts us that Elsevier is actually going even further in its war on access to knowledge. Some might argue that Elsevier was okay in going after a "central repository" like Academia.edu, but at least it wasn't going directly after academics who were posting pdfs of their own research on their own websites. While some more enlightened publishers explicitly allow this, many (including Elsevier) technically do not allow it, but have always looked the other way when authors post their own papers.That's now changed. As Taylor highlights, the University of Calgary sent a letter to its staff saying that a company "representing" Elsevier, was demanding that they take down all such articles on the University's network.
The University of Calgary has been contacted by a company representing the publisher, Elsevier Reed, regarding certain Elsevier journal articles posted on our publicly accessible university web pages. We have been provided with examples of these articles and reviewed the situation. Elsevier has put the University of Calgary on notice that these publicly posted Elsevier journal articles are an infringement of Elsevier Reed’s copyright and must be taken down.Taylor's analysis of this is worth reading. He basically notes that any shred of a chance for Elsevier to fix their reputation is now gone. In the past, he'd suggested ways that the company could better interact with academics and librarians to rebuild its reputation -- but this basically crosses the point of no return.
Of course, there's a legal-geek part of me that hopes that Elsevier takes that last step off the ledge of insanity and actually files a lawsuit against a University (or, even more ridiculous, an academic author), and we get to see the mother of all copyright battles concerning fair use. Remember, in the US, among the key areas where fair use is likely to be found are "teaching, scholarship or research." That's in the statute itself. So, go ahead, Elsevier, bring it on.Because this is, obviously, a very short-term move. Whatever feeble facade Elsevier have till now maintained of being partners in the ongoing process of research is gone forever. They’ve just tossed it away, instead desperately trying to cling onto short-term profit. In going after the University of Calgary (and I imagine other universities as well, unless this is a pilot harassment), Elsevier have declared their position as unrepentant enemies of science.
In essence, this move is an admission of defeat. It’s a classic last-throw-of-the-dice manoeuvre. It signals a recognition from Elsevier that they simply aren’t going to be able to compete with actual publishers in the 21st century. They’re burning the house down on their way out. They’re asset-stripping academia.
Elsevier are finished as a credible publisher. I can’t believe any researcher who knows what they’re doing is going to sign away their rights to Elsevier journals after this.
The University of Calgary is up in Canada and it has somewhat different rules, including fair dealing, rather than fair use. But the Supreme Court there appears to be quite supportive of fair dealing, especially in academic settings. Other reports note that the company has been similar notices to US-based colleges as well.
Why Elsevier has decided to declare such a war on access is anyone's guess, but it's not going to end well.
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Filed Under: access to information, copyright, dmca, education, journals, knowledge, open access, research, takedowns, universities, war on access
Companies: elsevier
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Greed
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Re: Greed
What Elsevier is doing here is a moneygrab to get better control of copyrighted material to the loss of their authors. Let us see how well it works for them to ruin their reputation by gnawing the hand that feeds them!
I wonder how long the copyright given to Elsevier is? The longer the copyright, the longer this dino will fight to destroy open access and other competition.
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Re: Re: Greed
Consider this: What has Yale, for example, given the world? Skull'n'Bones (Lodge 322, the Yale Society of Death) is what. And what did Skull'n'Bones give the world? 9/11 is what.
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Never give in to reason
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Re: Never give in to reason
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Strange Brew
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Re: Strange Brew
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Ban
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Re: Ban
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�A drop of ink may make a million think.�
― George Gordon Byron
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Re:
They need a wikipedia like repository where everyone can access knowledge for free, and contribute to science (for free)
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Re: Re: Brilliant idea
So simple. So elegant. It will never happen because Big Academia cannot risk the world finding out that all the really, really clever people have been excluded from it all along. The power politics of professorial chartered monopoly win every time.
(Not *too* like wikipedia, I would hope. Plagiarism is not nice.)
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Re: Re: Re: Brilliant idea
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Re: Re: Re: Brilliant idea
big search is not a thing
big academia is so far from being a thing it suggests a need for therapy
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Yea, outsourcing.
(emphasis mine)
Sounds like they're outsourcing their enforcement. Whether or not it's a legitimate mistake (like the incedents of media companies issuing takedown notices w/ Google on their own websites) or they're testing the waters, using the outsourced company so they can later disavow them, we'll probably never know.
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Re: Yea, outsourcing.
That could very well be it. If they did this themselves, then they'd catch all the flack over it. Using another company to act as a 'buffer' though, they can gauge the public reaction to something they were considering, and just claim the other company 'went beyond our directions' should the backlash be severe enough.
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Knowledge Lost
Access to knowledge may soon be displaced by flat out loss of knowledge if those in the academic publication world don't focus on their users instead of their business model.
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Re: Knowledge Lost
Digitizing more than the most popular texts is a dark hole to throw money at for most libraries, museums and other text collecting entities. It still remains to be seen, how to ensure that transition for scientific texts without charity funding (whether from government, private donations or companies).
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Re: Re: Knowledge Lost
Back to past, and behind !
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Re: Re: Re: Knowledge Lost
In all fairness, it is not throwing away knowledge as much as a passive restriction (storage on paper is relatively resiliant to time). I agree that it is shortsighted, but the resources have to come from somewhere for the texts to make the transition.
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Publishers
2. Authors do not have to use a "publisher" at all now that we have the Internet and e-books. There is no law requiring it.
Of course, rubbish authors will always suck up to publishers. That's why there's next to nothing new worth reading any more. "50 Shedloads of Gruesome" anyone?
Besides which, Big Academia has brought ignominy upon itself with such nonsense as "Big Bang", "Global Warming", "Holocaust" and a general failure to so much as even notice that 9/11 ever happened. It is becoming irrelevant by its own hand. Proof of karma if ever there was.
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Re: Publishers
2. Authors do not have to use a "publisher" at all now that we have the Internet and e-books. There is no law requiring it.
What there is, however, is a "publish or perish" mentality in academia. The idea is that if you don't have a significant body of works published in respected academic journals, it is nigh-impossible to get a tenured position.
This puts tremendous pressure on academics to publish works - and specifically with "respected" periodicals. This means that "respected" journals (read: legacy publishers) have a tremendous amount of bargaining power over academics: if they don't sign over the copyright to the article, they won't get published, and probably won't get tenure.
Moreover, since academics generally don't care about the market value for their articles themselves, they often don't see any problem with assigning the copyright to the periodical.
Big Academia has brought ignominy upon itself with such nonsense as "Big Bang", "Global Warming", "Holocaust"
...and now you put on your tin foil hat. "Big Academia" must mean "everyone who believes in empirical evidence," that's what supports all of the "nonsense" you've just mentioned.
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Re: Re: Publishers
Academia-metrics are one of the most important deciding factors in the likelyhood of you getting funding. It therefore sux to be a young professor, while the old and dried out can easily get funding for their less valuable projects.
Moving up in the world to a tenured position is tantamount to being able to get enough grants to keep yourself busy and a bit extra as safety.
I cannot understand his "Big Academia" thinking either. It sound like creationist or lizardmen-variety worldviews...
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Re: Re: Publishers
There's a severe irony in doing this... The number of tenured positions has dropped immensely while the number of adjuncts has increased in academia. You can be a grad student for quite some time, saddled with debt and still barely make enough to pay your bills.
It's like people are running around in a rat race and don't know how to get out of the maze.
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Re: Publishers
You're joking, right? With everyone banging on about it at every available opportunity and in every conceivable context for the past 12 years, there are probably uncontacted tribes who know what 9/11 is by now.
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Re: Re: Publishers
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FUTON bias
Researchers want their articles to have more visibility and impact. Researchers want their articles to be cited more often. Making their articles less available goes directly against that.
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Re: FUTON bias
Knowledge has value regardless of its ubiquity, knowledge widely dispersed throughout a society makes that society more valuable. Attempting to monetize the distribution of knowledge is counterproductive to the betterment of that society, but greed seems to blind many to this.
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My familiarity with the "process" does not extend to how various articles get from the original rights holders or later rights holders like journals to ER. That would certainly help analyze from a legal perspective what is happening and any weaknesses associated with such transfers.
In the context of this article it is a bit frustrating to understand what is going on because the author of the linked article does not say if what was posted on the University's website are articles by members of its faculty or articles by persons not associated with the university. If the former, it is a shame that title was likely transferred to a third party, and that title was used by the third party to work out a deal with ER to the possible detriment of the original rights holder.
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Re:
Elsevier is the (privately owned) publisher that owns the journals in question.
If you follow the link to the other Techdirt article, you'll get this description of Elsevier's M.O.:
If you want more, this is a good resource:
http://thecostofknowledge.com/
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Elsevier
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Re: Elsevier
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Re: Elsevier
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feeble facade Elsevier
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