Elsevier Appears To Be Slurping Up Open Access Research, And Charging People To Access It
from the because-elsevier-is-so-nice dept
Oh, Elsevier. The publishing giant has quite the reputation for its desire to stop people from sharing knowledge unless Elsevier can put up a toll booth. A huge number of academics have signed pledges to boycott Elsevier and not allow their works to be published by the company. Also, in the last few years, there's been a rapid growth in open access and requirements that research be distributed for free (often under a Creative Commons license).Almost exactly a year ago, we had a story about Elsevier charging for open access content, and apparently the company hasn't gotten any better. Ross Mounce recently noticed that Elsevier appeared to be selling a paper on HIV infection for $31.50 + tax (after which you have just 24 hours to download it, or just kiss that money goodbye):
When confronted about this, someone from Elsevier, Alicia Wise, tweeted a nonsensical response:
the journal is in transition from Wiley to Elsevier; will check on transition statusBut that's meaningless. If the paper is being published under an open access license, even if somehow that journal is being transferred, then Elsevier should still be publishing it under open access terms. And, considering that the document was just published recently, you'd think that the author on the paper would know something about this. Once again, it looks like Elsevier is just giving open access a giant middle finger.
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Filed Under: copyright, creative commons, open access
Companies: elsevier, wiley
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And then Wiley should make it abundantly clear why this shit does not fly.
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Would this be a DCMA worthy use?
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Re: Would this be a DCMA worthy use?
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It's time
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Re: It's time
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Re: It's time
Once their profits start hurting, then they'd start paying attention, and all without spending a dime.
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Re: Re: It's time
Also for academia to win a significant award against Elsevier will be a Pyhrric victory, as their access fees will go up to pay for it.
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We got computers today so it might not take 100 years again? positive thinking
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's time
Are you sure? How can you say X is X without saying you know that it is because you read it in paper about X? Therefor I argue that knowledge is blocked by copyright because you can't prove your knowledge without quoting a paper to verify that knowledge.
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Much like surgery, the early parts may be painful and messy, but if you just leave a problem to fester, it's only going to get worse.
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Isn't that what happened here? The paper was published with Wiley, not with Elsevier, but the latter has taken the paper and is pretending to be the publisher anyway.
I'd be interested to see what lies behind that transition statement, because if its not true then *surely* Elsevier is bound for trouble?
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Until we stop equating price with value, nothing's gonna change.
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Peer reviewed or not, when does science actually mean "this is true"?
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Most people however are not scientists they want to know if x is x and y is y so journalists, being people selling their views to people like to say "Scientists tell us ..."
The reason it is vital that papers are available for everyone to read is that the paper should contain the evidence and the reasoning so you can judge for yourself.
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However, even if that's true, existing licensed copies retain their license, so someone needs to mirror all of the CC content and make sure a free repository for it continues to exist.
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Who will step up to be the next Aaron Swartz?
This whole thing smells of complicity between academic publishers to try to undermine the open access trend via "journal swapping". Or maybe... "journal evergreening"?
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Vindicated!
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Problem solved.
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Re: Problem solved.
So you if you look out in your yard and see that someone has been stealing your apples, and then the next day they didn't steal any more, by your reasoning they would never again.
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Elsevier responds
We are grateful to Ross Mounce (and thanked him via his blog) for flagging this up to us late Friday, and by Monday afternoon we opened all 27 of the articles and added metadata and license information to the online versions. We never intended to charge for material or rights that should be free, and we will of course reimburse anyone who has purchased access to these articles – our records show there have been only a handful of transactions.
We continually adapt our systems and procedures to strive for zero defects. If for any reason a problem occurs we are committed to deal with it in a fair and efficient manner.
I’ld like to address separately some of the comments that suggest we have no authority to be disseminating these articles or this journal. Authors in this title grant publishing rights to the Society which owns the title, and the Society has the right to sub-license these rights to a publisher. They Society has recently switched from Wiley to Elsevier. We are very happy that Clinical Microbiology& Infection has joined our infectious diseases publishing portfolio (www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com).
Thanks,
Alicia
Dr Alicia Wise
Director of Access & Policy
Elsevier
a.wise@elsevier.com
@wisealic
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Re: Elsevier responds
So it's either time to part ways with the Society, or somebody's lying. I know what I suspect given the fact that the Society continues to publish with Wiley (Elsevier likes exclusivity).
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