19 ms·

UC terminates subscriptions with Elsevier in push for open access

1743 points by tingletech 8y ago

jeromebaek 8y ago
This is huge. Not only does it pressure publishers like Elsevier, it also legitimizes Sci-Hub in a way: if UC, one of the biggest and most reputable Universities in the world including Berkeley and UCLA, says thry won't pay for Elsevier, researchers will just use Sci-Hub to access paywalled articles. And it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone, because the world's best researchers are all going to be using it.
- minikites 8y ago
  Or they can use the interlibrary lending service: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary-loan http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary...
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    Is it any good? Even if it is, it's nowhere near as good as scihub.
    - jrochkind1 8y ago
      It's "good" in the sense that if you fill out a form (probably manually entering things in boxes in a web form), you'll probably have a PDF in your email within 2 or 3 business days, so long as nearly any library anywhere has a copy (licensed electronic or on paper). For a hard-to-find article not really available anywhere else, that's pretty neat. For something you could just get on sci-hub? Nah.
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        I end up with some ILL scans in the same day as the request.
    - kevinventullo 8y ago
      In the early 2010's, I was able to find stuff through ILL that I couldn't find anywhere on the internet. Not sure how extensive SciHub is nowadays.
  - jrochkind1 8y ago
    True, but nobody wants to wait a few days for an article in 2018.
    - Techonomicon 8y ago
      nor in 2019!
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  While they're not gonna say it in the press release, you gotta figure the decision-makers know that many professors and students are using sci-hub _already_, and find it _easier to use_ than the official licensed channels, and that this was part of what gave them the ability to cancel the Elsevier license.
  - jrochkind1 8y ago
    > And it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone, because the world's best researchers are all going to be using it I wouldn't count on that, could lead to the reverse, Elsevier coming to terms with the threat and getting serious. If the worlds best (and wealthiest biggest-spending) research institutions are willing to go this route, Elsevier is gonna be thinking, uh oh we're in trouble, better bring out the big guns. The tricky thing is that it's often _authors themselves_ who willingly share their stuff on "pirate" sites, and Elsevier wants to avoid at all costs the academic authors realizing they have different interests and goals than Elsevier. Elsevier is in a tough spot in the long-term, despite their crazy profit-margins today -- and we all want it to keep getting tougher and tougher. But if they think they're going down, they're going to start lashing out...
    - philipkglass 8y ago
      What bigger guns do publishers have to use against sci-hub that they haven't used yet? They have already used lawsuits against sci-hub and getting their domain names blocked in jurisdictions where that sort of thing can happen. Pressuring for IP-address blocks across different ISPs? Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub.
      - jrochkind1 8y ago
        > Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub Have you done or read much UX analysis with academics? They do _not_ tend to be adepts at things like tor browser. Not even in "hard-science" disciplines. Some are, some aren't. They don't want to jump through any hoops at all, they see getting/finding articles as a necessary evil, mostly to get citations to put in papers. They are busy, and have no time for any extra hoops, and aren't really interested in learning new tools for accessing articles. In fact that's WHY they are using sci-hub, simply because it's the quickest lowest barrier way to get the stuff, without having to learn any special tools. I'm not sure either what bigger guns Elsevier has, but they'll try to figure it out. They have not yet tried to go against _authors_ for sharing the articles they wrote, but Elsevier has copyright or exclusive license to distribute. Or against individual academics for consuming pirated articles. (You know the emails/letters you get if you're torrenting a movie from piratebay without a VPN or what have you? Nobody has ever sent one to an academic for sharing or downloading an article... yet).
- tony_cannistra 8y ago
  But, Sci-hub (which I use every day and am in full support of!) is a band-aid solution to the open-access problem. I wonder if the entire UC system going offline from Elsevier access is enough to stop other researchers from submitting to their journals. Probably not initially, but I know that many of my colleagues avoid submitting to journals that they know their peers don't read.
  - gh02t 8y ago
    It's mostly a problem in more specialized fields where there are only really one or two journals servicing it. If Elsevier owns the only journal(s) in your field then you're gonna be in a tough spot. Organizing and launching a new journal is challenging, which is one of the reasons Elsevier has been so hard to overthrow despite almost everyone being unhappy with them. What is also needed is for more journals to be founded or defect. Elsevier's big subscribers can exert some leverage, but Elsevier's strategy has been to lock down their control of publishing in entire fields, meaning that you may not have much alternative.
  - jrochkind1 8y ago
    Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, doesn't say that even UC researchers will no longer submit to Elsevier journals (or no longer be on Elsevier journal editorial boards). They can and presumably will keep submitting to Elsevier journals. UC just won't pay for licenses to access those journals. If UC tried to tell faculty which journals they were or were not allowed to submit to, that would be a LOT more controversial to them. I mean, this _could_ have been controversial too, but that would be even more so. If this actual decision wasn't controversial among faculty, my guess is it's because they're all using sci-hub anyway.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, or even UC researchers no longer doing that. The policy which resulted in it—UC’s push for open access for public-funded research, and Elsevier’s unwillingness to allow open access on terms UC was willing to accept—implies that, should the breach not be healed, there will eventually be a problem for at least some subset of UC researchers publishing in Elsevier journals.
- jononor 8y ago
  Do we have backups of Sci-Hub?
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Yes.
  - gpm 8y ago
    Given enough storage space you can even make one yourself, the papers are distributed via a set of torrents.
- colourlessgreen 8y ago
  Hey, they may also use UnPaywall
djohnston 8y ago
this is awesome, way to go UC
itsbenweeks 8y ago
Finally! I've been hearing librarians gripe about the prohibitive cost of academic subscriptions for over a decade. It's no surprised that the first administrative body to take a $tand is from a state school system. It's surprising that their budgets didn't bring them there sooner, though. Lets hope that UC faculty will stop publishing with Elesevier in the future, so the journals rankings begin to drop.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
PascLeRasc 8y ago
This is great news. The UC system has a ton of academic clout and this will push smaller universities to close their contracts and bump up the impact factor of open access journals. Elsevier's also by far the shittiest publisher in their practices [1]. 40% profit margins on publicly-funded research that the public doesn't get to access is disgusting. I can't wait for them to go out of business. [1] https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600?s=09 https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600?s...
- FabHK 8y ago
  > Elsevier's also by far the shittiest publisher in their practices Yeah. Interesting: the longest part of the Wikipedia article used to be Criticism & Controversies, but it has been restructured quite a bit. Still lists many despicable acts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier Ceterum censeo Elsevier(um) esse delendum.
  - PascLeRasc 8y ago
    The whole article is criticisms and controversies, I love it.
    - justwalt 8y ago
      I’m surprised the article doesn’t have a tag for point of view, although it’s hard to disagree with the claims. Still, it’s one of the most hostile articles I think I’ve read on Wikipedia.
      - FabHK 8y ago
        And if you read the Talk page, you'll realise that several Elsevier employees have been updating the article. That it is still so hostile to Elsevier is then maybe an indication of how despicable the company really is.
hyperion2010 8y ago
Very happy to see my advisor's signature on the academic senate's support letter. We have been waiting for months to see the outcome of this. I can still get to stuff on sciencedirect but i assume that will be changing in the near future :)
- myself248 8y ago
  Write your advisor a brief note of thanks, would ya? Sticking one's neck out for a thing like that, even with a bunch of other necks, could be a harrowing thing to do. I appreciate their courage in sticking up for this.
- qaute 8y ago
  According to the linked statement from the UC Office of Scholarly Communications [1], "No matter what happens moving forward, UC scholars will still be able to use ScienceDirect to access most articles published prior to January 1, 2019 because UC has permanent access rights to them." [1] https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier/ https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/pub... Edit: dannykwells beat me to it, and in more detail.
elektor 8y ago
In addition to Sci-Hub, another good and legal alternative tool for academics is Unpaywall. https://unpaywall.org/products/extension https://unpaywall.org/products/extension Although nothing beats the speed of a Sci-Hub bookmarlet. https://github.com/nfahlgren/scihub_bookmark https://github.com/nfahlgren/scihub_bookmark
- dangom 8y ago
  Worthwhile to mention Sci-hub's telegram bot [1]. Forward any link as a message to the bot and it's instantly send you a paper. Also worthwhile to mention Zotero's sci-hub integration. There's a guide on how to get it running here: https://medium.com/@gagarine/use-sci-hub-with-zotero-as-a-fall-back-pdf-resolver-cf139eb2cea7 https://medium.com/@gagarine/use-sci-hub-with-zotero-as-a-fa... [1] https://twitter.com/sci_hub/status/731467465973174273 https://twitter.com/sci_hub/status/731467465973174273
- nyolfen 8y ago
  this userscript will automatically detect and link DOIs to scihub: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/36188-sci-hub-automatic-link/code https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/36188-sci-hub-automatic-li...
zouhair 8y ago
And it's starting, can't wait until Elsevier is bankrupt. Parasites.
- lenticular 8y ago
  They have a >40% profit margin, so it would take a lot to bankrupt those bastards.
  - slimshady94 8y ago
    Does anybody who actually works at Elsevier ever read these HN threads?
    - m31415 8y ago
      Even if they don't read HN, I'm sure Elsevier execs know about the general discontent against costly journals. There have been numerous campaigns [1] to boycott journals published by Elsevier. [1]: http://thecostofknowledge.com http://thecostofknowledge.com
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      I can't find it now, but yes, someone from either Elsevier or Springer actually did spend some time on HN a while ago -- within the last year IIRC -- defending their business model and practices. It was a valiant effort, let's put it that way.
    - sofaofthedamned 8y ago
      I interviewed with them in Oxford UK. The tech people there don't have a clue about the stress they cause the academic community. Only reason I knew is because my wife is an ex-academic. It is interesting however how there is never any astroturfing from their side, which would suggest even they know their position is utter toss and a drain on society.
    - yagadwyer 8y ago
      I do! But I’m just a dev there.
jascenso 8y ago
Unreasonable choice by Elsevier. I never understood why the authors of a University/Institute have to pay for open access on top of the huge subscription bill.
3xblah 8y ago
This only applies to publications post-2018. The UC system, i.e., its students (tuition) and state taxpayers, is still paying Elsevier for all pre-2019 publications, including papers published by UC authors.
- elipsey 8y ago
  This was not evident to me after reading the article, but perhaps I did not read carefully. Can you kindly direct me towards some textual evidence, or a citation?
  - 3xblah 8y ago
    https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/uc-elsevier/ https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/uc-elsevier/
    - elipsey 8y ago
      Thank you. It seems to me like they are saying they already paid for permanent access to most 2018 or older articles: "What is not affected You can still access the following content in the same way you always have: Most Elsevier articles published in 2018 or earlier: Because the UC’s prior contracts included permanent access to previously published content, you will still be able to get immediate access to the full text of most articles via ScienceDirect, just as you have in the past."
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - 3xblah 8y ago
        You are correct. I apologise for the inadvertence. What I meant to say is that access would only be affected for post-2018 publications. The only comment at that time was one suggesting UC staff would be turning to alternative sources for access. Aside from post-2018 publications, generally they will not need to do that.
dekhn 8y ago
Great news. Now there are enough dissenters that Elsevier will be forced to come to the table upon more favorable terms.
pwthornton 8y ago
One of the reasons you are probably seeing this happen are budget cuts. Major university systems have seen their funding be cut by state governments. Elsevier charges an obscene amount of money to access information that is often publicly funded. If money were no object, you'd probably see less university systems rejecting Elsevier. But money is becoming a bigger issue. Ultimately, this is starting to put major university systems in line with individual users, and we should see an explosion of open-access information in the next decade. Remember when Harvard University said it can't afford journal publishers' price: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-univ...
- mgbmtl 8y ago
  Perhaps, and budget cuts can justify more risk taking. No one wants to be accused of taking political stances that go against student interests, but budget cuts are budget cuts. In my field, where being Free Software based is a selling argument, I like to joke that recessions are good for our field, and economic booms are good for our field (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgUA1tluVmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgUA1tluVmE). I just adjust my pitch depending on the circumstances (save money or invest in a more powerful platform).
- mattigames 8y ago
  Is there any in-deep analysis about university finances? It seems that getting around $150.000 from each new student they should have more than enough to sustain and profit.
  - taurath 8y ago
    My understanding is they are demand inelastic so their costs naturally go up, and there's been an arms race in the past 20 years to build very nice new buildings, housing, etc to compete on look, prestige and features for students. Reputation of the school is one of the biggest differentiators, so now that they're being run as a business rather than the state costs have no incentive whatsoever to decrease. Now of course, even if the states wanted to be more equitable to their citizens by going back to a more state-funded model, the cost to maintain all of those new features is massively increased. Its like an asset bubble more or less.
alphagrep12345 8y ago
I don't understand why companies like Elsevier are needed. Why can't every university have their own Arxiv kind of website, upload their work? These websites are anyways indexed by Google.
- zwaps 8y ago
  Universities have working paper series, generally. However, Arvix and co. are a centralized platform, and there are lot of scale benefits (for everyone) in using such as platform - which is why everyone publishes there. In that sense, decentralized working paper series are not a solution. However, the system can be "decentralized" in terms of control, and run much more efficient with greater consumer benefit.
- dmitrygr 8y ago
  inertia. yes, a website could solve the issue today, but not 30 years ago. Elsevier predates internet by more than a century (it is 139 years old)
- natechols 8y ago
  The problem is that they used to be needed, in the pre-Internet era, so the entire academic community has evolved around the publishing ecosystem. Or rather, the incentive system has evolved that way. Journals like Science/Nature/Cell are essentially the gatekeepers to tenure-track jobs at top universities, at least in the biomedical sciences. If you're a typical postdoc trying to move to the next stage of your career, "just post it on Biorxiv" isn't very helpful advice. I would love nothing more than to see the entire publishing system revamped and parasites like Elsevier and NPG disappear, but until you solve the basic problem of academic hiring and promotion, it's an uphill battle.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    I agree. Right now the only way for universities or funders to know whether other researchers have thoroughly looked at and approved of the work of someone they're considering for tenure or a grant, is to look at whether their work has the stamp of approval of being published in a "reputable" journal. We need an alternative to that. (Full disclosure: I'm working on such an alternative. It just launched, but if any of you come across research you think it's good, do consider publicly endorsing it using https://plaudit.pub/extension/ https://plaudit.pub/extension/. It's all open data, and non-profit.)
ziotom78 8y ago
I am really happy for UC's choice! Sadly, this reminds me that recently Elsevier and CRUI (the association of Italian universities) sealed a 5-year-long deal [1], despite protests from the scientific community. [1] https://www.crui.it/archivio-notizie/i-ricercatori-italiani-potranno-beneficiare-dell%E2%80%99accesso-continuo-al-database-sciencedirect-di-elsevie.html https://www.crui.it/archivio-notizie/i-ricercatori-italiani-...
zwaps 8y ago
NICE Elsevier is really, really bad. At this point, I think they are already seeing the end and investors are trying to squeeze every last bit out of the publishing system before it finally collapses. Case in point: The extremely consumer (paying!) hostile actions they took after buying Mendeley.
- Theodores 8y ago
  > before it finally collapses. Nope, you are forgetting about China. China is where it is happening for Western scientific publishing enterprises. To get published in a Chinese journal is one thing, to get your paper published for the global audience is true icing on the cake. Elsevier and Springer can look at this little problem with UC and think 'meh!' - the travel to China and the conference scene there is much more fun anyway.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    That's why it was extra surprising that large Chinese funders have publicly declared support for Plan S, the coalition of funders forbidding researchers they fund from publishing in journals that do not go fully open access: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07659-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07659-5
aboutruby 8y ago
Also, usual reminder that Sci-Hub exists and has all the research papers available for free from any journal.
- AlotOfReading 8y ago
  Sci-Hub is great, but it absolutely does not have everything published. I try to keep up with the archaeology journals and maybe 1/3rd of papers I look for are available.
  - thatcat 8y ago
    IIRC they download the paper as you enter the doi if it is not already in their catalogue; so does moscow library just not have subscriptions to the journals you're looking for or what?
    - tokai 8y ago
      Not all articles have dois.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Oh that's interesting. I search for stuff over a wide variety of fields, and find like 95%+ of what I search for. Some of it is so obscure I'm amazed they have it. Try libgen scientific articles, e.g. http://libgen.io/scimag/index.php?s=archaeology http://libgen.io/scimag/index.php?s=archaeology .. ALso you can search by journal number (or click on journal name) and all issues are shown in a table.
    - hyperbovine 8y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/ If you can't find it on Sci-Hub, chances are that a top-tier R1 does not have it either.
      - yesenadam 8y ago
gist 8y ago
> The prices of scientific journals now are so high that not a single university in the U.S. — not the University of California, not Harvard, no institution — can afford to subscribe to them all,” said Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, university librarian and economics professor at UC Berkeley What is the definition of 'afford'? Obviously Harvard (as only one example) with a huge billion dollar endowment can easily pay for the journals that are relevant. They just choose not to and think they don't receive value for what they pay. But they do spend money on many other things that some people would find to be wasteful and plenty of people and companies make money off those institutions. I am sure their employees are very well paid. I don't know why people have this tendency to freak out when a for profit company like Elsvier tries to make money. It's not like the 'non profit' colleges are some charity case they pay out plenty of money to various entities and people (for example I am sure they have enormous legal expenses as only one example) when they choose to do so.
- natechols 8y ago
  The problem is that they're making money off content they didn't produce, that taxpayers paid for in many cases, and they're actually preventing wide dissemination of research results. It's not like they're particularly good at their job either - I have yet to meet a scientist who actually enjoys interacting with journal publishers. They simply don't have a choice if they want to stay in an academic position.
  - gist 8y ago
    That is called capitalism. By the way there are plenty of people that are making money off of what the government funded which of course was the arpanet and the internet.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  >"I don't know why people have this tendency to freak out when a for profit company like Elsvier tries to make money." That's an interesting sentence, the way you've framed that. People objecting are objecting to capitalism...and the whole natural order. "Elsevier is..just trying to do what it was created for, like a bird singing or the sun rising or a baby smiling, why is that such a problem? People are just freaking out! I don't know why."
padraic7a 8y ago
Bravo, UC well done.
buboard 8y ago
i wonder if the $5000 that the UC faculty will be paying for every articles they 'll publish in elsevier is going to make up for their lost profits.
- colourlessgreen 8y ago
  UCLA at least have been encouraging researchers to not review or publish in Elsevier https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Talks-With-Elsevier-UCLA/245311 https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Talks-With-Elsevier-UCL...
dannykwells 8y ago
I think this will be an important link to give context to this development: https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier/ https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/pub... - No matter what happens moving forward, UC scholars will still be able to use ScienceDirect to access most articles published prior to January 1, 2019 because UC has permanent access rights to them. (Please see the Alternative Access to Articles page for a list of titles to which UC does not have permanent access rights and for information on how to access items UC does not subscribe to.) - If access is disrupted at any point, the UC Libraries will still work with researchers to get them the articles they need through other means, such as interlibrary loan. - Our quick guide to alternative access provides an overview of the options available to UC researchers. ________ - If the negotiations are successful, UC’s proposed model will make it easier and more affordable for UC faculty to publish their work as open access in Elsevier journals. - No matter what happens, UC authors retain the right to publish in the journal of their choice. - By providing article processing charge (APC) support through the UC Libraries as well as an opt-out option, UC is working hard to ensure that authors have maximum flexibility in determining where and how they want to publish.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  Looks like the content at that URL has changed very recently and no longer includes all that text. Here's an IA version that does.... https://web.archive.org/web/20190209202821/https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190209202821/https://osc.unive...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
chrispeel 8y ago
I'm a member of the IEEE, which I believe also has a problem. They charge authors to publish, then charge IEEE members to access the journals. All this while the reviewers and editors are working for free. At a bare minimum, they should make the journals open to all members. One way to cut costs is to stop printing paper journals. I'd love to hear what the UC system has to say about the IEEE.
- brandonjm 8y ago
  You can choose to publish open access conference papers through IEEE but you have to pay around $2000 (I forget if it was USD or AUD). I'm not sure about the exact costs for an open access Journal paper though. That said, IEEE don't prevent you from listing your own paper on your own website (in it's accepted form, not published form) provided you link the correct DOI and include the reference.
  - scott_s 8y ago
    The ACM is similar, and I think (hope) they will eventually have to just open up all published papers by default. The main difference between the IEEE and the ACM to Elsevier is that the IEEE and ACM are professional organizations. They have a non-profit mission, whereas Elsevier is a for-profit company. I have no problem reviewing papers and serving on program committees when the organizing entity is a non-profit service organization. I think the the ACM and IEEE have a future in a fully open-access world, but Elsevier does not.
- metaphor 8y ago
  +1 here. For at least the past 5 years, I've been questioning the value of IEEE regular membership very hard. Marketing internally spams the Gmail inboxes paid for by dues; Spectrum is nothing more than a front for advertisements while members don't even have ad-free web access to its content; Xplore is a minimum $20/mo limited to an insulting 3 papers; standards are outrageously overpriced even with supposed "member discount". The only thing that has kept me around this long is an apparent misguided belief that the IEEE is the flagship organization catering to the interests of professional EEs, and I'm an EE, therefore I should retain membership. This will be my 10th year of membership...mostly on the campaign promises of Jose Moura[1] of CMU--who I voted for back in 2017 and is now President. I'm really hoping things do indeed change. I also hold lifetime membership with the ACM. Cost ~$4,000 out of pocket, but that buys indefinite access to digital library content. Sure, I could have Sci-Hub'd their papers, but I also recognize that the organization needs to be funded somehow, and their asking price for perceived value was within my budget. IEEE doesn't even have such an option, nor does its Computer Society. This criticism of SDOs[2] is definitely relevant to the meta of those professional organizations who merely claim to support the interests of its members. [1] https://www.josemoura.com https://www.josemoura.com [2] https://youtu.be/Sdm698P2AkA?t=88 https://youtu.be/Sdm698P2AkA?t=88
jjoonathan 8y ago
Obligatory reminder: Mendeley stores your watermarked pirated papers on Elsevier servers. Tread carefully.
- SubiculumCode 8y ago
  You can try using Zotero instead. Mendeley is just not that good, and Zotero is open source and excellent.
  - tcpekin 8y ago
    This thread has convinced me to try to switch, but one thing that I love in Mendeley is the ability to watch a folder, and have any pdf in that folder automatically imported into my account, which then gets synced across devices. That, and the document detail lookup based on a manually input doi, which fixes author names etc. are the two sticking points. When I add a doi to a pdf in Zotero, there doesn't seem to be a way to look it up and import the relevant information to the file information in Zotero. Does anyone have any way around them?
    - SubiculumCode 8y ago
      https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_libra... Seems like you can import by doi. Zotero allows auto import from df, but suggest that pdf metadata tends to be less accurate than importing from the web directly using the Firefox web extension
      - tcpekin 8y ago
        Yeah, that doesn't help the huge collection of papers I already have. And I often find that the web extensions previously broke, haven't tried it recently. Just being able to download the pdf and have it auto watch a folder/import it to me is an almost completely necessary feature.
jrochkind1 8y ago
See UC's Office of Scholarly Communication's guide to "Alternative Access to Elsevier Articles." It looks like UC actually had a license which granted them perpetual licensing rights to most existing content? Or "post termination access rights" in the language of the post. https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/alternative-access-to-articles/ https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/pub...
jrochkind1 8y ago
Many (most?) German universities did this last June, here's a recent article from Nature (which may not be un-biased) on how it's working out. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00492-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00492-4
burtonator 8y ago
If you're interested other Elsevier shenanigans they now encrypt your PDFs that you add to Mendeley so you don't even have access to your OWN research. https://getpolarized.io/2019/01/23/mendeleys-encrypted-repository-is-fundamentally-anti-science.html https://getpolarized.io/2019/01/23/mendeleys-encrypted-repos...
- dangom 8y ago
  I've recently migrated from Mendeley to Zotero. I first had to downgrade Mendeley because recent releases also encrypt your local database to guarantee lock-in [1]. Quite scary. [1] https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import
  - dr_coffee 8y ago
    Zotero has been great. I switched four years ago and never looked back. Plugin support is great- I have drag and drop support in my latex editor and fairly easy citation selection in Lyx
    - jessriedel 8y ago
      I love zotero, and would never switch to Mendeley because of the lock-in problem, but the lack of any mobile apps is a real problem. Reading and annotating on an iPad is a key ability, and the 3rd part PaperShip is buggy and no longer under development.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    I've used Zotero regularly since 2012 or so. At the time I chose it because it integrated with Firefox, though I recall looking into Mendeley as well. If you use BibTeX or BibLaTeX I'd recommend the following extension: https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-better-bibtex https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-better-bibtex I'm very glad I never even tried Mendeley given the database encryption fiasco. Mendeley put a blog post out saying that preventing importing to Zotero was unintentional, but I don't buy it. https://blog.mendeley.com/2019/01/31/the-importance-of-interoperability/ https://blog.mendeley.com/2019/01/31/the-importance-of-inter... Before the database encryption fiasco, I would recommend Mendeley and Zotero if someone wanted a citation manager, but now I recommend staying away from Mendeley as much as possible. The only major problems I've had with Zotero were related to Firefox's switch to WebExtensions. Now adding a copy of a webpage to a citation is more difficult than before the switch, though probably equally difficult as in Mendeley.
not2b 8y ago
Hooray. This is a long-overdue step.
stevespang 8y ago
They all know that anybody can just go on Sci-Hub and get most research. My local city library offers several "legal" free access sites to published journals - - if you have 20 minutes to wade through all the ridiculous BS on the computer trying to discover if the article is even available. Sci Hub takes me 25 seconds and 85 to 90% of what I need is right there. (Be certain to donate !)
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  If I go through my library site, I have a good 70% chance of this happening: https://twitter.com/DannyBate4/status/1092132558937169922 https://twitter.com/DannyBate4/status/1092132558937169922
logjammin 8y ago
Proud UC employee here. Bravo.
peterwwillis 8y ago
Serious question: Why do any institutions pay any publisher at all? If everyone just published for free, nobody would need a subscription. What's the point of the publisher?
- Vinnl 8y ago
  But if not everybody publishes for free, you can only get access to those articles by paying the publishers. The follow-up question is: why do people keep publishing there? The answer to that is that funders and institutions use journal brand names as proxies for evaluating candidates for grants or tenure, so publishing your work in traditional pay-walled journals is good for your career despite making your work less accessible. The follow-up question to that is: why do funders and institutions use journal brand names as proxies? The answer to that may lie in [1], summarised by: there's not really a good alternative. (Full disclosure: I'm working on setting up such an alternative.) [1] https://theconversation.com/why-i-disagree-with-nobel-laureates-when-it-comes-to-career-advice-for-scientists-80079 https://theconversation.com/why-i-disagree-with-nobel-laurea...
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
    Hold on, that's not my follow-up question. You've just said that some orgs publish in Elsevier because grants and tenure. Nobody needs to use them. And yet people do use them, fully aware what it will do to the research, because it helps them personally. My follow-up question is, why are people not mad at the funders and research labs who insist on publishing there? They're burying the research intentionally just to get a better job.
    - Vinnl 8y ago
      > You've just said that some orgs publish in Elsevier because grants and tenure. Ah, sorry, I was unclear there. It's not organisations that publish somewhere, but researchers. And some people are mad at researchers for continuing to publish there, but I find it hard to fault them, because they would probably no longer be researchers if they didn't. People are also mad at funders for that, but it's hard for any individual funder to change that. For example, a coalition of primarily European funders is currently trying to change the incentives, and they get a lot of setbacks from European researchers who feel that when they get banned from publishing in paywalled journals, they will miss out on foreign career opportunities - which have become an almost required part of any academic career. (Note that it's not "just to get a better job". It's to have a job in academia at all. The field is very competitive. There's probably people who've taken a stand, but they're likely to have left academia.)
wanderfowl 8y ago
Here's hoping this is the asteroid to Elsevier's (and their business model's) dinosaur.
musicale 8y ago
Elsevier provides little value to scholars, editors, or universities However, it seems to be correcting the problem by heading resolutely toward oblivion.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  If they are, that's happening very slowly. Despite several prolific cancellations in the past year, they again posted nearly 40% profit margins.
gnulinux 8y ago
This is huge. University of California, hosting Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego among others, is indisputably one of the most prestigious university systems in the world and is widely regarded as the most prestigious public school. Them terminating their subscription of a major scientific journal sounds unreal. Let's see if this will start any change, but I'm very hopeful.
refurb 8y ago
I assume they won’t expect their professors to publish in pay journals? That open access papers are rated as highly as paid when determining promotions?
xvilka 8y ago
It reminds me that no lawful citizen should donate to SciHub. They even have a special link at the bottom of the main page for it!
openloop 8y ago
Maybe you should listen to Berkeley.
formatkaka 8y ago
aaron swartz would be happy !!
hilbert42 8y ago
"“Knowledge should not be accessible only to those who can pay,” said Robert May, chair of UC’s faculty Academic Senate. “The quest for full open access is essential if we are to truly uphold the mission of this university.” The Academic Senate issued a statement today endorsing UC’s position." An excellent decision by UC! This decision will likely cause some pain in the short-term but in the long-term those who want or need access to knowledge will be much better off. Access to knowledge via expensive journals has long been a problem for many primarily for reasons of expense and copyright. Whilst these barriers are obvious, some are less so. In the past access to knowledge via these journals worked to a degree as academic and professional institutions and university libraries usually provided access to them but only for those associated with said organizations—that effectively left many others locked out. Whilst not completely satisfactory, the distribution system worked, albeit very inefficiently. That meant that for some knowledge was readily accessible but for others it only slowly trickled out, effectively society as a whole had access but it was both sporadic and punctuated. However, in recent years several factors changed to make that already-inefficient distribution system untenable. First, there has been an explosion of new knowledge that has pushed the old distribution to straining point, then the development of the internet changed the paradigm completely: it both pushed the problems of copyright to the fore and showed up how slow and inefficient the old system was, and finally the middlemen opportunists had a field day—publishers like Elsevier effectively became knowledge monopolies and exploited the system to the point of breaking. There is no doubt the knowledge distribution system has become completely broken, one only has to look at the phenomenal success of Alexandra Elbakyan's pirate website Sci-Hub to come to that conclusion. In turn, staid universities and academics, etc.—those who publishers like Elsevier had already held to ransom for some considerable time—realized that Sci-Hub's success provided the opportunity to break free of the publishers' yokes. When it comes to the distribution of knowledge, it is difficult for one to over exaggerate how truly limiting and restrictive the publishers' copyright system is. Whilst copyright has always been a limiting factor in this area, it is especially so in this digital information age. Why it is so is a huge subject that I cannot address in detail here, suffice to say it covers a vast expanse: from monopolies on information, the high cost of textbooks to restrictions on the electronic concatenation of information and research databases through to AI processing of existing knowledge. In this area the misuse of copyright is immense. There is no doubt in my mind that the distribution system needs to be opened up and that open access is the route foreword. We have to applaud the University of California's decision to terminate subscriptions with Elsevier in its push for open access to publicly funded research. The aim for all published research ought to be for it to be fully open to everyone.
yzh 8y ago
https://openaccessmanifesto.wordpress.com/guerilla-open-access-manifesto/ https://openaccessmanifesto.wordpress.com/guerilla-open-acce... Aaron's manifesto is getting more and more relevant. He would be happy to see this!
0815test 8y ago
Good on ya, UC. Stick it to those dirty greedy double-dealing Dutch bstrds.
0815test 8y ago
Good on ya, UC. Hit those greedy, double-dealing, Dutch Elsevier bstrds where it hurts. Next target: Nature Pigs Group, the consortium of Anglo swne who have infested every area of research with their sitty journals. Of course, some of the blame goes to idjit academics who jump at the chance to publish in any NPG journal, even if it is named "Nature Enemas and Fecal Matter"
- sctb 8y ago
  If you won't comment civilly and substantively we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dguest 8y ago
I often wish large experiments would take a stronger stance on the supply end. At CERN we've worked out deals with publishers mandating that _our_ content be open access, even if the journal isn't. Personally I feel like this is buying into the system. As it stands I have to make political arguments about the value of open access research. I would rather tell my colleagues we can't publish in journal-X because it won't be accessible to as many people.
Causality1 8y ago
Using tax money to fund research and then not making the results open access is theft. Citizens should get what they pay for.
ahmad49 8y ago
awesome

1743 points by tingletech 8y ago

This is huge. Not only does it pressure publishers like Elsevier, it also legitimizes Sci-Hub in a way: if UC, one of the biggest and most reputable Universities in the world including Berkeley and UCLA, says thry won't pay for Elsevier, researchers will just use Sci-Hub to access paywalled articles. And it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone, because the world's best researchers are all going to be using it.

minikites 8y ago
Or they can use the interlibrary lending service: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary-loan http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary...
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Is it any good? Even if it is, it's nowhere near as good as scihub.
  - jrochkind1 8y ago
    It's "good" in the sense that if you fill out a form (probably manually entering things in boxes in a web form), you'll probably have a PDF in your email within 2 or 3 business days, so long as nearly any library anywhere has a copy (licensed electronic or on paper). For a hard-to-find article not really available anywhere else, that's pretty neat. For something you could just get on sci-hub? Nah.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      I end up with some ILL scans in the same day as the request.
  - kevinventullo 8y ago
    In the early 2010's, I was able to find stuff through ILL that I couldn't find anywhere on the internet. Not sure how extensive SciHub is nowadays.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  True, but nobody wants to wait a few days for an article in 2018.
  - Techonomicon 8y ago
    nor in 2019!
jrochkind1 8y ago
While they're not gonna say it in the press release, you gotta figure the decision-makers know that many professors and students are using sci-hub _already_, and find it _easier to use_ than the official licensed channels, and that this was part of what gave them the ability to cancel the Elsevier license.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  > And it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone, because the world's best researchers are all going to be using it I wouldn't count on that, could lead to the reverse, Elsevier coming to terms with the threat and getting serious. If the worlds best (and wealthiest biggest-spending) research institutions are willing to go this route, Elsevier is gonna be thinking, uh oh we're in trouble, better bring out the big guns. The tricky thing is that it's often _authors themselves_ who willingly share their stuff on "pirate" sites, and Elsevier wants to avoid at all costs the academic authors realizing they have different interests and goals than Elsevier. Elsevier is in a tough spot in the long-term, despite their crazy profit-margins today -- and we all want it to keep getting tougher and tougher. But if they think they're going down, they're going to start lashing out...
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    What bigger guns do publishers have to use against sci-hub that they haven't used yet? They have already used lawsuits against sci-hub and getting their domain names blocked in jurisdictions where that sort of thing can happen. Pressuring for IP-address blocks across different ISPs? Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub.
    - jrochkind1 8y ago
      > Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub Have you done or read much UX analysis with academics? They do _not_ tend to be adepts at things like tor browser. Not even in "hard-science" disciplines. Some are, some aren't. They don't want to jump through any hoops at all, they see getting/finding articles as a necessary evil, mostly to get citations to put in papers. They are busy, and have no time for any extra hoops, and aren't really interested in learning new tools for accessing articles. In fact that's WHY they are using sci-hub, simply because it's the quickest lowest barrier way to get the stuff, without having to learn any special tools. I'm not sure either what bigger guns Elsevier has, but they'll try to figure it out. They have not yet tried to go against _authors_ for sharing the articles they wrote, but Elsevier has copyright or exclusive license to distribute. Or against individual academics for consuming pirated articles. (You know the emails/letters you get if you're torrenting a movie from piratebay without a VPN or what have you? Nobody has ever sent one to an academic for sharing or downloading an article... yet).
tony_cannistra 8y ago
But, Sci-hub (which I use every day and am in full support of!) is a band-aid solution to the open-access problem. I wonder if the entire UC system going offline from Elsevier access is enough to stop other researchers from submitting to their journals. Probably not initially, but I know that many of my colleagues avoid submitting to journals that they know their peers don't read.
- gh02t 8y ago
  It's mostly a problem in more specialized fields where there are only really one or two journals servicing it. If Elsevier owns the only journal(s) in your field then you're gonna be in a tough spot. Organizing and launching a new journal is challenging, which is one of the reasons Elsevier has been so hard to overthrow despite almost everyone being unhappy with them. What is also needed is for more journals to be founded or defect. Elsevier's big subscribers can exert some leverage, but Elsevier's strategy has been to lock down their control of publishing in entire fields, meaning that you may not have much alternative.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, doesn't say that even UC researchers will no longer submit to Elsevier journals (or no longer be on Elsevier journal editorial boards). They can and presumably will keep submitting to Elsevier journals. UC just won't pay for licenses to access those journals. If UC tried to tell faculty which journals they were or were not allowed to submit to, that would be a LOT more controversial to them. I mean, this _could_ have been controversial too, but that would be even more so. If this actual decision wasn't controversial among faculty, my guess is it's because they're all using sci-hub anyway.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, or even UC researchers no longer doing that. The policy which resulted in it—UC’s push for open access for public-funded research, and Elsevier’s unwillingness to allow open access on terms UC was willing to accept—implies that, should the breach not be healed, there will eventually be a problem for at least some subset of UC researchers publishing in Elsevier journals.
jononor 8y ago
Do we have backups of Sci-Hub?
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Yes.
- gpm 8y ago
  Given enough storage space you can even make one yourself, the papers are distributed via a set of torrents.
colourlessgreen 8y ago
Hey, they may also use UnPaywall

djohnston 8y ago

this is awesome, way to go UC

itsbenweeks 8y ago

Finally! I've been hearing librarians gripe about the prohibitive cost of academic subscriptions for over a decade. It's no surprised that the first administrative body to take a $tand is from a state school system. It's surprising that their budgets didn't bring them there sooner, though. Lets hope that UC faculty will stop publishing with Elesevier in the future, so the journals rankings begin to drop.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

PascLeRasc 8y ago

This is great news. The UC system has a ton of academic clout and this will push smaller universities to close their contracts and bump up the impact factor of open access journals. Elsevier's also by far the shittiest publisher in their practices [1]. 40% profit margins on publicly-funded research that the public doesn't get to access is disgusting. I can't wait for them to go out of business. [1] https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600?s=09 https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600?s...

FabHK 8y ago
> Elsevier's also by far the shittiest publisher in their practices Yeah. Interesting: the longest part of the Wikipedia article used to be Criticism & Controversies, but it has been restructured quite a bit. Still lists many despicable acts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier Ceterum censeo Elsevier(um) esse delendum.
- PascLeRasc 8y ago
  The whole article is criticisms and controversies, I love it.
  - justwalt 8y ago
    I’m surprised the article doesn’t have a tag for point of view, although it’s hard to disagree with the claims. Still, it’s one of the most hostile articles I think I’ve read on Wikipedia.
    - FabHK 8y ago
      And if you read the Talk page, you'll realise that several Elsevier employees have been updating the article. That it is still so hostile to Elsevier is then maybe an indication of how despicable the company really is.

hyperion2010 8y ago

Very happy to see my advisor's signature on the academic senate's support letter. We have been waiting for months to see the outcome of this. I can still get to stuff on sciencedirect but i assume that will be changing in the near future :)

myself248 8y ago
Write your advisor a brief note of thanks, would ya? Sticking one's neck out for a thing like that, even with a bunch of other necks, could be a harrowing thing to do. I appreciate their courage in sticking up for this.
qaute 8y ago
According to the linked statement from the UC Office of Scholarly Communications [1], "No matter what happens moving forward, UC scholars will still be able to use ScienceDirect to access most articles published prior to January 1, 2019 because UC has permanent access rights to them." [1] https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier/ https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/pub... Edit: dannykwells beat me to it, and in more detail.

elektor 8y ago

In addition to Sci-Hub, another good and legal alternative tool for academics is Unpaywall. https://unpaywall.org/products/extension https://unpaywall.org/products/extension Although nothing beats the speed of a Sci-Hub bookmarlet. https://github.com/nfahlgren/scihub_bookmark https://github.com/nfahlgren/scihub_bookmark

dangom 8y ago
Worthwhile to mention Sci-hub's telegram bot [1]. Forward any link as a message to the bot and it's instantly send you a paper. Also worthwhile to mention Zotero's sci-hub integration. There's a guide on how to get it running here: https://medium.com/@gagarine/use-sci-hub-with-zotero-as-a-fall-back-pdf-resolver-cf139eb2cea7 https://medium.com/@gagarine/use-sci-hub-with-zotero-as-a-fa... [1] https://twitter.com/sci_hub/status/731467465973174273 https://twitter.com/sci_hub/status/731467465973174273
nyolfen 8y ago
this userscript will automatically detect and link DOIs to scihub: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/36188-sci-hub-automatic-link/code https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/36188-sci-hub-automatic-li...

zouhair 8y ago

And it's starting, can't wait until Elsevier is bankrupt. Parasites.

lenticular 8y ago
They have a >40% profit margin, so it would take a lot to bankrupt those bastards.
- slimshady94 8y ago
  Does anybody who actually works at Elsevier ever read these HN threads?
  - m31415 8y ago
    Even if they don't read HN, I'm sure Elsevier execs know about the general discontent against costly journals. There have been numerous campaigns [1] to boycott journals published by Elsevier. [1]: http://thecostofknowledge.com http://thecostofknowledge.com
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    I can't find it now, but yes, someone from either Elsevier or Springer actually did spend some time on HN a while ago -- within the last year IIRC -- defending their business model and practices. It was a valiant effort, let's put it that way.
  - sofaofthedamned 8y ago
    I interviewed with them in Oxford UK. The tech people there don't have a clue about the stress they cause the academic community. Only reason I knew is because my wife is an ex-academic. It is interesting however how there is never any astroturfing from their side, which would suggest even they know their position is utter toss and a drain on society.
  - yagadwyer 8y ago
    I do! But I’m just a dev there.

jascenso 8y ago

Unreasonable choice by Elsevier. I never understood why the authors of a University/Institute have to pay for open access on top of the huge subscription bill.

3xblah 8y ago

This only applies to publications post-2018. The UC system, i.e., its students (tuition) and state taxpayers, is still paying Elsevier for all pre-2019 publications, including papers published by UC authors.

elipsey 8y ago
This was not evident to me after reading the article, but perhaps I did not read carefully. Can you kindly direct me towards some textual evidence, or a citation?
- 3xblah 8y ago
  https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/uc-elsevier/ https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/uc-elsevier/
  - elipsey 8y ago
    Thank you. It seems to me like they are saying they already paid for permanent access to most 2018 or older articles: "What is not affected You can still access the following content in the same way you always have: Most Elsevier articles published in 2018 or earlier: Because the UC’s prior contracts included permanent access to previously published content, you will still be able to get immediate access to the full text of most articles via ScienceDirect, just as you have in the past."
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - 3xblah 8y ago
      You are correct. I apologise for the inadvertence. What I meant to say is that access would only be affected for post-2018 publications. The only comment at that time was one suggesting UC staff would be turning to alternative sources for access. Aside from post-2018 publications, generally they will not need to do that.

dekhn 8y ago

Great news. Now there are enough dissenters that Elsevier will be forced to come to the table upon more favorable terms.

pwthornton 8y ago

One of the reasons you are probably seeing this happen are budget cuts. Major university systems have seen their funding be cut by state governments. Elsevier charges an obscene amount of money to access information that is often publicly funded. If money were no object, you'd probably see less university systems rejecting Elsevier. But money is becoming a bigger issue. Ultimately, this is starting to put major university systems in line with individual users, and we should see an explosion of open-access information in the next decade. Remember when Harvard University said it can't afford journal publishers' price: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-univ...

mgbmtl 8y ago
Perhaps, and budget cuts can justify more risk taking. No one wants to be accused of taking political stances that go against student interests, but budget cuts are budget cuts. In my field, where being Free Software based is a selling argument, I like to joke that recessions are good for our field, and economic booms are good for our field (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgUA1tluVmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgUA1tluVmE). I just adjust my pitch depending on the circumstances (save money or invest in a more powerful platform).
mattigames 8y ago
Is there any in-deep analysis about university finances? It seems that getting around $150.000 from each new student they should have more than enough to sustain and profit.
- taurath 8y ago
  My understanding is they are demand inelastic so their costs naturally go up, and there's been an arms race in the past 20 years to build very nice new buildings, housing, etc to compete on look, prestige and features for students. Reputation of the school is one of the biggest differentiators, so now that they're being run as a business rather than the state costs have no incentive whatsoever to decrease. Now of course, even if the states wanted to be more equitable to their citizens by going back to a more state-funded model, the cost to maintain all of those new features is massively increased. Its like an asset bubble more or less.

alphagrep12345 8y ago

I don't understand why companies like Elsevier are needed. Why can't every university have their own Arxiv kind of website, upload their work? These websites are anyways indexed by Google.

zwaps 8y ago
Universities have working paper series, generally. However, Arvix and co. are a centralized platform, and there are lot of scale benefits (for everyone) in using such as platform - which is why everyone publishes there. In that sense, decentralized working paper series are not a solution. However, the system can be "decentralized" in terms of control, and run much more efficient with greater consumer benefit.
dmitrygr 8y ago
inertia. yes, a website could solve the issue today, but not 30 years ago. Elsevier predates internet by more than a century (it is 139 years old)
natechols 8y ago
The problem is that they used to be needed, in the pre-Internet era, so the entire academic community has evolved around the publishing ecosystem. Or rather, the incentive system has evolved that way. Journals like Science/Nature/Cell are essentially the gatekeepers to tenure-track jobs at top universities, at least in the biomedical sciences. If you're a typical postdoc trying to move to the next stage of your career, "just post it on Biorxiv" isn't very helpful advice. I would love nothing more than to see the entire publishing system revamped and parasites like Elsevier and NPG disappear, but until you solve the basic problem of academic hiring and promotion, it's an uphill battle.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  I agree. Right now the only way for universities or funders to know whether other researchers have thoroughly looked at and approved of the work of someone they're considering for tenure or a grant, is to look at whether their work has the stamp of approval of being published in a "reputable" journal. We need an alternative to that. (Full disclosure: I'm working on such an alternative. It just launched, but if any of you come across research you think it's good, do consider publicly endorsing it using https://plaudit.pub/extension/ https://plaudit.pub/extension/. It's all open data, and non-profit.)

ziotom78 8y ago

I am really happy for UC's choice! Sadly, this reminds me that recently Elsevier and CRUI (the association of Italian universities) sealed a 5-year-long deal [1], despite protests from the scientific community. [1] https://www.crui.it/archivio-notizie/i-ricercatori-italiani-potranno-beneficiare-dell%E2%80%99accesso-continuo-al-database-sciencedirect-di-elsevie.html https://www.crui.it/archivio-notizie/i-ricercatori-italiani-...

zwaps 8y ago

NICE Elsevier is really, really bad. At this point, I think they are already seeing the end and investors are trying to squeeze every last bit out of the publishing system before it finally collapses. Case in point: The extremely consumer (paying!) hostile actions they took after buying Mendeley.

Theodores 8y ago
> before it finally collapses. Nope, you are forgetting about China. China is where it is happening for Western scientific publishing enterprises. To get published in a Chinese journal is one thing, to get your paper published for the global audience is true icing on the cake. Elsevier and Springer can look at this little problem with UC and think 'meh!' - the travel to China and the conference scene there is much more fun anyway.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  That's why it was extra surprising that large Chinese funders have publicly declared support for Plan S, the coalition of funders forbidding researchers they fund from publishing in journals that do not go fully open access: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07659-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07659-5

aboutruby 8y ago

Also, usual reminder that Sci-Hub exists and has all the research papers available for free from any journal.

AlotOfReading 8y ago
Sci-Hub is great, but it absolutely does not have everything published. I try to keep up with the archaeology journals and maybe 1/3rd of papers I look for are available.
- thatcat 8y ago
  IIRC they download the paper as you enter the doi if it is not already in their catalogue; so does moscow library just not have subscriptions to the journals you're looking for or what?
  - tokai 8y ago
    Not all articles have dois.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Oh that's interesting. I search for stuff over a wide variety of fields, and find like 95%+ of what I search for. Some of it is so obscure I'm amazed they have it. Try libgen scientific articles, e.g. http://libgen.io/scimag/index.php?s=archaeology http://libgen.io/scimag/index.php?s=archaeology .. ALso you can search by journal number (or click on journal name) and all issues are shown in a table.
  - hyperbovine 8y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/ If you can't find it on Sci-Hub, chances are that a top-tier R1 does not have it either.
    - yesenadam 8y ago

gist 8y ago

> The prices of scientific journals now are so high that not a single university in the U.S. — not the University of California, not Harvard, no institution — can afford to subscribe to them all,” said Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, university librarian and economics professor at UC Berkeley What is the definition of 'afford'? Obviously Harvard (as only one example) with a huge billion dollar endowment can easily pay for the journals that are relevant. They just choose not to and think they don't receive value for what they pay. But they do spend money on many other things that some people would find to be wasteful and plenty of people and companies make money off those institutions. I am sure their employees are very well paid. I don't know why people have this tendency to freak out when a for profit company like Elsvier tries to make money. It's not like the 'non profit' colleges are some charity case they pay out plenty of money to various entities and people (for example I am sure they have enormous legal expenses as only one example) when they choose to do so.

natechols 8y ago
The problem is that they're making money off content they didn't produce, that taxpayers paid for in many cases, and they're actually preventing wide dissemination of research results. It's not like they're particularly good at their job either - I have yet to meet a scientist who actually enjoys interacting with journal publishers. They simply don't have a choice if they want to stay in an academic position.
- gist 8y ago
  That is called capitalism. By the way there are plenty of people that are making money off of what the government funded which of course was the arpanet and the internet.
yesenadam 8y ago
>"I don't know why people have this tendency to freak out when a for profit company like Elsvier tries to make money." That's an interesting sentence, the way you've framed that. People objecting are objecting to capitalism...and the whole natural order. "Elsevier is..just trying to do what it was created for, like a bird singing or the sun rising or a baby smiling, why is that such a problem? People are just freaking out! I don't know why."

padraic7a 8y ago

Bravo, UC well done.

buboard 8y ago

i wonder if the $5000 that the UC faculty will be paying for every articles they 'll publish in elsevier is going to make up for their lost profits.

colourlessgreen 8y ago
UCLA at least have been encouraging researchers to not review or publish in Elsevier https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Talks-With-Elsevier-UCLA/245311 https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Talks-With-Elsevier-UCL...

dannykwells 8y ago

I think this will be an important link to give context to this development: https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier/ https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/pub... - No matter what happens moving forward, UC scholars will still be able to use ScienceDirect to access most articles published prior to January 1, 2019 because UC has permanent access rights to them. (Please see the Alternative Access to Articles page for a list of titles to which UC does not have permanent access rights and for information on how to access items UC does not subscribe to.) - If access is disrupted at any point, the UC Libraries will still work with researchers to get them the articles they need through other means, such as interlibrary loan. - Our quick guide to alternative access provides an overview of the options available to UC researchers. ________ - If the negotiations are successful, UC’s proposed model will make it easier and more affordable for UC faculty to publish their work as open access in Elsevier journals. - No matter what happens, UC authors retain the right to publish in the journal of their choice. - By providing article processing charge (APC) support through the UC Libraries as well as an opt-out option, UC is working hard to ensure that authors have maximum flexibility in determining where and how they want to publish.

jrochkind1 8y ago
Looks like the content at that URL has changed very recently and no longer includes all that text. Here's an IA version that does.... https://web.archive.org/web/20190209202821/https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190209202821/https://osc.unive...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

chrispeel 8y ago

I'm a member of the IEEE, which I believe also has a problem. They charge authors to publish, then charge IEEE members to access the journals. All this while the reviewers and editors are working for free. At a bare minimum, they should make the journals open to all members. One way to cut costs is to stop printing paper journals. I'd love to hear what the UC system has to say about the IEEE.

brandonjm 8y ago
You can choose to publish open access conference papers through IEEE but you have to pay around $2000 (I forget if it was USD or AUD). I'm not sure about the exact costs for an open access Journal paper though. That said, IEEE don't prevent you from listing your own paper on your own website (in it's accepted form, not published form) provided you link the correct DOI and include the reference.
- scott_s 8y ago
  The ACM is similar, and I think (hope) they will eventually have to just open up all published papers by default. The main difference between the IEEE and the ACM to Elsevier is that the IEEE and ACM are professional organizations. They have a non-profit mission, whereas Elsevier is a for-profit company. I have no problem reviewing papers and serving on program committees when the organizing entity is a non-profit service organization. I think the the ACM and IEEE have a future in a fully open-access world, but Elsevier does not.
metaphor 8y ago
+1 here. For at least the past 5 years, I've been questioning the value of IEEE regular membership very hard. Marketing internally spams the Gmail inboxes paid for by dues; Spectrum is nothing more than a front for advertisements while members don't even have ad-free web access to its content; Xplore is a minimum $20/mo limited to an insulting 3 papers; standards are outrageously overpriced even with supposed "member discount". The only thing that has kept me around this long is an apparent misguided belief that the IEEE is the flagship organization catering to the interests of professional EEs, and I'm an EE, therefore I should retain membership. This will be my 10th year of membership...mostly on the campaign promises of Jose Moura[1] of CMU--who I voted for back in 2017 and is now President. I'm really hoping things do indeed change. I also hold lifetime membership with the ACM. Cost ~$4,000 out of pocket, but that buys indefinite access to digital library content. Sure, I could have Sci-Hub'd their papers, but I also recognize that the organization needs to be funded somehow, and their asking price for perceived value was within my budget. IEEE doesn't even have such an option, nor does its Computer Society. This criticism of SDOs[2] is definitely relevant to the meta of those professional organizations who merely claim to support the interests of its members. [1] https://www.josemoura.com https://www.josemoura.com [2] https://youtu.be/Sdm698P2AkA?t=88 https://youtu.be/Sdm698P2AkA?t=88

jjoonathan 8y ago

Obligatory reminder: Mendeley stores your watermarked pirated papers on Elsevier servers. Tread carefully.

SubiculumCode 8y ago
You can try using Zotero instead. Mendeley is just not that good, and Zotero is open source and excellent.
- tcpekin 8y ago
  This thread has convinced me to try to switch, but one thing that I love in Mendeley is the ability to watch a folder, and have any pdf in that folder automatically imported into my account, which then gets synced across devices. That, and the document detail lookup based on a manually input doi, which fixes author names etc. are the two sticking points. When I add a doi to a pdf in Zotero, there doesn't seem to be a way to look it up and import the relevant information to the file information in Zotero. Does anyone have any way around them?
  - SubiculumCode 8y ago
    https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_libra... Seems like you can import by doi. Zotero allows auto import from df, but suggest that pdf metadata tends to be less accurate than importing from the web directly using the Firefox web extension
    - tcpekin 8y ago
      Yeah, that doesn't help the huge collection of papers I already have. And I often find that the web extensions previously broke, haven't tried it recently. Just being able to download the pdf and have it auto watch a folder/import it to me is an almost completely necessary feature.

jrochkind1 8y ago

See UC's Office of Scholarly Communication's guide to "Alternative Access to Elsevier Articles." It looks like UC actually had a license which granted them perpetual licensing rights to most existing content? Or "post termination access rights" in the language of the post. https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/alternative-access-to-articles/ https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/pub...

jrochkind1 8y ago

Many (most?) German universities did this last June, here's a recent article from Nature (which may not be un-biased) on how it's working out. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00492-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00492-4

burtonator 8y ago

If you're interested other Elsevier shenanigans they now encrypt your PDFs that you add to Mendeley so you don't even have access to your OWN research. https://getpolarized.io/2019/01/23/mendeleys-encrypted-repository-is-fundamentally-anti-science.html https://getpolarized.io/2019/01/23/mendeleys-encrypted-repos...

dangom 8y ago
I've recently migrated from Mendeley to Zotero. I first had to downgrade Mendeley because recent releases also encrypt your local database to guarantee lock-in [1]. Quite scary. [1] https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import
- dr_coffee 8y ago
  Zotero has been great. I switched four years ago and never looked back. Plugin support is great- I have drag and drop support in my latex editor and fairly easy citation selection in Lyx
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    I love zotero, and would never switch to Mendeley because of the lock-in problem, but the lack of any mobile apps is a real problem. Reading and annotating on an iPad is a key ability, and the 3rd part PaperShip is buggy and no longer under development.
- btrettel 8y ago
  I've used Zotero regularly since 2012 or so. At the time I chose it because it integrated with Firefox, though I recall looking into Mendeley as well. If you use BibTeX or BibLaTeX I'd recommend the following extension: https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-better-bibtex https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-better-bibtex I'm very glad I never even tried Mendeley given the database encryption fiasco. Mendeley put a blog post out saying that preventing importing to Zotero was unintentional, but I don't buy it. https://blog.mendeley.com/2019/01/31/the-importance-of-interoperability/ https://blog.mendeley.com/2019/01/31/the-importance-of-inter... Before the database encryption fiasco, I would recommend Mendeley and Zotero if someone wanted a citation manager, but now I recommend staying away from Mendeley as much as possible. The only major problems I've had with Zotero were related to Firefox's switch to WebExtensions. Now adding a copy of a webpage to a citation is more difficult than before the switch, though probably equally difficult as in Mendeley.

not2b 8y ago

Hooray. This is a long-overdue step.

stevespang 8y ago

They all know that anybody can just go on Sci-Hub and get most research. My local city library offers several "legal" free access sites to published journals - - if you have 20 minutes to wade through all the ridiculous BS on the computer trying to discover if the article is even available. Sci Hub takes me 25 seconds and 85 to 90% of what I need is right there. (Be certain to donate !)

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
If I go through my library site, I have a good 70% chance of this happening: https://twitter.com/DannyBate4/status/1092132558937169922 https://twitter.com/DannyBate4/status/1092132558937169922

logjammin 8y ago

Proud UC employee here. Bravo.

peterwwillis 8y ago

Serious question: Why do any institutions pay any publisher at all? If everyone just published for free, nobody would need a subscription. What's the point of the publisher?

Vinnl 8y ago
But if not everybody publishes for free, you can only get access to those articles by paying the publishers. The follow-up question is: why do people keep publishing there? The answer to that is that funders and institutions use journal brand names as proxies for evaluating candidates for grants or tenure, so publishing your work in traditional pay-walled journals is good for your career despite making your work less accessible. The follow-up question to that is: why do funders and institutions use journal brand names as proxies? The answer to that may lie in [1], summarised by: there's not really a good alternative. (Full disclosure: I'm working on setting up such an alternative.) [1] https://theconversation.com/why-i-disagree-with-nobel-laureates-when-it-comes-to-career-advice-for-scientists-80079 https://theconversation.com/why-i-disagree-with-nobel-laurea...
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  Hold on, that's not my follow-up question. You've just said that some orgs publish in Elsevier because grants and tenure. Nobody needs to use them. And yet people do use them, fully aware what it will do to the research, because it helps them personally. My follow-up question is, why are people not mad at the funders and research labs who insist on publishing there? They're burying the research intentionally just to get a better job.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    > You've just said that some orgs publish in Elsevier because grants and tenure. Ah, sorry, I was unclear there. It's not organisations that publish somewhere, but researchers. And some people are mad at researchers for continuing to publish there, but I find it hard to fault them, because they would probably no longer be researchers if they didn't. People are also mad at funders for that, but it's hard for any individual funder to change that. For example, a coalition of primarily European funders is currently trying to change the incentives, and they get a lot of setbacks from European researchers who feel that when they get banned from publishing in paywalled journals, they will miss out on foreign career opportunities - which have become an almost required part of any academic career. (Note that it's not "just to get a better job". It's to have a job in academia at all. The field is very competitive. There's probably people who've taken a stand, but they're likely to have left academia.)

wanderfowl 8y ago

Here's hoping this is the asteroid to Elsevier's (and their business model's) dinosaur.

musicale 8y ago

Elsevier provides little value to scholars, editors, or universities However, it seems to be correcting the problem by heading resolutely toward oblivion.

Vinnl 8y ago
If they are, that's happening very slowly. Despite several prolific cancellations in the past year, they again posted nearly 40% profit margins.

gnulinux 8y ago

This is huge. University of California, hosting Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego among others, is indisputably one of the most prestigious university systems in the world and is widely regarded as the most prestigious public school. Them terminating their subscription of a major scientific journal sounds unreal. Let's see if this will start any change, but I'm very hopeful.

refurb 8y ago

I assume they won’t expect their professors to publish in pay journals? That open access papers are rated as highly as paid when determining promotions?

xvilka 8y ago

It reminds me that no lawful citizen should donate to SciHub. They even have a special link at the bottom of the main page for it!

openloop 8y ago

Maybe you should listen to Berkeley.

formatkaka 8y ago

aaron swartz would be happy !!

hilbert42 8y ago

"“Knowledge should not be accessible only to those who can pay,” said Robert May, chair of UC’s faculty Academic Senate. “The quest for full open access is essential if we are to truly uphold the mission of this university.” The Academic Senate issued a statement today endorsing UC’s position." An excellent decision by UC! This decision will likely cause some pain in the short-term but in the long-term those who want or need access to knowledge will be much better off. Access to knowledge via expensive journals has long been a problem for many primarily for reasons of expense and copyright. Whilst these barriers are obvious, some are less so. In the past access to knowledge via these journals worked to a degree as academic and professional institutions and university libraries usually provided access to them but only for those associated with said organizations—that effectively left many others locked out. Whilst not completely satisfactory, the distribution system worked, albeit very inefficiently. That meant that for some knowledge was readily accessible but for others it only slowly trickled out, effectively society as a whole had access but it was both sporadic and punctuated. However, in recent years several factors changed to make that already-inefficient distribution system untenable. First, there has been an explosion of new knowledge that has pushed the old distribution to straining point, then the development of the internet changed the paradigm completely: it both pushed the problems of copyright to the fore and showed up how slow and inefficient the old system was, and finally the middlemen opportunists had a field day—publishers like Elsevier effectively became knowledge monopolies and exploited the system to the point of breaking. There is no doubt the knowledge distribution system has become completely broken, one only has to look at the phenomenal success of Alexandra Elbakyan's pirate website Sci-Hub to come to that conclusion. In turn, staid universities and academics, etc.—those who publishers like Elsevier had already held to ransom for some considerable time—realized that Sci-Hub's success provided the opportunity to break free of the publishers' yokes. When it comes to the distribution of knowledge, it is difficult for one to over exaggerate how truly limiting and restrictive the publishers' copyright system is. Whilst copyright has always been a limiting factor in this area, it is especially so in this digital information age. Why it is so is a huge subject that I cannot address in detail here, suffice to say it covers a vast expanse: from monopolies on information, the high cost of textbooks to restrictions on the electronic concatenation of information and research databases through to AI processing of existing knowledge. In this area the misuse of copyright is immense. There is no doubt in my mind that the distribution system needs to be opened up and that open access is the route foreword. We have to applaud the University of California's decision to terminate subscriptions with Elsevier in its push for open access to publicly funded research. The aim for all published research ought to be for it to be fully open to everyone.

yzh 8y ago

https://openaccessmanifesto.wordpress.com/guerilla-open-access-manifesto/ https://openaccessmanifesto.wordpress.com/guerilla-open-acce... Aaron's manifesto is getting more and more relevant. He would be happy to see this!

0815test 8y ago

Good on ya, UC. Stick it to those dirty greedy double-dealing Dutch bstrds.

0815test 8y ago

Good on ya, UC. Hit those greedy, double-dealing, Dutch Elsevier bstrds where it hurts. Next target: Nature Pigs Group, the consortium of Anglo swne who have infested every area of research with their sitty journals. Of course, some of the blame goes to idjit academics who jump at the chance to publish in any NPG journal, even if it is named "Nature Enemas and Fecal Matter"

sctb 8y ago
If you won't comment civilly and substantively we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dguest 8y ago

I often wish large experiments would take a stronger stance on the supply end. At CERN we've worked out deals with publishers mandating that _our_ content be open access, even if the journal isn't. Personally I feel like this is buying into the system. As it stands I have to make political arguments about the value of open access research. I would rather tell my colleagues we can't publish in journal-X because it won't be accessible to as many people.

Causality1 8y ago

Using tax money to fund research and then not making the results open access is theft. Citizens should get what they pay for.

ahmad49 8y ago

awesome