9 ms·

Elsevier steps up its War On Access

172 points by anu_gupta 13y ago

snrip 13y ago
This reads as being very butt-hurt that somebody else chooses not to give away their core business. It is cool that you see profit as something obscene, but don't blame others for making a business. Same goes for sending takedown notices. If you are technically in breach, you are in breach. If you don't want to do business with Elsevier, that is fine. If you don't want others to do so, that is fine too. This is just being sad.
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  Nope. Elsevier's core business is coordinating reviews of papers - for which submitters pay a fee and for which the participating reviewers don't get paid - and then typesetting the articles using a special sauce and hosting it behind a paywall. A pre-print of an article typeset using LaTeX on the academic's own machine is not under their copyright, and yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines. They are overreaching, and now they're alienating universities (who pay handsomely for site-wide subscriptions). I don't give them long, even if they do publish Physica A.
  - zvrba 13y ago
    > yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines. When you agree to the copyright form, you also agree that you won't systematically distribute preprints or submit them to a systematic distribution service. In comparison with other publishers, Elsevier is rather generous to allow authors to post a preprint on their personal web-page (whether or not it is served by their university.)
    - tehwalrus 13y ago
      "When you agree to the copyright form" => presumably this is different for every publisher. My only pre-print (hosted on arXiv) was submitted there long before it was accepted for publication in a non-Elsevier journal, who have made no attempt to take it down. There are also open access journals which explicitly allow you to host your own pre-prints.
    - Luc 13y ago
      Generous is an unreasonable word to use in this context. Their profit margins though, those are generous. "Elsevier made $1.1 billion in profit in 2010 for a profit margin of 36%." https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/publishers-and-the-mit-faculty-open-access-policy/elsevier-fact-sheet/ https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-acc...
      - res0nat0r 13y ago
        Isn't this a website about startups and business? What is wrong with a healthy profit margin that is made by legal willing contracts between Elsevier and scientists? Just because they make money and are involved with copyright they are automatically bad? If they were barely making any money and closer to broke startup founders, then they would be OK?
        Luc 13y ago
        It's a sign their profit is not just from the service they provide, which is really rather simple, but from a historically grown, entrenched system that is very hard to get rid of. They're basically a tax on society, and we'd be much better off if authors and their institutions made a clean break.
        fphhotchips 13y ago
        No, they're bad because the majority of their product (that is, knowledge) isn't developed by them, or paid for by them. Instead, it's funded by universities and funding agencies. It's a parasitic relationship with very little benefit to the host.
        jjoonathan 13y ago
        40% profit margins do not exist for long in properly functioning competitive markets. Deeply entrenched companies typically run at 10%. Monopolies (example: drug companies) run at 20% (arguably in the case of drug companies this is ok because they operate with much higher risk). If you find a 40% margin that can't be ascribed to transient behavior, you have found a market that has entered one of the (many) modes of market failure, in which the usual arguments for markets being a force for good (or least evil) go out the window. We use markets precisely because they tend to avoid situations like this; it baffles me how frequently the "market did it so it must be good" argument rears its head every time there's an exception. It's circular reasoning, at least for those of us who don't take the moral infallibility of the free-market as an article of faith. Specifically, they are not "automatically bad" because they make money using copyright. They are bad because they've found a loophole that lets them monopolize a critical distribution channel for taxpayer-funded research, and they're milking the shit out of it at enormous cost to taxpayers and students. Broke startup founders do not get to appropriate tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded work and hold it hostage from those who have paid for it, and if they did it would not be OK.
    - danieldk 13y ago
      In comparison with other publishers, Elsevier is rather generous to allow authors They are absolutely not generous. In my field, the ACL is one of the largest organisations, which publishes (among other things) two journals. Nearly (or all?) publications are publicly available at: http://aclweb.org/anthology/ http://aclweb.org/anthology/ Let's not forget that a substantial share of research worldwide is paid for by tax payers. It's awful to see that most of that knowledge does not become generally available to the larger public, but ends up being used to increase the profits of an oligopoly.
    - scott_s 13y ago
      Both the ACM and the IEEE allow authors to post the final version on their personal website, or the website of their institution. Of course, the ACM and IEEE are professional organizations, not for-profit publishers. So they can actually move away from the pay-per-access model and still continue to exist. I don't see how for-profit publishers can.
      - Fomite 13y ago
        One of the problems is the number of professional organizations who use a for-profit publisher for their journal's output.
  - roel_v 13y ago
    "A pre-print of an article typeset using LaTeX on the academic's own machine is not under their copyright, and yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines." I have no position in this battle, but misinformation is misinformation: who has copyright on pre-prints is entirely immaterial. Authors, in order to get published in an Elsevier journal, 1) promise they didn't publish it before (with exceptions) and 2) promise not to redistribute the final paper or its preparatory versions after it has been published. They also agree to not allow anyone else to redistribute any of that in case, through whatever channel, it gets out. So this is purely a matter of Elsevier holding the author to their end of the bargain. Said author is entirely free to not enter into it in the first place, of course.
    - danieldk 13y ago
      Said author is entirely free to not enter into it in the first place, of course. In some fields it's not that free. The choice between publishing in a high-impact Elsevier journal or a low-impact journal with acceptable terms is not really a choice if you want to have a career in science.
      - LambdaAlmighty 13y ago
        Wrong, the authors do have a choice. Many choices, in fact. Including & not limited to: raising awareness of Elsevier's reprehensible practices, writing blogs, commenting on online forums. Lobbying various institutions. Not signing an explicit contract with Elsevier? Definitely a choice. "Society made me do it" is always a pathetic excuse.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        camelite 13y ago
        You must have missed the second part of his sentence. It begins with "if".
    - Kliment 13y ago
  - chalst 13y ago
    Elsevier does not coordinate refereeing for typical journals; this is handled by the scientific board, who are not Elsevier employees. Elsevier is in charge of copy-editing, typesetting, and distribution, and coordinates with the scientific board.
  - maccard 13y ago
    >and yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines. In the contract you sign, it's clearly stated you can't upload your manuscript to 3rd party distribution sites, other than arxiv. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not keen on what they're doing, but they're staying within their contracts.
- Kliment 13y ago
  That's bullshit though. The authors retain copyright over their work, and have always had the right to distribute their papers on their personal websites. It's part of the deal. Now the assholes are changing the deal after the fact, and trying to use threats to get the people producing actual value to play along. If, as an author, I was okay with the rest of their evildoing before this, and accepted the deal as it stood, I no longer have any reason to trust them to honor any other agreement.
  - zvrba 13y ago
    > had the right to distribute their papers on their personal websites Elsevier allows you to post the preprint, but not the final published version (which includes Elsevier's typesetting, logo, etc.)
    - Kliment 13y ago
      I'd REALLY love to see a court decide on whether adding their logo and running it through a script is a transformation substantial enough to warrant copyright as a separate work.
      - roel_v 13y ago
        That is entirely besides the point. This is a contractual matter, not copyright.
        Kliment 13y ago
        The contract states that there is no transfer of copyright, yet the assholes attempt to enforce copyright against the authors, while acting, effectively, as their agents. See the problem?
        zvrba 13y ago
        It states no such thing. In fact, the website clearly states exactly the opposite, in "normal" (i.e., not legalese) language: "For subscription articles: These rights are determined by a copyright transfer, where authors retain scholarly rights to post and use their articles." http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities#author-use http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re...
- namespace 13y ago
  Why is the use of term "butt-hurt" on increase on HN? Does this lend weight in any meaningful way and not leave a bad taste in mouth.
  - aaren 13y ago
    I'm not even sure what it explicitly means. I interpret it as 'miffed' or 'vindictively annoyed', but I don't really know.
    - brazzy 13y ago
      Here you go: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/butthurt http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/butthurt
- brazzy 13y ago
  The thing is: Elsevier is a middle-man whose "business" (parasitism, more like) critically depends on exactly two things: scientists who want to be published in their journals, and Universities who want access to those journals. The second one of these is annoyed enough to find alternatives, there is no business. Which makes it very, very unwise to piss off both at the same time. Science publishers served a purpose in the past, but the cost of what they're doing has gone down dramatically and at the same time they're jacking up prices to absurd levels to extract the maximum profit from the pseudo-monopoly resulting from the non-fungibility of science results and magnified by aggregation. And the worst thing is that they extract these profits at the expense of everyone else because it actually reduces the accessibility of scientific research and the profits are paid for from science budgets. It's the perfect example of an entire industry whose activity is a net negative for society at large.
  - hwh 13y ago
    In fact, in this case they tried not to "piss off" both at the same time and in fact concentrated on the university, not the individual scientist. The university just tried to communicate its pressure to it scientists, but it's a long and hard road to get them to care (some then already do!).
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      Nope, it's quite a short route. You delist Elsevier publications fromt he impact index you calculate for measuring their productivity, and they'll intantly care. Universities are pissed off Elsevier when buying their material, but completely in love when hiring researchers, and also wondering why researchers don't seem to get what they feel about the matter.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
zvrba 13y ago
When you agree to publish with Elsevier, you sign a contract where you agree not to publish the final version of the article on-line. Many (most?) Elsevier journals DO permit you to post the so-called "author's manuscript" if you also include the appropriate disclaimer. (Whether this is permitted is also written in the contract you sign.) For example: http://zvrba.net/writings/fusion.pdf http://zvrba.net/writings/fusion.pdf In that light, I don't think Elsevier is the worst among bad guys. For example, you're also permitted to upload the unreviewed version to arxiv before submitting it to journal. Some other journals will outright reject the article because of its "prior publication".
- mrstew 13y ago
  Yeah, that was my first thought too. It's a shock because people are used to uploading their papers in final published form but I don't think it's a crazy thing for Elsevier to do. We should take the opportunity to tell authors to upload author copies into their institutional repositories. That's do far more for open access than complaining about how evil Elsevier is.
  - jboynyc 13y ago
    Also, encourage institutions to set up repositories. They're not yet as common as your comment implies.
  - zvrba 13y ago
    > It's a shock because people are used to uploading their papers in final published form How common is this? Aren't people used to reading what they're agreeing to before they sign a contract? Because: > but I don't think it's a crazy thing for Elsevier to do I don't think that either. Elsevier _clearly_ defines the terms ("accepted author's manuscript", "final published version", etc.) in their contract and clearly states what you're allowed to do with each one. For example, click on the "Author posting" tab on this link: http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities#author-use http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re... I'm not a fan of the big publishers, I'd be very happy if all journals became open access overnight, but the original article is on a witch-hunt on Elsevier and they didn't even fully check the facts first.
dcc1 13y ago
Pretty much most of elsevier works are available on pirate sites, all they are doing is harassing their customers by this stage and further alienating them.
- hwh 13y ago
  The general availability on the "black" market is a problem, though. It makes authors easier with a status quo that is perceived as really, really bad by those who pay the bills. While information providers in academia (mostly still called "libraries") struggle with their budgets, being forced to discontinue some journals and are at a point where they would love to communicate their pressure to the scientists (who decide upon where they publish, with good reasons) - they cannot quite get the point through. Scientists established their own information providing ways, being it Twitter (asking their collegues for their own means) or Libgen and folks. And you could - as a scientist - always drop the author a personal inquiry in the worst case. Nevertheless, the libraries are expected to buy it by enough parties that are left out in the black market game. It's a pretty skewed market. Disclosure: I work at a library that has to buy journals and struggles with budget for this (as probably all libraries do).
matthewmacleod 13y ago
I thought Elsevier was already doing all it could to alienate the authors who freely donate their work to shore up the corporation’s obscene profits. This is not a statement that I would expect to see in a well-balanced post containing sensible discussion about the pressing requirement for more open access. The full details on author rights are publicly available on Elsevier's site at http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re... - and as far as I'm aware, their current round of legal threats doesn't contradict that. Open access is REALLY, REALLY important to the future of science, but we won't get anywhere by misrepresenting the current state of affairs.
- Timmmmbob 13y ago
  It's correct though. Authors donate their work freely. Reviewers work for free. I believe even editorial boards work for free. I'm not sure about that though. All Elsevier has to do is hassle people for reviews and run a website. Hardly difficult. They only survive because of the insane network effects of journal publishing.
logfromblammo 13y ago
As I see it, the authors must retain all their copyrights, because any valid transfer of copyright would entail valuable consideration from Elsevier to the author. The authors pay Elsevier to coordinate peer review and publish using their brand names. This necessarily includes granting a license to Elsevier to copy and distribute the author's work. Now, there may be other contract terms that are not obvious. One such term may be that the author not publish the work himself. The worst that could happen here is breach of contract. Since the only up-front consideration was from the author, this just means that Elsevier doesn't need to do what the author paid them to do, while still keeping the consideration of cash plus copyright license. It's sole remedy is to not coordinate peer review and not publish. Since it ALSO charges fees on that end, it has no reason to do that. There must be a quid pro quo in a lawful contract. You can't bind someone to its terms unless you give them some valuable thing in return. Elsevier gives NOTHING to the author except the promise of publication and distribution. You can never prevent the author from making his own copies, ever. Your sole remedy is to write a penalty for doing so into the contract, but then you would have to PAY the author something to enforce it. Elsevier does not give the authors anything, therefore they cannot demand performance under the contract. The only thing they can do is use one of those restrictive terms to weasel out of their own obligations under the contract while still keeping what the author gave them. They are absolutely in the wrong by demanding people take down their own work. (I am not a lawyer.)
- simonster 13y ago
  As ridiculous as it sounds, many journals, including Elsevier journals, require you to transfer copyright of your article to them. See http://cdn.elsevier.com/promis_misc/phcgj_copyright_form.pdf http://cdn.elsevier.com/promis_misc/phcgj_copyright_form.pdf for one example.
  - logfromblammo 13y ago
    That's ridiculous. It's not even funny. I can't imagine how such a contract could stand up in court if contested, unless Elsevier actually paid the owner of the copyright something. If a contract does not involve an exchange of value between the parties, but instead appears to be a one-sided transfer, a judge might strike it down as unconscionable. If the contract were voided in this way, instead of breached, Elsevier would have to give back everything it got from the author. If you paid for it, even one penny, that sale is much easier to defend in court. But they don't pay. They charge at both ends.
CurtMonash 13y ago
I'm confused -- does Elsevier let you post your own articles on your own website (university-sponsored or otherwise)? If it does, then Elsevier isn't exactly suppressing the free dissemination of research. The answer probably lies in the meaning of the third checkmarked item on http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re..., which says the following is allowed: Sharing individual articles with colleagues for their research use (also known as 'scholarly sharing')
- aroch 13y ago
  As far as I know (I'm not a lawyer, but I do academic research), that third checkmark means we can share our papers within our staff group and with collaborators without them necessarily subscribing to Elsevier. We cannot however publicly make available our published manuscripts, thus we're forced to list citations + doi's even if the manuscript should be read by everyone
- jahewson 13y ago
  Elsevier's T&Cs say that for preprint (i.e. draft copies) of an article "voluntary posting on open web sites operated by author or author's institution for scholarly purposes" is permitted.
  - xerophtye 13y ago
    Random question, is there a Diff requirement between a draft and a final copy? What if there's only a difference of a few grammatical errors between published version and the one before that? Would the researcher be allowed to publish that "nearly-complete" copy of the paper?
gwu78 13y ago
Maybe as this racket dies, slowly we'll see tuition fees drop accordingly. But I'm not holding my breath. I always thought a significant share of my tuition payments must have been allocated to cover overpriced library subscriptions. I would go so far as to say these publishers indirectly make university more expensive; because the absurdly high cost of the subscriptions must surely passed on to students.
alanh 13y ago
I know 90%+ of the HN crowd sides, with good reason, against Elsevier, but I’d like us to not use the word “war” unless there is mutual, systematic murder between enemies. War is a terrible thing. We shouldn’t water down our only real word for it by applying it too loosely.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Your argument is against the English language rather than HN. "War" has been used to describe things other than "mutual, systematic murder between enemies" as long as the word has existed. Complaining about using the word "war" when not actually talking about murder is like complaining about using the phrase "I see" to say "I understand."
  - alanh 13y ago
    I’m not arguing “against English” or “against HN;” I’m arguing against diluting the power of one specific word. You are, of course, free to disagree.
    - kazagistar 13y ago
      His argument was that you seem to be under the impression that this dilution has not already happened long ago, which is clearly false. He is not diluting the word war: you are just trying to restrict its usage for some reason. Look at the definition, which reflects usage today: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war
thearn4 13y ago
Mathematician here. Time for another boycott?

172 points by anu_gupta 13y ago

snrip 13y ago

This reads as being very butt-hurt that somebody else chooses not to give away their core business. It is cool that you see profit as something obscene, but don't blame others for making a business. Same goes for sending takedown notices. If you are technically in breach, you are in breach. If you don't want to do business with Elsevier, that is fine. If you don't want others to do so, that is fine too. This is just being sad.

tehwalrus 13y ago
Nope. Elsevier's core business is coordinating reviews of papers - for which submitters pay a fee and for which the participating reviewers don't get paid - and then typesetting the articles using a special sauce and hosting it behind a paywall. A pre-print of an article typeset using LaTeX on the academic's own machine is not under their copyright, and yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines. They are overreaching, and now they're alienating universities (who pay handsomely for site-wide subscriptions). I don't give them long, even if they do publish Physica A.
- zvrba 13y ago
  > yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines. When you agree to the copyright form, you also agree that you won't systematically distribute preprints or submit them to a systematic distribution service. In comparison with other publishers, Elsevier is rather generous to allow authors to post a preprint on their personal web-page (whether or not it is served by their university.)
  - tehwalrus 13y ago
    "When you agree to the copyright form" => presumably this is different for every publisher. My only pre-print (hosted on arXiv) was submitted there long before it was accepted for publication in a non-Elsevier journal, who have made no attempt to take it down. There are also open access journals which explicitly allow you to host your own pre-prints.
  - Luc 13y ago
    Generous is an unreasonable word to use in this context. Their profit margins though, those are generous. "Elsevier made $1.1 billion in profit in 2010 for a profit margin of 36%." https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/publishers-and-the-mit-faculty-open-access-policy/elsevier-fact-sheet/ https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-acc...
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      Isn't this a website about startups and business? What is wrong with a healthy profit margin that is made by legal willing contracts between Elsevier and scientists? Just because they make money and are involved with copyright they are automatically bad? If they were barely making any money and closer to broke startup founders, then they would be OK?
      - Luc 13y ago
        It's a sign their profit is not just from the service they provide, which is really rather simple, but from a historically grown, entrenched system that is very hard to get rid of. They're basically a tax on society, and we'd be much better off if authors and their institutions made a clean break.
      - fphhotchips 13y ago
        No, they're bad because the majority of their product (that is, knowledge) isn't developed by them, or paid for by them. Instead, it's funded by universities and funding agencies. It's a parasitic relationship with very little benefit to the host.
      - jjoonathan 13y ago
        40% profit margins do not exist for long in properly functioning competitive markets. Deeply entrenched companies typically run at 10%. Monopolies (example: drug companies) run at 20% (arguably in the case of drug companies this is ok because they operate with much higher risk). If you find a 40% margin that can't be ascribed to transient behavior, you have found a market that has entered one of the (many) modes of market failure, in which the usual arguments for markets being a force for good (or least evil) go out the window. We use markets precisely because they tend to avoid situations like this; it baffles me how frequently the "market did it so it must be good" argument rears its head every time there's an exception. It's circular reasoning, at least for those of us who don't take the moral infallibility of the free-market as an article of faith. Specifically, they are not "automatically bad" because they make money using copyright. They are bad because they've found a loophole that lets them monopolize a critical distribution channel for taxpayer-funded research, and they're milking the shit out of it at enormous cost to taxpayers and students. Broke startup founders do not get to appropriate tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded work and hold it hostage from those who have paid for it, and if they did it would not be OK.
  - danieldk 13y ago
    In comparison with other publishers, Elsevier is rather generous to allow authors They are absolutely not generous. In my field, the ACL is one of the largest organisations, which publishes (among other things) two journals. Nearly (or all?) publications are publicly available at: http://aclweb.org/anthology/ http://aclweb.org/anthology/ Let's not forget that a substantial share of research worldwide is paid for by tax payers. It's awful to see that most of that knowledge does not become generally available to the larger public, but ends up being used to increase the profits of an oligopoly.
  - scott_s 13y ago
    Both the ACM and the IEEE allow authors to post the final version on their personal website, or the website of their institution. Of course, the ACM and IEEE are professional organizations, not for-profit publishers. So they can actually move away from the pay-per-access model and still continue to exist. I don't see how for-profit publishers can.
    - Fomite 13y ago
      One of the problems is the number of professional organizations who use a for-profit publisher for their journal's output.
- roel_v 13y ago
  "A pre-print of an article typeset using LaTeX on the academic's own machine is not under their copyright, and yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines." I have no position in this battle, but misinformation is misinformation: who has copyright on pre-prints is entirely immaterial. Authors, in order to get published in an Elsevier journal, 1) promise they didn't publish it before (with exceptions) and 2) promise not to redistribute the final paper or its preparatory versions after it has been published. They also agree to not allow anyone else to redistribute any of that in case, through whatever channel, it gets out. So this is purely a matter of Elsevier holding the author to their end of the bargain. Said author is entirely free to not enter into it in the first place, of course.
  - danieldk 13y ago
    Said author is entirely free to not enter into it in the first place, of course. In some fields it's not that free. The choice between publishing in a high-impact Elsevier journal or a low-impact journal with acceptable terms is not really a choice if you want to have a career in science.
    - LambdaAlmighty 13y ago
      Wrong, the authors do have a choice. Many choices, in fact. Including & not limited to: raising awareness of Elsevier's reprehensible practices, writing blogs, commenting on online forums. Lobbying various institutions. Not signing an explicit contract with Elsevier? Definitely a choice. "Society made me do it" is always a pathetic excuse.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - camelite 13y ago
        You must have missed the second part of his sentence. It begins with "if".
  - Kliment 13y ago
- chalst 13y ago
  Elsevier does not coordinate refereeing for typical journals; this is handled by the scientific board, who are not Elsevier employees. Elsevier is in charge of copy-editing, typesetting, and distribution, and coordinates with the scientific board.
- maccard 13y ago
  >and yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines. In the contract you sign, it's clearly stated you can't upload your manuscript to 3rd party distribution sites, other than arxiv. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not keen on what they're doing, but they're staying within their contracts.
Kliment 13y ago
That's bullshit though. The authors retain copyright over their work, and have always had the right to distribute their papers on their personal websites. It's part of the deal. Now the assholes are changing the deal after the fact, and trying to use threats to get the people producing actual value to play along. If, as an author, I was okay with the rest of their evildoing before this, and accepted the deal as it stood, I no longer have any reason to trust them to honor any other agreement.
- zvrba 13y ago
  > had the right to distribute their papers on their personal websites Elsevier allows you to post the preprint, but not the final published version (which includes Elsevier's typesetting, logo, etc.)
  - Kliment 13y ago
    I'd REALLY love to see a court decide on whether adding their logo and running it through a script is a transformation substantial enough to warrant copyright as a separate work.
    - roel_v 13y ago
      That is entirely besides the point. This is a contractual matter, not copyright.
      - Kliment 13y ago
        The contract states that there is no transfer of copyright, yet the assholes attempt to enforce copyright against the authors, while acting, effectively, as their agents. See the problem?
        zvrba 13y ago
        It states no such thing. In fact, the website clearly states exactly the opposite, in "normal" (i.e., not legalese) language: "For subscription articles: These rights are determined by a copyright transfer, where authors retain scholarly rights to post and use their articles." http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities#author-use http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re...
namespace 13y ago
Why is the use of term "butt-hurt" on increase on HN? Does this lend weight in any meaningful way and not leave a bad taste in mouth.
- aaren 13y ago
  I'm not even sure what it explicitly means. I interpret it as 'miffed' or 'vindictively annoyed', but I don't really know.
  - brazzy 13y ago
    Here you go: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/butthurt http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/butthurt
brazzy 13y ago
The thing is: Elsevier is a middle-man whose "business" (parasitism, more like) critically depends on exactly two things: scientists who want to be published in their journals, and Universities who want access to those journals. The second one of these is annoyed enough to find alternatives, there is no business. Which makes it very, very unwise to piss off both at the same time. Science publishers served a purpose in the past, but the cost of what they're doing has gone down dramatically and at the same time they're jacking up prices to absurd levels to extract the maximum profit from the pseudo-monopoly resulting from the non-fungibility of science results and magnified by aggregation. And the worst thing is that they extract these profits at the expense of everyone else because it actually reduces the accessibility of scientific research and the profits are paid for from science budgets. It's the perfect example of an entire industry whose activity is a net negative for society at large.
- hwh 13y ago
  In fact, in this case they tried not to "piss off" both at the same time and in fact concentrated on the university, not the individual scientist. The university just tried to communicate its pressure to it scientists, but it's a long and hard road to get them to care (some then already do!).
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Nope, it's quite a short route. You delist Elsevier publications fromt he impact index you calculate for measuring their productivity, and they'll intantly care. Universities are pissed off Elsevier when buying their material, but completely in love when hiring researchers, and also wondering why researchers don't seem to get what they feel about the matter.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

zvrba 13y ago

When you agree to publish with Elsevier, you sign a contract where you agree not to publish the final version of the article on-line. Many (most?) Elsevier journals DO permit you to post the so-called "author's manuscript" if you also include the appropriate disclaimer. (Whether this is permitted is also written in the contract you sign.) For example: http://zvrba.net/writings/fusion.pdf http://zvrba.net/writings/fusion.pdf In that light, I don't think Elsevier is the worst among bad guys. For example, you're also permitted to upload the unreviewed version to arxiv before submitting it to journal. Some other journals will outright reject the article because of its "prior publication".

mrstew 13y ago
Yeah, that was my first thought too. It's a shock because people are used to uploading their papers in final published form but I don't think it's a crazy thing for Elsevier to do. We should take the opportunity to tell authors to upload author copies into their institutional repositories. That's do far more for open access than complaining about how evil Elsevier is.
- jboynyc 13y ago
  Also, encourage institutions to set up repositories. They're not yet as common as your comment implies.
- zvrba 13y ago
  > It's a shock because people are used to uploading their papers in final published form How common is this? Aren't people used to reading what they're agreeing to before they sign a contract? Because: > but I don't think it's a crazy thing for Elsevier to do I don't think that either. Elsevier _clearly_ defines the terms ("accepted author's manuscript", "final published version", etc.) in their contract and clearly states what you're allowed to do with each one. For example, click on the "Author posting" tab on this link: http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities#author-use http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re... I'm not a fan of the big publishers, I'd be very happy if all journals became open access overnight, but the original article is on a witch-hunt on Elsevier and they didn't even fully check the facts first.

dcc1 13y ago

Pretty much most of elsevier works are available on pirate sites, all they are doing is harassing their customers by this stage and further alienating them.

hwh 13y ago
The general availability on the "black" market is a problem, though. It makes authors easier with a status quo that is perceived as really, really bad by those who pay the bills. While information providers in academia (mostly still called "libraries") struggle with their budgets, being forced to discontinue some journals and are at a point where they would love to communicate their pressure to the scientists (who decide upon where they publish, with good reasons) - they cannot quite get the point through. Scientists established their own information providing ways, being it Twitter (asking their collegues for their own means) or Libgen and folks. And you could - as a scientist - always drop the author a personal inquiry in the worst case. Nevertheless, the libraries are expected to buy it by enough parties that are left out in the black market game. It's a pretty skewed market. Disclosure: I work at a library that has to buy journals and struggles with budget for this (as probably all libraries do).

matthewmacleod 13y ago

I thought Elsevier was already doing all it could to alienate the authors who freely donate their work to shore up the corporation’s obscene profits. This is not a statement that I would expect to see in a well-balanced post containing sensible discussion about the pressing requirement for more open access. The full details on author rights are publicly available on Elsevier's site at http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re... - and as far as I'm aware, their current round of legal threats doesn't contradict that. Open access is REALLY, REALLY important to the future of science, but we won't get anywhere by misrepresenting the current state of affairs.

Timmmmbob 13y ago
It's correct though. Authors donate their work freely. Reviewers work for free. I believe even editorial boards work for free. I'm not sure about that though. All Elsevier has to do is hassle people for reviews and run a website. Hardly difficult. They only survive because of the insane network effects of journal publishing.

logfromblammo 13y ago

As I see it, the authors must retain all their copyrights, because any valid transfer of copyright would entail valuable consideration from Elsevier to the author. The authors pay Elsevier to coordinate peer review and publish using their brand names. This necessarily includes granting a license to Elsevier to copy and distribute the author's work. Now, there may be other contract terms that are not obvious. One such term may be that the author not publish the work himself. The worst that could happen here is breach of contract. Since the only up-front consideration was from the author, this just means that Elsevier doesn't need to do what the author paid them to do, while still keeping the consideration of cash plus copyright license. It's sole remedy is to not coordinate peer review and not publish. Since it ALSO charges fees on that end, it has no reason to do that. There must be a quid pro quo in a lawful contract. You can't bind someone to its terms unless you give them some valuable thing in return. Elsevier gives NOTHING to the author except the promise of publication and distribution. You can never prevent the author from making his own copies, ever. Your sole remedy is to write a penalty for doing so into the contract, but then you would have to PAY the author something to enforce it. Elsevier does not give the authors anything, therefore they cannot demand performance under the contract. The only thing they can do is use one of those restrictive terms to weasel out of their own obligations under the contract while still keeping what the author gave them. They are absolutely in the wrong by demanding people take down their own work. (I am not a lawyer.)

simonster 13y ago
As ridiculous as it sounds, many journals, including Elsevier journals, require you to transfer copyright of your article to them. See http://cdn.elsevier.com/promis_misc/phcgj_copyright_form.pdf http://cdn.elsevier.com/promis_misc/phcgj_copyright_form.pdf for one example.
- logfromblammo 13y ago
  That's ridiculous. It's not even funny. I can't imagine how such a contract could stand up in court if contested, unless Elsevier actually paid the owner of the copyright something. If a contract does not involve an exchange of value between the parties, but instead appears to be a one-sided transfer, a judge might strike it down as unconscionable. If the contract were voided in this way, instead of breached, Elsevier would have to give back everything it got from the author. If you paid for it, even one penny, that sale is much easier to defend in court. But they don't pay. They charge at both ends.

CurtMonash 13y ago

I'm confused -- does Elsevier let you post your own articles on your own website (university-sponsored or otherwise)? If it does, then Elsevier isn't exactly suppressing the free dissemination of research. The answer probably lies in the meaning of the third checkmarked item on http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re..., which says the following is allowed: Sharing individual articles with colleagues for their research use (also known as 'scholarly sharing')

aroch 13y ago
As far as I know (I'm not a lawyer, but I do academic research), that third checkmark means we can share our papers within our staff group and with collaborators without them necessarily subscribing to Elsevier. We cannot however publicly make available our published manuscripts, thus we're forced to list citations + doi's even if the manuscript should be read by everyone
jahewson 13y ago
Elsevier's T&Cs say that for preprint (i.e. draft copies) of an article "voluntary posting on open web sites operated by author or author's institution for scholarly purposes" is permitted.
- xerophtye 13y ago
  Random question, is there a Diff requirement between a draft and a final copy? What if there's only a difference of a few grammatical errors between published version and the one before that? Would the researcher be allowed to publish that "nearly-complete" copy of the paper?

gwu78 13y ago

Maybe as this racket dies, slowly we'll see tuition fees drop accordingly. But I'm not holding my breath. I always thought a significant share of my tuition payments must have been allocated to cover overpriced library subscriptions. I would go so far as to say these publishers indirectly make university more expensive; because the absurdly high cost of the subscriptions must surely passed on to students.

alanh 13y ago

I know 90%+ of the HN crowd sides, with good reason, against Elsevier, but I’d like us to not use the word “war” unless there is mutual, systematic murder between enemies. War is a terrible thing. We shouldn’t water down our only real word for it by applying it too loosely.

pessimizer 13y ago
Your argument is against the English language rather than HN. "War" has been used to describe things other than "mutual, systematic murder between enemies" as long as the word has existed. Complaining about using the word "war" when not actually talking about murder is like complaining about using the phrase "I see" to say "I understand."
- alanh 13y ago
  I’m not arguing “against English” or “against HN;” I’m arguing against diluting the power of one specific word. You are, of course, free to disagree.
  - kazagistar 13y ago
    His argument was that you seem to be under the impression that this dilution has not already happened long ago, which is clearly false. He is not diluting the word war: you are just trying to restrict its usage for some reason. Look at the definition, which reflects usage today: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/war

thearn4 13y ago

Mathematician here. Time for another boycott?