Heather and others, Although I acknowledge the differences between these publishers, it is perhaps noteworthy that apparently Elsevier did find it (commercially, which includes reputation) wise to release mathematics backfiles for free, as you probably know: http://www.elsevier.com/physical-sciences/mathematics/archived-articles. I see no reason why that should be limited to the field of mathematics.
Best, Jeroen ------- Jeroen Bosman Utrecht University Library -----Original Message----- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison Sent: donderdag 30 april 2015 2:42 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Elsevier (and other traditional publishers) and PLOS Elsevier has much in common with Public Library of Science: both are scholarly publishing organizations, focused on science, and in my opinion both aggressively advocate sometimes for the best interests of scholarship, but often primarily for their own business interests. If policy-makers are aiming to help traditional publishers like Elsevier survive in an open access environment (a goal I am not sure we all agree on), then in formulating policies it is important to keep in mind some very basic differences. PLOS was born digital and open access and with a full commitment to open access. Traditional publishers like Elsevier have a legacy of works under copyright and a business model that involves selling rights to these works and integrated search services (rather a lot of money at that). In the case of Elsevier, this involves millions of works over a long period of time. Even if every single article Elsevier publishes from today on were open access, this would not impact previously published works. Unless I am missing something there is no business model for Elsevier to provide access to these previously published works free-of-charge. This means that traditional publishers like Elsevier are very likely to have to continue with a toll access business model even if they move forward with open access publishing. This is an essentially different environment from that of a full open access publisher like PLOS. It is not realistic to assume that a traditional publisher that must maintain a toll access environment will behave in the same way that born open access publishers do. PLOS was started from a commitment to providing works free-of-charge. Elsevier and publishers like Elsevier have thrived in a toll access environment, and will have to maintain a toll access environment. There will be far more pressure and incentive to revert to toll access for traditional publishers than for PLOS. This is why arguments along the lines that PLOS has been around for a while, therefore there are no problems with CC-BY, don't necessarily apply to a publisher like Elsevier. Elsevier, unlike PLOS, does have its own suite of value-added services such as Science Direct and Scopus. When friends of PLOS say there is no reason not to grant blanket commercial rights to anyone downstream, I think it is important to remember that this represents the perspective of one type of publisher. Other journals and publishers either provide value added services themselves, or receive revenue from providers of such services, e.g. payments from journal aggregators. Note that while Elsevier has no incentive to provide access to previously published works free-of-charge, they are a green publisher and so authors from recent years can make their works published with Elsevier freely available through institutional archives. This is one thing green open access can achieve right now that gold OA cannot. I'd like to acknowledge that Stevan Harnad has been right on this point for many, many years. I'm still signed on for the Elsevier boycott, in case anyone is wondering: http://thecostofknowledge.com/ best, -- Dr. Heather Morrison Assistant Professor École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies University of Ottawa http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ heather.morri...@uottawa.ca _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
