Hi all,
Stevan Harnad has helpfully summarized Elsevier's posting policy for accepted author manuscripts, but has left out a couple of really important elements. He is correct that all our authors can post voluntarily to their websites and institutional repositories. Posting is also fine where there is a requirement/mandate AND we have an agreement in place. We have a growing number of these agreements. An overview of our funding body agreements can be read here: www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/fundingbodyagreements . These agreements, for example, mean that we post to UKPMC for authors who receive funding from a number of funding agencies including the Wellcome Trust. We deposit manuscripts into PMC for NIH-funded authors. Posting in the arXiv is fine too. We are also piloting open access agreements with a growing number of institutions, including posting in institutional repositories. It is already clear that one size does not fit all institutions, and we are keen to continue learning, listening, and partnering. Our access policies can be read in full at www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/access_policies (health warning: they are written for those who really enjoy detail) and we've been working on a more friendly and succinct summary too (but this is still a work in progress). With kind wishes, Alicia Dr Alicia Wise Director of Universal Access Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB P: +44 (0)1865 843317 I M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: a.w...@elsevier.com I Twitter: @wisealic From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Peter Murray-Rust Sent: 13 May 2012 16:51 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum Subject: [GOAL] Re: Elsevier's query re: "positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized" On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Stevan Harnad <amscifo...@gmail.com> wrote: ** Cross-Posted ** On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm...@cam.ac.uk> wrote: > > On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 9:10 PM, Stevan Harnad <amscifo...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > > Stevan, > Could you please explain this clause? (This is my ignorance as I don't > publish with Elevier and so am unfamiliar with their author-side contracts). > Does it mean that Elsevier sometimes allows Green Open Access and sometimes don't? It means that Elsevier formally endorses its authors' right to make their final, peer-reviewed drafts Open Access immediately upon publication (no embargo) by posting them on their institutional website (Green Gratis OA) -- "but not in institutional repositories with mandates for systematic postings." It is exactly this sort of clause - usually badly written - that is widespread in publishers documents (if you can even find them). Just remember that *we* pay for their lawyers' salaries. The strategy is common and exemplified by Ross Mounce's work on licences. Make it complex and make it different from every other publisher. Never use a single community-agreed approach. If the publishers wanted to make it simple and professional it could have been done a decade ago. It's not hard. A protocol and licence saying what could/not be done in Green OA. What I worry about is that the publishers can change the rules whenever they feel like. They are quit capable of saying it's "Green" just as Wiley has done for highly paid "Fully Open Access" (not even as green as Stevan is asking for). The point is that these rules are made by people who don't care about scholarly publishing. The sooner we admit we are dealing with an industry every bit as lovable as bankers the sooner we'll put in place *our* rules and not theirs. The distinction between an institutional website and an institutional repository is bogus. Of course it is. Unless you are trying to appear helpful and trying not to be. The distinction between nonmandatory posting (allowed) and mandatory posting (not allowed) is arbitrary nonsense. ("You retain the right to post if you wish but not if you must!") Of course it is. It takes a highly paid marketeer to dream that up. The "systematic" criterion is also nonsense. (Systematic posting would be the institutional posting of all the articles in the journal; but any single institution only contributes a tiny, arbitrary fraction of the articles in any journal, just as any single author does; so the mandating institution would not be a 3rd-party "free-rider" on the journal's content: its researchers would simply be making their own articles OA, by posting them on their institutional website, exactly as described.) This "systematic" clause is hence pure FUD, designed to scare or bully or confuse institutions into not mandating posting, and authors into not complying with their institutional mandates. (There are also rumours that in confidential licensing negotiations with institutions, Elsevier has been trying to link bigger and better pricing deals to the institution's agreeing not to adopt a Green OA mandate.) That's why I raised it a few days ago. We are dealing with people many of whose staff have probably never seen a scholarly pub. Along with the majority of publishers today, Elsevier is a Green publisher: It has endorsed immediate (unembargoed) institutional Green OA posting by its authors ever since 27 May 2004: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3771.html But that is no a legally binding contract and that's the problem. Elsevier's public image is so bad today that rescinding its Green light to self-archive after almost a decade of mounting demand for OA is hardly a very attractive or viable option: http://cdn.anonfiles.com/1334923359479.pdf http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned And double-talk, smoke-screens and FUD are even less attractive: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/822-.html It will be very helpful in helping researchers to provide -- and their institutions and funders to mandate -- Open Access if Elsevier drops its "you may if you wish but not if you must" clause, which is not only incoherent, but intimidates authors. (This would also help counteract some of the rather bad press Elsevier has been getting lately...) I actually suspect that no-one reading this list has any power to change Elsevier policy - it's set at boardroom level by people who could be selling soap. -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069 Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084 (England and Wales).
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