On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Stevan Harnad <[email protected]> wrote:
** Cross-Posted **
On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
> On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 9:10 PM, Stevan Harnad
<[email protected]> 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.
Â
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.
Â
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.
Â
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.
Â
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
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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