Many thanks to Peter! Just in case you didn’t know who Dezenhall is (I didn’t): Scientific American, January, 26, 2007 Open Access to Science Under Attack<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/open-access-to-science-un/>
And for the NY Times reference: it looks like being behind a paywall, but the wall is very low. If you use Firefox, just activate “reader view”. Best Serge Bauin De : Peter Murray-Rust <pm...@cam.ac.uk<mailto:pm...@cam.ac.uk>> Répondre à : Global List <goal@eprints.org<mailto:goal@eprints.org>> Date : Tue, 31 Mar 2020 19:36:57 +0100 À : Global List <goal@eprints.org<mailto:goal@eprints.org>> Objet : Re: [GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge Sorry that this has become confrontational, but I think it's important that we are not drawn into this idea that Elsevier is part of a community. It is not. It is a ruthless commercial organization which, over the 15 years I have had to deal with it has tried every trick in the book to make it difficult or impossible to use scientific knowledge as we would wish. Lobbying governments to make science closed, obfuscating permissions, bullying graduate students, publishing fake journals, hiring Dezenhall to discredit the Open Access movement, lobbying against Text and Data Mining unless they control it, keeping 50-year old paywalls up, making researchers take down papers from repositories. I can provide documentation for all my assertions, but I have more important things to do. On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 5:38 PM Éric Archambault <eric.archamba...@science-metrix.com<mailto:eric.archamba...@science-metrix.com>> wrote: Peter, ... There are people in these organizations and insulting us at the personal level doesn't help creating the sense of community we all need to fight this bug. There is time for theory, other for actions. I did not insult you. I was careful to avoid ad hominem remarks. However in reverse I have been publicly insulted some years back on Twitter by an Elsevier Director who called me "pompous" and that his role was to take me down a peg. Communities exist by mutual trust, mutual respect and where necessary being humble enough to listen to others and adopt their ideas. Elsevier staff/directors have frequently attempted to imply they are our friends, they are there to help, they are part of a community. They are not. They are as much a part of my community as my energy provider or car insurance. It is true that we need to work as a community to tackle COVID-19. We are doing that. Elsevier are not. As an example I take the article: >>> A serological survey on viral haemorrhagic fevers in liberia Author: J. Knobloch,E.J. Albiez,H. Schmitz Publication: Annales de l'Institut Pasteur. Virologie Publisher: Elsevier Date: 1982 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0769-2617(82)80028-2 Copyright © 1982 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS <<< This paper, 38 years old gave a clear prediction that Ebola could break out in West Africa "Liberia should be included in the Ebola endemic zone". It was paywalled by Elsevier and the Liberian government complained that if they had known of its contents they cold have taken countermeasures. See NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/opinion/yes-we-were-warned-about-ebola.html This paper is key in understanding how signals for viral epidemics can occur in the literature years before the outbreak (34 years in fact). I am sure there are similar signals about COVID in the scientific literature hidden behind paywalls. Yet the Ebola paper STILL costs 35 USD , and Elsevier still charge exorbitantly for its use in teaching. Put it into RightsLink which will charge you 300 USD as an academic for permission to teach 100 students and 500 if you are an NGO in a French country. This is not "community". If you wish to be seen as part of a community you have to earn it. After 25 years of active opposition to everything the Open community is trying to do, that will be very hard. As a minimum I would expect you to make every article on every subject on every date openly accessible to the whole world for any purpose. 50 million or whatever you control. Not "while the epidemic lasts" (as you did for Ebola and closed articles), But for ever. That would take courage and I'd applaud. But nothing less will do. Peter. -- "I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same". Peter Murray-Rust Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069 _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto: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
