Elsevier boycott: Time for librarians to rise up! : Confessions of a Science Librarian. A little while back the Cost of Knowledge site started up a boycott pledge list in response to mathematician Timothy Gowers’ pledge to stop contributing to Elsevier’s operations by ceasing writing, reviewing and editing for them. Here is the call to action: Academics have protested against Elsevier’s business practices for years with little effect. These are some of their objections: They charge exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions to individual journals.
In the light of these high prices, the only realistic option for many libraries is to agree to buy very large “bundles”, which will include many journals that those libraries do not actually want. Elsevier thus makes huge profits by exploiting the fact that some of their journals are essential. They support measures such as SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, that aim to restrict the free exchange of information.The key to all these issues is the right of authors to achieve easily-accessible distribution of their work. Why scientists are boycotting a publisher - Opinion. The Cost of Knowledge. 5,000 profs join boycott of Elsevier publications in international “academic spring” Elsevier have a right to price their journals as they see fit, but they must be honest in their reasoning and not attack boycotters with untruths. As an editor of an Elsevier-owned academic journal, Tim Leunig argues that he must expose those who speak falsely, including Elsevier’s CEO, who has claimed that critics of the publishing company are relying on ‘misunderstandings of fact’ to push an academic boycott.
I am managing director of an Elsevier journal, Explorations in Economic History. Recently, some 6000 global academics have decided to refuse to cooperate with Elsevier, citing its high-price policy. The chief executive of Reed Elsevier, Erik Engstrom, said that all objections “are based on misstatements or misunderstandings of the fact.” This is simply not correct.
In my field there are four major journals: the Economic History Review, the European Review of Economic History, Explorations in Economic History and the Journal of Economic History. As an individual it costs me £21 to subscribe to the Economic History Review, £23 to subscribe to the Journal of Economic History, and £30.50 for the European Review. What comes after the Elsevier boycott? The answer might be found by following the ‘Green’ road to open access. What is the next step for those boycotting Elsevier’s journals? Neil Stewart writes that one thing academics can do to bring about open access publishing immediately is to take the ‘Green’ road to open access and enjoy higher citations counts by placing their work in institutional repositories. The recently launched campaign to boycott publishing, editing and reviewing papers for any of Elsevier’s stable of journal titles, instigated by Tim Gowers, has been gathering steam over the last couple of weeks.
The campaign has received a great deal of publicity from some very prominent sources, and an eloquent explanation of why one academic chose to join the boycott was recently published on this blog. The issue of access (or the lack thereof) to scholarly research is being debated across the web as never before, with a number of prominent commentators arguing for open access to research. So what are likely to be the long term effects of the boycott? Elsevier : la première bataille. Enfin. Assez fourbi, assez gémi : on défouraille. Enfin. Après des années d’outrages patiemment endurés et de rodomontades piteusement ravalées en grommellements à l’heure de signer des contrats qui se ramenaient à des capitulations, cette fois la bataille est engagée, enfin.
Et non pas par les bibliothécaires, mais bien, et c’est ce qui rend la nouvelle tellement intéressante, par les chercheurs. C’est beaucoup plus dangereux pour l’éditeur, et infiniment plus réjouissant pour nous. Difficile de dire encore si ce sera la bataille de Londres ou celle de Stalingrad, le premier baroud d’honneur des résistants ou le premier désastre de l’ennemi… Mais comme jusqu’à présent c’est plutôt Münich ou les Bourgeois de Calais qui venaient à l’esprit, il y a déjà de quoi se réjouir sans arrière-pensée.
Des années durant, les scientifiques ont livré leurs articles bénévolement pour les faire racheter à prix d’or par leurs bibliothèques. La riposte n’a pas tardé. P.S. Imprimer ce billet. Elsevier under fire from American OA advocates. The Sheridan Libraries Blog » Background on the Elsevier Boycott. Background on the Elsevier Boycott If you’ve heard about the boycott of Elsevier, you may have a few questions about why this is happening. Below is an overview, followed by a boat-load of links. Don't hesitate to ask your librarian any questions you have about scholarly publishing. (Several JHU folks have signed the boycott. Only Elsevier? BackgroundSTEM academic publishing has been in a ferment for quite some time. RecentlyOSTP recently posted responses to a request for information about public access to scholarly publishing.
The Argument Here's the short version of the academics' argument. What keeps all the researchers from moving to the new Open Access publishing outlets like PLoS or BioMed Central? Links(I will try to keep these links updated. ShareThis About Robin Sinn Robin is a science librarian with a strong interest in scholarly communications. You are Elsevier: time to overcome our fears and kill subscription journals. Having spent a decade fighting the scientific publishing establishment, the last few weeks have been kind of fun.
Elsevier, the Dutch publishing conglomerate that has long served as the poster child for all that is wrong with the industry, has come under withering criticism for pushing legislation that would prevent the US government from making the results of taxpayer funded research available to the public. But amidst all this richly deserved opprobrium, we must not forget that Elsevier are in a position to behave so poorly because we let them. Publishers control the paywalls that restrict access to the scientific literature. But individual researchers control the fate of their own papers. And the only reason a paywall ever stands between anyone and a paper they want to read is because its authors chose to put it there. The scientific community could decide tomorrow to eliminate restrictions on access to the research literature.
I love how Kevin Zelnio puts it: What actually is Elsevier’s open-access licence? « Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week. Like many scholarly publishers that work primarily on the subscription model, Elsevier allows authors to opt in to open access by paying a fee, currently $3000. (While that’s more than twice the $1350 that PLoS ONE charges, it’s comparable to the $2900 that PLoS Biology charges, identical to Springer’s $3000 fee, and slightly less than Taylor & Francis’s “Open Select” fee of $3250.)
(By the way, Elsevier have rather a good policy in connection with this fee: “Authors can only select this option after receiving notification that their article has been accepted for publication. This prevents a potential conflict of interest where a journal would have a financial incentive to accept an article.”) But what are we actually allowed to do with Elsevier’s open-access articles? Can we re-use their figures? Is this true of Elsevier’s open-access articles?
I don’t know. No-one else seems to know what the licence is, either. Hiya Mike,If memory serves I tweeted this info to you a few days ago.