[BOAI] Re: Elsevier updates it article-sharing policies, perspectives and services

[Stevan Harnad]

On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) <A.Wise at elsevier.com
> wrote:

> Hi Stevan –
>
>
>
> We continue to permit immediate self-archiving in an author’s
> institutional repository.  This is now true for all institutional
> repositories, not only those with which we have agreements or those that do
> not have mandates.
>

Hi again Alicia,

I am afraid you missed what I was pointing out:

The 2004 Elsevier OA self-archiving policy endorsed immediate-deposit *and
immediate (unembargoed) OA.*

The latest policy embargoes OA in institutional repositories.

You are using "self-archiving" ambiguously. No "permission" is needed to
deposit. What is at issue is *when the deposit can be made OA.*

Nor do institutional mandates to deposit have anything whatsoever to do
with anything. What is at issue is *when the deposit can be made OA.*

So, as I said in my prior posting, "Elsevier should state quite explicitly
that its latest revision of its policy on author OA self-archiving has
taken a very specific step backward from the policy first adopted in 2004
<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3771.html>."

You are correct that under our old policy, authors could post anywhere
> without an embargo if their institution didn’t have a mandate.
>

No, Elsevier's original 2004 policy (see below) made no mention of mandates
whatsoever (although there were a number of institutional and funder
mandates by that time).

Elsevier's attempt to create a link between the author's right to make the
final draft OA and their institution's OA policy was made in 2012
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/961-Some-Quaint-Elsevier-Tergiversation-on-Rights-Retention.html>,
after the prior Elsevier policy had been in effect for 8 years.

And then, as now, I maintained that the link with institutional OA policy
is absurd and meaningless, and authors should ignore it completely.

Our new policy is designed to be consistent and fair for everybody, and we
> believe it now reflects how the institutional repository landscape has
> evolved in the last 10+ years.
>

The current Elsevier policy now removes the absurd link with institutional
OA policy, which had been used as a pretext for embargoing OA. Elsevier
makes it "consistent" *by embargoing OA in all institutional repositories*,
whether or not they have an OA mandate.

In contrast, the equally absurd attempt to prevent Arxiv authors from
continuing to do what they have been doing since 1991 has now been dropped,
so unembargoed OA in Arxiv, previously "forbidden" (though authors have
been doing it uninterruptedly for nearly a quarter century) is now
offically "permitted" --  *i**n Arxiv but not in institutional repositories*
.

So neither consistency nor fairness is at issue -- quite the opposite. This
is back-pedalling from 2004 (and 2012) being disguised as consistency and
fairness, to make it look like a positive rather than a negative step.

 We require embargo periods because for subscription articles, an
> appropriate amount of time is needed for journals to deliver value to
> subscribing customers before the manuscript becomes available for free.
> Libraries understandably will not subscribe if the content is immediately
> available for free. Our sharing policy now reflects that reality.
>

Although there is still no objective evidence that OA self-archiving
reduces subscriptions, I am quite ready to believe that once all journal
articles (of all journal publishers) are accessible as immediate OA,
subscriptions will become unsustainable. That outcome is inevitable -- and
it will happen with or without OA mandates and with or without publisher OA
embargoes.

What Elsevier's OA policies are attempting to do is to delay the inevitable
for as long as possible, in order to sustain subscription revenue for as
long as possible, by embargoing OA.

Fine. There is a fundamental conflict of interest here, between what is
best for the publishing industry and what is best for the research
community, its institutions, its funders, and the tax-paying public that
funds the funders.

OA embargoes impede research. It's as simple as that. But they also sustain
subscription revenue. So *publishers are simply impeding research in order
to sustain subscription revenue.*

It would be nice if publishers stated that honestly, in justifying their
embargo policies, rather than trying to disguise it as trying to help
research and the research community in any way.

The attempt to embargo OA will of course fail -- although it will succeed
in slowing OA progress, as it has been doing so far.

What will undermine the attempts to sustain subscription revenue at all
costs will be the eventual realization by the research community that all
the essential functions of peer-reviewed journal publishing can be provided
at far, far lower cost to the research community than either subscription
fees or (today's) inflated Gold OA fees (which I have come to call "Fools
Gold").

And that is via "Fair-Gold" peer-review service fees, paid for out of a
fraction of institutions' windfall savings from cancelling all
subscriptions.

And what will make those subscription cancellations possible is exactly
what Elsevier and other publishers are trying to prevent, or at least delay
as long as possible, by embargoing it, namely universal, immediate,
unembargoed Green OA: precisely what the research community is trying to
mandate.

Harnad, S (2014) The only way to make inflated journal subscriptions
unsustainable: Mandate Green Open Access
<http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/>
. *LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog **4/28 *
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad
/


Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity
Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/>.
D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8)
<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july10/harnad/07harnad.html>.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/


Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B. &
Phillips, A (Eds.) *The Future of the Academic Journal*. Chandos.
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/265617/


Harnad, S. (1997) How to Fast-Forward Serials to the Inevitable and the
Optimal for Scholars and Scientists. *Serials Librarian* 30: 73-81.
(Reprinted in C. Christiansen & C. Leatham, Eds. *Pioneering New Serials
Frontiers: From Petroglyphs to CyberSerials*. NY: Haworth Press, and in
French translation as Comment Accelerer l'Ineluctable Evolution des Revues
Erudites
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Papers/Harnad/harnad97.revues.francais.html>
vers
la Solution Optimale pour les Chercheurs et la Recherche
<http://www.enssib.fr/eco-doc/harnadinteg.html> http://cogprints.org/1695/
The outcome is inevitable, and optimal (for the research community and the
public); the only part that is not predictable (because human rationality
is not always predictable) is how long publishers will succeed in delaying
the optimal and inevitable...

Best wishes,

Stevan


> With kind wishes,
>
>
>
> Alicia
>
>
>
> Dr Alicia Wise
>
> Director of Access and Policy
>
> Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB
>
> M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: a.wise at elsevier.com
>
> *Twitter: @wisealic*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Repositories discussion list [mailto:
> JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] *On Behalf Of *Stevan Harnad
> *Sent:* Friday, May 01, 2015 1:24 PM
> *To:* JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> *Subject:* Re: Elsevier updates it article-sharing policies, perspectives
> and services
>
>
>
>
>
> On May 1, 2015, at 7:30 AM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) <A.Wise at elsevier.com>
> wrote:
> Dear Stevan –
>
> Elsevier supports the need for researchers to share their research and
> collaborate effectively. In light of the recent STM consultation on the
> principles for article sharing,
> <http://www.stm-assoc.org/stm-consultations/scn-consultation-2015/> I
> wanted to reach out to you directly to let you know about some changes we
> are making which will enable Elsevier published content to be shared more
> widely. To underpin these efforts we have updated our approach – informed
> by very constructive input from institutions, authors and funders we work
> with - and are now launching new guidelines. I invite you to read our
> article hosting <https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/hosting/_nocache>
>  and article sharing
> <http://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-posting-policy> guidelines
> on Elsevier.com <http://elsevier.com/>.
>
> We have published an article on Elsevier Connect
> <http://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-updates-its-policies-perspectives-and-services-on-article-sharing>,
> our online communication platform to explain some further details behind
> the changes and the new technologies and exciting pilots we are deploying
> to facilitate sharing. As always, we welcome comments or suggestions, and
> are happy to discuss any questions or concerns.  Please do not hesitate to
> contact me.
>
> With very kind wishes,
>
> Alicia
>
> Key highlights
>
>    - We continue to support sharing of preprints, accepted manuscripts,
>    and final publications and provide simple guidelines for authors about how
>    they can share at each stage of their workflow.
>
>
>    - We are providing a range of options for researchers to share their
>    work publicly, including a newShare Links
>    <http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/share-link> service which
>    provides 50 days free access to the final article on ScienceDirect.
>
>
>    - We are making it clear that we want to work with hosting platforms,
>    such as institutional repositories, to make sharing easy and seamless for
>    researchers.  We will no longer require an agreement with institutional
>    repositories and instead clarify that self-archived accepted manuscripts
>    can be used under a CC-BY-NC-ND license and that they can be hosted and
>    shared privately during the embargo and publically shared after embargo.
>
>
>    - We are also providing a wider range of ways for researchers to share
>    their work privately during the journal’s embargo period, such as in
>    private workgroups on sites such as Mendeley and MyScienceWork.
>
>
> Dr Alicia Wise
> Director of Access and Policy
> Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB
> M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: a.wise at elsevier.com
>
> *Twitter: @wisealic*
>
>
>
> Dear Alicia,
>
>
>
> I've looked over the latest Elsevier revision of its policy on author OA
> self-archiving, as requested.
>
>
>
> The essential points of the latest policy revision are two:
>
>
>
> *I.* Elsevier still endorses both immediate-deposit and immediate-OA, for
> the pre-refereeing preprint, anywhere (author's institutional home page,
> author's institutional repository, Arxiv, etc.).
>
>
>
> *II.* Elsevier still endorses immediate-deposit and immediate-OA for the
> refereed postprint on the author's home page or in Arxiv, *but
> not immediate-OA in the author's institutional repository, where OA is
> embargoed.*
>
>
>
> You asked for my comments. Here they are:
>
>
>
> (1) Elsevier should state quite explicitly that its latest revision of its
> policy on author OA self-archiving has taken a very specific step backward
> from the policy first adopted in 2004
> <http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3771.html>:
>
>
>
> *An author may post his version of the final paper on his personal web
> site *
>
> *and on his institution's web site (including its institutional
> respository). *
>
> *Each posting should include the article's citation and a link to the *
>
> *journal's home page (or the article's DOI). The author does not need our *
>
> *permission to do this, but any other posting (e.g. to a repository *
>
> *elsewhere) would require our permission. By "his version" we are
> referring *
>
> *to his Word or Tex file, not a PDF or HTML downloaded from ScienceDirect
> - *
>
> *but the author can update his version to reflect changes made during the *
>
> *refereeing and editing process. Elsevier will continue to be the single, *
>
> *definitive archive for the formal published version. *
>
>
>
> Elsevier has withdrawn its endorsement of immediate-OA in the author's
> institutional repository. It's best not to try to conceal this in language
> that makes it sound as if Elsevier is taking positive steps in response to
> the demand for OA.
>
>
>
> (2) The distinction between the author's institutional home page and the
> author's institutional repository is completely arbitrary and empty. Almost
> no one consults either a home page or a repository directly. The deposits
> and links are simply *harvested* by Google and Google Scholar (and other
> harvesters), and that's where users search and retrieve them. (Hence all an
> institution need do is designate the institutional disk sector containing
> the author's publicatiosn in the "repository" to be part of the author's
> "home page.")
>
>
>
> (3) If an author (foolishly) decides to comply with an Elsevier OA
> embargo, there is the automated copy-request Button, with which the author
> can provide a copy almost-immediately, with one click from the requestor
> and one click from the author. (Elsevier's reputation is not enhanced by
> the fact that many users and authors will now have to do two extra clicks
> to get a copy, because Elsevier was not happy to let them do it with one
> click.)
>
>
>
> My advice is accordingly to go back to the original 2004 policy. You had
> it right the first time. The rest has only muddied Elsevier's reputation.
>
>
>
> With best wishes,
>
>
>
> Stevan
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane,
> Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084,
> Registered in England and Wales.
>
>
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