[BOAI] SocArXiv debuts, as SSRN acquisition comes under scrutiny

[Richard Poynder]

The arrival of a new preprint server for the social sciences called SocArXiv
comes just a month after news that Elsevier is acquiring the Social Science
Research Network (SSRN), a preprint repository and online community founded
in 1994 by two researchers. 

 

Given the concern and disappointment expressed over the SSRN purchase by
researchers, it is no surprise that the launch of SocArXiv has been very
well received. Still smarting from Elsevier's 2013 acquisition of Mendeley -
another formerly independent service for managing and sharing scholarly
papers - many (especially OA advocates) were appalled to hear that the
publisher has bought a second OA asset. The reasons for this were
encapsulated in a blog post by University of Iowa law professor Paul Gowder
entitled "SSRN has been captured by the enemy of open knowledge".

 

This concern has also attracted the attention of the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) which has launched a review of the SSRN purchase. The FTC
is currently contacting many institutions and experts in scholarly
publishing to assess the implications of the acquisition, presumably in
order to decide whether it needs to intervene in some way.

 

Elsevier is understandably keen to downplay the interest the US government
is showing in its latest acquisition. "The Federal Trade Commission is
conducting a routine, informal review of our acquisition of the Social
Sciences Research network," vice president and head of global corporate
relations at Elsevier Tom Reller emailed me. "Elsevier's interest in SSRN is
and has been about SSRNs' ethos, a place where it is free to upload, and
free to download. We are working cooperatively with the FTC, and believe
that the review will conclude favourably."

 

In other words, Elsevier does not believe the FTC's interest in its purchase
will lead to a formal investigation.

 

But however timely SocArXiv's launch may be, the service is not a response
to the SSRN acquisition, the director of the new service, and professor of
sociology at the University of Maryland, Philip Cohen assured me. "We were
already in planning before we heard about the SSRN purchase."

 

More here:
http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/socarxiv-debuts-as-ssrn-acquisition.ht
ml

 

 

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