[GOAL] Re: Elsevier's query re: "positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized"

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 11:59 PM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) <
A.Wise at elsevier.com> wrote:

One of the dangers in this type of discussion is to confuse people with
organizations. Alicia is an employee of Elsevier and her role in "Universal
Access" - whatever than means - is ultimately to promote the profitability
of the company.

Which is what she is doing on this list. I won't impute her motives and I
can only guess at the corporate policy instructions she may or may not have
to adhere to. I also have no idea whether she has any power to change
anything - I suspect not. She has written about me:

> * *
>
> *Peter M-R *– You are frustrated by, and distrust, publishers.
>

I trust publishers about as much as I trust other organizations in parallel
markets. So I compare Elsevier to Microsoft and - yes - I trust Elsevier as
much as I trust Microsoft. They are out to dominate the market (nothing
immoral or illegal about that) and they use whatever business tools are
legal (and occasionally overstep - but most companies jut about obey the
law).

So yes, I generally trust Elsevier to obey the law and to maximize profits.

I've had 3 intense years with helpful employees of Elsevier - like Elsevier
- and I trust them to keep the discussion going, keep things complicated,
introduce delaying tactics, appeal to our better natures, etc. The last in
particular. We academics actually like to look for the good in others and
we don't like to cause problems. We're not actually very good at business -
in fact we are lousy. Which is why we have meaningless contracts with
publishers, and why we don't lobby in an an aggressive way.

Despite this it may still be more practical to work with us to evolve the
> current system into one more to your liking than to create a completely new
> one.
>

15 years of more under Elsevier hegemony doesn't excite me for another 15.


>   Either way we agree absolutely that content mining is essential to
> advance science, but perhaps will need to agree to disagree (at least for
> the time being) about the best tactics to enable this to happen more
> broadly.
>

Yes - I want it to happen know and you - quite rightly for your
shareholders - want to delay and obfuscate and trivialise and Balkanise.
That's what any good company would do in your position. The main trouble is
that up to now it's been possible to do this behind the scenes with
confidential contracts with librarians. I'm not keen on that and I intend -
in so far as individuals can do it - to make sure that this is as public an
issue a possible.

I'll be writing about some of this on my blog over the new few days.

****
>
> ** **
>
>
-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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