[GOAL] Re: Elsevier is taking down papers from Academia.edu

[Graham Triggs]

On 10 December 2013 13:05, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> There is a general point: the Elsevier site(s) are riddled with Open
> Access inconsistencies. I have discovered at least:
>
> * open access articles behind paywalls
> * articles advertised as open access but not labelled anywhere
> * (private correspondence) articles paid for as open access but never
> posted as such  (espite correspondence by authors)
> * articles without any statement of open access (IMO both the HTML and PDF
> should have clear statements)
>

The question is whether these are honest mistakes, system failures, or
something more deliberate.

Occasionally, things are going to go wrong - especially when you are
talking about options (e.g. as in a hybrid journal) rather than a blanket
policy across a journal or publisher.

However, they would still represent a breach of the contract that was
agreed when the article was published. Which would mean two things:

1) The publisher should act quickly to comply with the terms of the contract

2) Compensation could be due to the injured party(ies)

Which ought to mean refunding the author a portion of their APC (maybe
1/365th for each day or part day that it is closed access). And refunding
anyone who paid to have access to the article.


> * articles with conflicting messages (CC-BY and "All rights reserved")
>

Copyright vs distribution / usage licence. These aren't really conflicting
- in fact, it's only through asserting copyright that you can provide a CC
licence. The reader is [still] granted the rights that have been reserved
through copyright.

There are other serious deficiencies:
> * the licence is often many pages down the paper (e.g. just before the
> references and very difficult to locate). It must be on the visible section
> of page 0.
> * the Rightslink is seriously broken.
>

These are standards issues - or rather, that there is enough room for
variability in what is legally required to actually make this difficult for
users. So in order to make things easier, the industry should agree some
standards that they will comply with.

G
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