[GOAL] Elsevier Takedown Of Green Openaccess

[Peter Murray-Rust]

In a blog post
http://svpow.com/2013/12/17/elsevier-steps-up-its-war-on-access/
Mike Taylor reports that

The University of Calgary <http://www.ucalgary.com/> has just sent this
notice to all staff:

The University of Calgary has been contacted by a company representing the
publisher, Elsevier Reed, regarding certain Elsevier journal articles
posted on our publicly accessible university web pages. We have been
provided with examples of these articles and reviewed the situation.
Elsevier has put the University of Calgary on notice that these publicly
posted Elsevier journal articles are an infringement of Elsevier Reed’s
copyright and must be taken down.

We are now in the position - which many of us foresaw many years ago - that
if Green Open Access started to hurt publishers they would arbitrarily
close it down or otherwise make it difficult.

Green OA is not a right, nor a contractual agreement and can be withdrawn
at any time. The danger for the publisher is bad publicity but this seems
to be a weak constraint.

Others may debate why Elsevier has done this - maybe the papers aren't on
the right web pages, maybe the University has a mandate (which invalidates
Green OA as far as Elsevier is concerned), maybe it's a foulup , maybe...

The simple truth is that this is the end of the road for many of us. We are
not working with publishers, we are fighting them.

Open Access is about justice.

This is not.


-- 
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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