[GOAL] Re: Hybrid Open Access

Tue Dec 17 21:04:07 GMT 2013

I flagged this up to Elsevier about 5 months ago.

I would agree that they could be in violation of trading laws as they are
asserting rights over free material and charging for it.  I don't know
whether the trading standards office would be able to deal with it - we
might have to make purchases.

>From my observations it has happened frequently with Elsevier (see my
blog). I have no idea whether my examples I pointed out have been corrected.

There is a more general problem in that many publishers charge for CC-NC
articles. It is unclear which categories can be legitimately charged for. I
note that Elsevier journals such as Cell Reports have a very high
proportion of CC-NC(-ND) on the basis that authors choose it (in the same
way that 10 year olds choose burgers and sweets). I was sent an example
today of an editor who was being urged by Elsevier to make her journal
CC-NC. as it would protect authors.

Proponents of CC-NC should realize that this licence directly gives a
monopoly for exploitation to the publisher - the author is irrelevant.

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 8:22 PM, Graham Triggs <grahamtriggs at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks for that Robert.
>
> Interestingly, the Rightslink page also claims that the article is
> Copyright Elesvier. Which it isn't - the copyright is held with the authors
> (which is only clear when you download the PDF).
>
> That means on Rightslink, aside from the licence not requiring re-use
> rights to be purchased, the page is making false and misleading statements
> about the item in question. I would say that is breaking UK law, and
> presumably other regions too.
>
> I would suggest that Elsevier needs to urgently review how this is
> advertised and/or it's relationship with CCC on the basis of that evidence.
>
> Although I suspect a lot of this comes from blanket rules in place for an
> entire serial with CCC, and a lot of these problems could at least be
> mitigated by ScienceDirect:
>
> a) being clear about copyright and licencing in the HTML page, as well as
> the PDF
>
> b) not providing links to Rightslink for CC-BY articles, where this is
> clearly unnecessary.
>
> G
>
>
> On 17 December 2013 16:30, Kiley, Robert <r.kiley at wellcome.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>  Laura
>>
>>
>>
>> It is not difficult to find an example of RightLink (and probably others)
>> quoting re-use fees for CC-BY articles.
>>
>>
>>
>> Let me give you an example.
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0898656813002489 is an
>> article funded by Wellcome, and made available under a CC-BY licence.  This
>> is made clear at ScienceDirect (albeit in a footnote).
>>
>>
>>
>> However, if you follow the link to “Gets rights and content” you get
>> redirected to the Rightslink site where there is a form you can complete to
>> get a quick quote for re-use.  So, for arguments sake I selected that I
>> wanted to use this single article:
>>
>>
>>
>> ·         In a CD-ROM/DVD
>>
>> ·         I was a pharmaceutical company
>>
>> ·         I wanted to make 12000 copies
>>
>> ·         And translate it into two languages
>>
>>
>>
>> ..and RightsLink gave me a “quick price” of 375,438.35 GBP [I love the
>> accuracy of this price.]
>>
>>
>>
>> Of course for a CC-BY article, there is no need for anyone to pay
>> anything to use this content. Attribution is all that is required.
>>
>>
>>
>> I don’t know what would have happened if I had continued with the
>> transaction, but I hope that a user would not really end up getting charged.
>>
>>
>>
>> As the CC-BY licence information is in the ScienceDirect metadata I’m not
>> sure why RightsLink can’t “read “ this and for whatever use the user
>> selects, the fee is calculated to be £0.00.  Better still would be for
>> CC-BY articles NOT to contain a link to RightsLink.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Robert
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] *On
>> Behalf Of *Laura Quilter
>> *Sent:* 17 December 2013 14:53
>> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
>> *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: Hybrid Open Access
>>
>>
>>
>> Can you clarify regarding instances of CCC RightsLink demanding payments
>> for OA reuse?  I'd really like to know details.
>>
>>
>>   ----------------------------------
>> Laura Markstein Quilter / lquilter at lquilter.net
>>
>> *Attorney, Geek, Militant Librarian, Teacher *
>> Copyright and Information Policy Librarian
>> University of Massachusetts, Amherst
>> lquilter at library.umass.edu
>>
>> Lecturer, Simmons College, GSLIS
>> laura.quilter at simmons.edu
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 6:08 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Moving the discussion to a new title...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:16 AM, David Prosser <david.prosser at rluk.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> What my paper missed and what may have been obvious at the time, but
>> which I only saw with hindsight, were the biggest problems with the model:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1. There is little incentive for the publisher to set a competitive APC.
>>  It is clear that in most cases APCs for hybrids are higher than APCs for
>> born-OA journals.  But as the hybrid is gaining the majority of its revenue
>> from subscriptions why set a lower APC - if any author wants to pay it then
>> it is just a bonus.  Of course, this helps explains the low take-up rate
>> for OA in most hybrid journals - why pay a hight fee when you can get
>> published in that journal for free?  And if you really want OA then best go
>> to a born-OA journal which is cheaper and may well be of comparable quality.
>>
>>
>>
>> 2. There is little pressure on the publisher to reduce subscription
>> prices.  Of course, everybody says 'we don't double dip', but this is
>> almost impossible to verify and  from a subscriber's point of view very
>> difficult to police.  I don't know of any institution, for example, in a
>> multi-year big deal who has received a rebate based on OA hybrid content.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>   There are several other concerns about "hybrid":
>>
>> * the unacceptable labelling and licensing of many TA publishers. Many
>> hybrid papers are not identified as OA of any sort, others are labelled
>> with confusing words "Free content". Many do not have licences, some have
>> incompatible rights.
>>
>> * many are linked to RightsLink which demand payment (often huge) for
>> Open Access reuse
>>
>> * many deliberately use Non-BOAI compliant licences. One editor mailed me
>> today and said the the publisher was urging them to use NC-ND as it
>> protected authors from exploitation.
>>
>> * they are not easily discoverable. I mailed the Director of Universal
>> Access at Elsevier asking for a complete list of OA articles and she
>> couldn't give it to me. I had to use some complex database query - I have
>> no idea how reliable that was.
>>
>> Leaving aside the costing of hybrid, if someone has paid for Open Access
>> then it should be:
>>
>> * clearly licensed on splash page, HTML, and PDFs.
>>
>> * the XML should be available
>>
>> * there should be a complete list of all OA articles from that publisher.
>>
>> Currently I am indexing and extracting facts from PLoSONE and BMC on a
>> daily basis. Each of these does exactly what I need:
>>
>> * lists all new articles every day
>>
>> * has a complete list of all articles ever published
>>
>> * collaborates with scientists like me to make it easy to iterate over
>> all the content.
>>
>> It is easy to get the impression that TA publishers don't care about
>> these issues. BMC and PLoS (and the OASPAs) do it properly - an honest
>> product.
>>
>> Any publisher who wishes to be respected for their OA offerings has to do
>> the minimum of what I list here:
>>
>> * CC-BY
>>
>> * list of all articles
>>
>> * easy machine iteration and retrieval.
>>
>> Anything else is holding back progress
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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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-- 
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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