[GOAL] Re: Update on statement against Elsevier's new "sharing" policy

Couture Marc marc.couture at teluq.ca
Thu Jun 4 21:03:15 BST 2015


Hi all,

Elsevier has a record of pretending to make its decisions (at least partly) in the interests of researchers, or research, and now repositories.

One example is the introduction of tagged manuscripts. I don’t really understand how it will work and what will be gained by authors or repositories if they use these instead of the usual author-supplied manuscripts, with metadata residing in the repository itself.

The new policy seems to imply that either the author-provided or the Elsevier-tagged manuscripts could be self-archived, but like much of the policy, it’s far from clear.

In this page (http://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-updates-its-policies-perspectives-and-services-on-article-sharing), it is stated that in order to help repositories “ensure self-archived accepted manuscripts can be made available in line with publisher’s hosting & posting policies”, Elsevier will be “taking steps to tag all manuscripts from the point of acceptance with key metadata”. And also this: “IRs will have access to the tagged manuscripts if an author self-archives.”

What I understand here is that these embedded metadata could be used by Elsevier to automatically, and more efficiently, monitor policy  compliance (notably embargo). Which they have certainly the right to do, by the way. The point is: do we have, or wish to work for them on this?

Finally, I suggest that you read the Comments section of  the above-cited page, especially Ms Wise’s answers, which are - how to say it - more to the point than what I’d been expected to find.

Marc Couture
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