[GOAL] Elsevier selling access to open access articles... again

Mon Feb 20 21:39:32 GMT 2017

Hi Alicia,

I am rather confused about a statement you made two days ago on this list.

After I posted about a Wellcome Trust paid-for "open access" article that
was paywalled and was being sold by Elsevier at the journal
*Mitochondrion,* two
days ago you sent a message to this list saying (and this is a direct
quote):

"We’ve gone through the system, this is the only article affected."

source:
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/2017-February/004378.html

*Can you then please explain to me why just hours after you made this
statement on behalf of Elsevier, that I was able to purchase access to an
article that the Wellcome Trust paid Elsevier £5,280 to make open access
back in 2012?* The article is by Feasey et al (2012) "Invasive
non-typhoidal salmonella disease: an emerging and neglected tropical
disease in Africa" and is still on sale as of now at ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673611617522

I'm struggling to understand how this could be?

First of all, £5,280 is an incredibly high sum just to turn-off a paywall
and keep it off.
Secondly, I read from LinkedIn that Elsevier has over 7,000 employees, and
from your own company documents that Elsevier has an annual turnover for
the STM division of over £2 billion per annum, with a profit margin of
roughly 34%.

Given the size and rude financial health of the company, how can Elsevier
have such a broken and incompetent hybrid open access system? How come
Elsevier's "system" evidently doesn't faithfully track which articles
should be open access and which articles should be behind a paywall?

To me it seems that Elsevier is utterly incompetent at hybrid open access,
and that *a full independent audit is urgently needed of your pay-per-view
sales because you evidently don't seem to be able to accurately self-report
the extent of your problems*.

Please respond to my questions as soon as possible, on this public mailing
list.

Sincerely,

Ross

PS For those interested I provide more background about this issue here:
http://rossmounce.co.uk/2017/02/20/hybrid-open-access-is-unreliable/

On 18 February 2017 at 00:03, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) <A.Wise at elsevier.com>
wrote:

> Hi Ross, this has taken a little time to bottom out but indeed the article
> should be OA. In 2013 you may recall we initiated an exercise to
> add/correct and generally clean up OA license information on articles.
> This article was part of that exercise, and a little unusual: we had
> invoiced the author, and then the institution wanted to receive the invoice
> but in a different currency, so the original  article invoice was unpaid
> during the cleaning exercise.
>
>
>
> Our normal practice is to publish articles OA, but to move them back
> behind the firewall if after a grace period the invoice remains unpaid.  So
> it was picked up as an article with an unpaid APC and moved behind the
> firewall.  We’ve gone through the system, this is the only article
> affected. There’s nothing malicious about what happened here, and we’ll be
> reimbursing the institution’s APC, and your PPV charge.  We will also run a
> check to see if anyone else paid PPV for this article and if so reimburse
> them as well.
>
>
>
> With best wishes,
>
> Alicia
>
>
>
> Dr Alicia Wise
>
> Director of Access and Policy
>
> Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB
>
> M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 <07823%20536826> I E: a.wise at elsevier.com
>
> *Twitter: @wisealic*
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)
> *Sent:* 15 February 2017 18:22
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org>
> *Cc:* Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) <A.Wise at elsevier.com>
> *Subject:* RE: [GOAL] Elsevier selling access to open access articles...
> again
>
>
>
> Ross – we are looking into this, but an initial glance at the article
> suggests that the author first decided to publish gold OA and then decided
> against it.  We’ll have a little look to make sure all the metadata is
> correct.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Alicia
>
>
>
> Dr Alicia Wise
>
> Director of Access and Policy
>
> Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB
>
> M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 <07823%20536826> I E: a.wise at elsevier.com
>
> *Twitter: @wisealic*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org
> <goal-bounces at eprints.org>] *On Behalf Of *Ross Mounce
> *Sent:* 15 February 2017 08:06
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org>
> *Subject:* [GOAL] Elsevier selling access to open access articles... again
>
>
>
> Elsevier have a documented track record of selling access to articles that
> should be open access.
>
>
>
> It is with sadness that I report here that they appear to be doing this
> again in 2017:
>
> http://rossmounce.co.uk/2017/02/14/elsevier-selling-access-
> to-open-access-again/
>
>
>
>
>
> As a reminder, they were caught doing this in:
>
>
>
> 2014:
>
> https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/elsevier-bumps-on-road-to-
> open-access/2012238.article
>
>
>
> and
>
>
>
> 2015:
>
> http://rossmounce.co.uk/2015/03/06/elsevier-illegally-sold-
> me-a-creative-commons-non-commercial-licensed-article/
>
>
>
> and
>
>
>
> 2016:
>
> https://twitter.com/RaoOfPhysics/status/740811591084576768
>
>
>
>
>
> Can someone please remind me why we allow researchers to publish hybrid
> open access at Elsevier? For such a large company, and the large sums of
> money paid in the form of hybrid APCs it is simply astonishing that
> Elsevier can't seem to get this right.
>
>
>
> If you know of any other sources of information about articles that have
> been paid-for to be open access at Elsevier journals (aside from Wellcome
> Trust data), please let me know. I and others will do our best to check
> that these articles are actually open access, not for sale behind an
> expensive paywall.
>
>
>
> Happy Valentine's Day,
>
>
>
> Ross
>
>
>
> --
>
> --
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
> Ross Mounce, PhD
>
> Software Sustainability Institute Fellow 2016
> Dept. of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge
> www.rossmounce.co.uk <http://rossmounce.co.uk/>
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane,
> Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084,
> Registered in England and Wales.
>
> _______________________________________________
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> GOAL at eprints.org
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>
>

-- 
-- 
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Ross Mounce, PhD
Software Sustainability Institute Fellow 2016
Dept. of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge
www.rossmounce.co.uk <http://rossmounce.co.uk/>
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
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