[GOAL] Elsevier as an open access publisher

[Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen)]

Fully agree. Let's not employ newspeak. Elsevier is the single most important obstacle to achieving and getting support for open access. Period. .

Jeroen Bosman
Utrecht University Library



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com>
Date: 13/01/2017 22:29 (GMT+01:00)
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] Elsevier as an open access publisher


On 13 January 2017 at 16:57, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>> wrote:
Elsevier is now one of the world’s largest open access publishers as measured by the number of fully OA journals published. What are the implications?

There are precisely no implications.

The number of journals is an utterly irrelevant measure, but I'm assuming you already knew this.
Journals are just vessels for content. It is actual content that is important.
Article volume is what counts in publishing (economically), and Elsevier are nowhere near the largest when it comes to immediate OA publishing.

Most of Elsevier's fully OA journals are recently created and are low-volume. They can create and close (e.g. https://www.journals.elsevier.com/new-negatives-in-plant-science/ ) journals at the click of button.

Perhaps though this is part of Elsevier's strategy - at a very very superficial level (e.g. counting journal titles) it looks like they are deeply invested in open access publishing. I hope no politicians or librarians are fooled by this simple ruse.


Sincerely,

Ross





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