[GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge

[Peter Murray-Rust]

Sorry that this has become confrontational, but I think it's important that
we are not drawn into this idea that Elsevier is part of a community. It is
not. It is a ruthless commercial organization which, over the 15 years I
have had to deal with it has tried every trick in the book to make it
difficult or impossible to use scientific knowledge as we would wish.
Lobbying governments to make science closed, obfuscating permissions,
bullying graduate students, publishing fake journals, hiring Dezenhall to
discredit the Open Access movement, lobbying against Text and Data Mining
unless they control it, keeping 50-year old paywalls up, making researchers
take down papers from repositories.
I can provide documentation for all my assertions, but I have more
important things to do.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 5:38 PM Éric Archambault <
eric.archambault at science-metrix.com> wrote:

> Peter, ...
>
>  There are people in these organizations and insulting us at the personal
> level doesn't help creating the sense of community we all need to fight
> this bug. There is time for theory, other for actions.
>

I did not insult you. I was careful to avoid ad hominem remarks. However in
reverse I have been publicly insulted some years back on Twitter by an
Elsevier Director who called me "pompous" and that his role was to take me
down a peg.

Communities exist by mutual trust, mutual respect and where necessary being
humble enough to listen to others and adopt their ideas.  Elsevier
staff/directors have frequently attempted to imply they are our friends,
they are there to help, they are part of a community. They are not. They
are as much a part of my community as my energy provider or car insurance.

It is true that we need to work as a community to tackle COVID-19. We are
doing that. Elsevier are not. As an example I take the article:
>>>

A serological survey on viral haemorrhagic fevers in liberia
*Author: *

J. Knobloch,E.J. Albiez,H. Schmitz
*Publication: *

Annales de l'Institut Pasteur. Virologie
*Publisher:*

Elsevier
*Date:*

1982
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0769-2617(82)80028-2

Copyright © 1982 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS
<<<

This paper, 38 years old gave a clear prediction that Ebola could break out
in West Africa "Liberia should be included in the Ebola endemic zone". It
was paywalled by Elsevier and the Liberian government complained that if
they had known of its contents they cold have taken countermeasures. See NY
Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/opinion/yes-we-were-warned-about-ebola.html

This paper is key in understanding how signals for viral epidemics can
occur in the literature years before the outbreak (34 years in fact). I am
sure there are similar signals about COVID in the scientific literature
hidden behind paywalls.  Yet the Ebola paper STILL costs 35 USD , and
Elsevier still charge exorbitantly for its use in teaching. Put it into
RightsLink which will charge you 300 USD as an academic for permission to
teach 100 students and 500 if you are an NGO in a French country. This is
not "community".

If you wish to be seen as part of a community you have to earn it. After 25
years of active opposition to everything the Open community is trying to
do, that will be very hard.

As a minimum I would expect you to make every article on every subject on
every date openly accessible to the whole world for any purpose. 50 million
or whatever you control. Not "while the epidemic lasts" (as you did for
Ebola and closed articles),

But for ever.

That would take courage and I'd applaud. But nothing less will do.

Peter.


>
-- 
"I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign
with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same".

Peter Murray-Rust
Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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