New APPS

Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Mostly Philosophy.

recent posts

about

    Elsevier is taking down papers from Academia.edu

    It's very ugly (via many of my Twitter contacts). Go check the whole story, but here's the beginning:

    Lots of researchers post PDFs of their own papers on their own web-sites. It’s always been so, because even though technically it’s in breach of the copyright transfer agreements that we blithely sign, everyone knows it’s right and proper. Preventing people from making their own work available would be insane, and the publisher that did it would be committing a PR gaffe of huge proportions.

    Enter Elsevier, stage left. Bioinformatician Guy Leonard is just one of several people to have mentioned on Twitter this morning that Academia.edu took down their papers in response to a notice from Elsevier.

    Posted in ,

    13 responses to “Elsevier is taking down papers from Academia.edu”

    1. Fritz Warfield Avatar
      Fritz Warfield

      Still more reasons to have nothing to do with Elsevier journals. At the very least, I hope many more will stop providing them with free labor.

      Like

      Reply
    2. Allan Olley Avatar
      Allan Olley

      I put links to drafts/versions of my published paper (located on my personal webpage) on academia. Academia seems to eventually upload the paper on its own initiative at some point. I don’t have anything published with Elsevier at this point, I have wondered about this sort of thing.

      Like

      Reply
    3. Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa Avatar
      Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa

      Unless it’s the actual typeset stuff being posted, it is probably NOT a violation of the copyright agreement to post papers online. I don’t think I’ve published with an Elsevier journal, so I haven’t seen a copyright form myself, but this suggests the policy allows material to be posted:
      http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php?id=30&fIDnum=|&mode=simple&la=en&format=full

      Like

      Reply
    4. Orwin O'Dowd Avatar
      Orwin O’Dowd

      I’ve learned to avoid Academia as a hazardous site. And to block Jstor: they were hacked to oblivion, remember, and the guy took his life on trial, so you don’t know do you?
      In the spirit of semantic clean-up, thousands of pages of wiki are disinforming you, and physics has ground to a halt as a result. This crisis has been a long time coming: Newton already refused to have anything more to do with scientific publishing after his Principia first edition, objecting that the process was “akin to slavery”.
      KINDLY TAKE DOWN ALL THAT FATUOUS BLATHER THAT FAILS TO DISTINGUISH PYTHAGORAE OF EPHESOS, SAMOS AND RHEGION. DIOGENES LAERTIUS WAS NOT SO STUPID, AND IF YOU DONT WANT TO READ HIM STOP QUOTING HIM AND SHUT UP ABOUT GREEK PHILOSOPHY!

      Like

      Reply
    5. wheeler Avatar
      wheeler

      From the publisher’s point of view, there is a world of difference between individual authors posting published papers on their personal website and uploading their published papers to an archive like Academia, even though both are typically prohibited under the terms of publication. What the major publishers of academic journals are selling is a database, not individual journal titles, which is why a move against a non-proprietary archive like Academia should not be viewed as a surprise. A move against an individual author who self-archived on his personal website, however, would be a surprise.
      The policies governing archiving vary –as a visit to SHERPA, through the linke that Jonathan provided above at [3], will demonstrate. This little table from Phil Sci Archive captures some of the differences in these policies for a handful of journals, for those interested in a snapshot: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/copyright.html.
      Looking ahead, it is not clear to me how well this self-archive versus non-proprietary archive distinction will hold up. I can imagine a service which efficiently organized self-archived papers, for instance. Google Scholar may well evolve to effectively offer that service. Ironically, a challenge to that effort is filtering out the increasing volume of OA spam.

      Like

      Reply
    6. Owen S Avatar
      Owen S

      As Allan and Jonathan suggest, there is an easy way around this without boycotting Elsevier. I’ve published in an Elsevier journal (Fertility and Sterility), and put the non-typeset ‘accepted author manuscript’ version of the paper on academia.edu along with a little blurb copied from the Elsevier site saying it’s the authors’ version. It hasn’t been taken down, and I highly doubt it will be given that it conforms to Elsevier’s current stated policy. It’s not as pretty as the journal article, but the content is all there.
      Elsevier’s policy is stated here: http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-policies/article-posting-policy#accepted-author-manuscript

      Like

      Reply
    7. Jeff H Avatar
      Jeff H

      The correct version of wheeler’s link is:
      http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/copyright.html
      (i.e. leave out the final period).

      Like

      Reply
    8. Richard Baron Avatar
      Richard Baron

      Elsevier’s policy on published journal articles (PJAs) is interesting. They start by giving two reasons for not allowing posting elsewhere, to guarantee the integrity of the articles and to make enough money:
      “Elsevier guarantees each PJA’s authenticity, we work with others (e.g. national libraries) to preserve them for posterity and in perpetuity, and we invest to drive their usage. We strictly apply an absolute guideline regarding their location: every PJA will reside only on a completely controlled site because this is the only way that we as the publisher can guarantee each PJA’s permanence, authenticity and that it is not altered. The continued viability of scholarly journals and their PJAs is also important to the research community. Publishers invest significant time, money and resources to create, maintain and develop both journals’ reputations and the publishing process. The distribution of PJAs is therefore also subject to strict guidelines so that journals’ ability to recoup the investments required to create them are not compromised.”
      Then they turn to open access journals:
      “For open access articles published in either an Elsevier Open Access Journal or via our Open Access Article program, the final published version can be immediately posted on your institution or personal website. Permitted reuse of open access articles are determined by the author’s choice of user license.”
      So either integrity does not matter for articles in open access journals, or it can be safeguarded without prohibiting publication on open websites.

      Like

      Reply
    9. Shen-yi Liao Avatar
      Shen-yi Liao

      While I am generally in favor of taking actions against profiteering publishers such as Elsevier, it is important to notice that here Elsevier only seems to be taking down papers from Academia.edu rather than authors’ own webpages, institutional archives, or non-profit archives.
      The distinction is significant because Academia.edu is, as far as I can gather from their about page, a for-profit company with much financial backing from prominent investors. Academia.edu can thus be seen as building a competing, for-profit database. I think this is especially evident in its policy of forcing people to register so that they can download papers uploaded to the site — and thus growing their own user base. From my perspective, Academia.edu is about as good for open access as Elsevier is.
      Two upshots, as I see it:
      1. Please upload your papers to PhilPapers, SSRN, arXiv, and other freely-accessible archives and NOT Academia.edu if you care about open access.
      2. Get ready to get quite mad at Elsevier if they start taking down papers from those places, but not yet.

      Like

      Reply
    10. Michael Kremer Avatar
      Michael Kremer

      Meanwhile, Elsevier is in the news in yet another unflattering way.

      Like

      Reply
    11. Nicole Wyatt (Department Head, Philosophy, University of Calgary) Avatar
      Nicole Wyatt (Department Head, Philosophy, University of Calgary)

      Elsevier has just issued a take down notice to the University of Calgary over postings on faculty web pages of papers published in Elsevier journals. Can we get quite mad at Elsevier now?

      Like

      Reply
    12. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Do you have further links to this? I’ve seen this going around, but can’t find links with the exact notice that Elsevier is issuing. It would be interesting to see how exactly they phrase such an absurdity.

      Like

      Reply
    13. Nicole Wyatt Avatar
      Nicole Wyatt

      I don’t have the take down notice from Elsevier, but here is the email we got from the university copyright office.
      “The University of Calgary has been contacted by a company representing the publisher, Elsevier Reed, regarding certain Elsevier journal articles posted on our publicly accessible university web pages. We have been provided with examples of these articles and reviewed the situation. Elsevier has put the University of Calgary on notice that these publicly posted Elsevier journal articles are an infringement of Elsevier Reed’s copyright and must be taken down.
      Elsevier Reed, publisher of over 2000 journals, does not permit the posting of published journal articles on the Internet, unless the open access option has been purchased. Author agreements detail what rights authors retain over material published by Elsevier and outline which versions can be made available on institutional web pages. Elsevier typically allows author preprints or accepted manuscripts to be publicly posted as opposed to the final published journal article.
      Elsevier acknowledges that these articles may have been inadvertently posted; however, we are required to remove them unless the authors have expressly retained the rights to post the actual published Elsevier version. Please review all of the publicly accessible University of Calgary web pages you are affiliated with and ensure that you have not made any published Elsevier PDFs available. If you require additional details regarding the rights you have retained for these articles, please review your author contract or Elsevier’s Article Posting Policy.
      Please note that this issue is not isolated to Elsevier publisher policies. Please ensure that other materials you have made available on publicly accessible university web pages are compliant with your other author contracts and publisher policies.”

      Like

      Reply

    Leave a comment