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    Has Elsevier jumped the shark?

    As many of you will have seen by now, it looks like Elsevier — not content with taking down papers from academia.edu — is now also issuing takedown notices to individual universities. Nicole Wyatt, chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Calgary, reported on having received such a notice in comments here. The Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog, from which I had learned about the academia.edu takedown, also reported on the note received by the University of Calgary and passed on to all their staff. (Btw, did they go after other universities as well? Or is it a case of ‘pilot harassment’, as well described by the SV-POW site? So far I only know of occurrences with Calgary.)

    If anyone was still looking for reasons to boycott Elsevier, this is clearly a good one. Of course, it is not too difficult for most philosophers to boycott Elsevier, who does not publish major philosophy journals. But Elsevier is very strong in some adjacent areas, psychology in particular; it publishes for example the flagship journal Cognition, where a number of philosophers have published.

    The question to be asked is: why is it that we academics still put up with such absurd behavior by (some, though not all) academic publishers? Here, I want to suggest that again we are dealing with the phenomenon of academic journals as brands, which I wrote about last week. In philosophy as well as in other disciplines, journal publications still play a tremendously influential role in hiring processes, tenure cases etc. These academic publishers are the brand-owners, and as the discipline is still largely regulated by reliance on these brands, we cannot for now do without them. But as I learned from this blog post at Language Log, especially in the comments section, there is significant variability among disciplines regarding the position that journals occupy. In physics, for example, they are much less prominent, and this almost exclusively as a result of arXiv and the widespread habit of posting preprints. (H/T to Kenny Easwaran for the LL blog post.)

    It is of course unreasonable to expect that philosophy (or any other discipline) will change its evaluative mechanisms and its patterns of scientific communication from one day to another. I also do not want to give the impression that I am against all and any journal: I’m an editor for two journals, one of which open access; I fulfill my usual refereeing duties, occasionally even for journals published by one of the ‘ill-behaved’ publishers (not Elsevier, though); and of course, I publish in journals myself. I am just pointing out that the reason we academics put up with bad behavior by (some) academic publishers is because we think we need them, in particular for quality control; all I’m saying is, we don’t.

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    30 responses to “Has Elsevier jumped the shark?”

    1. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      Is Elsevier being so unreasonable here? As I recall, their policy allows accepted papers to be put up in preprint form. So all the author’s original content, and all the changes to that content that results from the work of unpaid referees and editors, can be put on the web. The only thing they object to is putting the PDF of the actual, typeset, copy-edited article online. The differences between the final article and the accepted manuscript are entirely the result of work by Elsevier’s paid staff, not of work by academics. Is there really a moral reason they ought to allow that material too to be made available online?
      (I publish fairly often in Elsevier journals (mostly Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics), and I always publish on my website (a) a PDF of the accepted manuscript; (b) a link to the journal. I don’t feel ill-treated by not being allowed to publish the copy-edited version.)

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    2. Shen-yi Liao Avatar
      Shen-yi Liao

      Thanks to Nicole Wyatt for bringing the Calgary case to light!

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    3. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Fair point. But I suppose that what is really surprising about the takedown notice is the threat of taking legal measures against the authors. Then again, if you feel comfortable with the terms enforced by Elsevier, then you may choose to continue publish with them. I wouldn’t feel comfortable receiving a takedown notice like that, given that the typesetting work done by Elsevier staff is really the most insignificant part of it all.

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    4. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      I’m not sure I follow. If the difference between the accepted and final versions is insignificant, why worry about only being allowed to publish the former?

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    5. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      Actually, sorry, Catarina: I should have read your post more carefully. I’m inclined to agree that if Elsevier’s opening move was to make legal threats against individual authors, that’s excessive and worrying. But are they doing that? The comment on the original thread just seems to say that Elsevier or its representative has written to the University of Calgary centrally and asked it to stop infringing its publication policy. If the policy itself is reasonable (which I’ve suggested it is) then that doesn’t seem unreasonable either.

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    6. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Insignificant in terms of the amount of work involved (relative to the amount of work put into it by everybody else). Not insignificant in terms of how the material gets used. Journals should be content with having some sort of exclusivity over the content in terms of the complete databases they offer, not in terms of individual articles.
      And in fact, it goes both ways: if it is that insignificant a difference, why should they make such a fuss about it? To my mind, Elsevier is breaking a tacit but important agreement between publishers and authors (i.e. that it’s ok to make the papers available on their personal websites). I suspect that other publishers know that it’s just not worth the fight.

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    7. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      Fair points (though is access to the final version really that important? If the preprint is competently typeset then I’m not sure it matters except perhaps when preparing references). And I agree about the “tacit but important agreement”: I suppose my partial defence of Elsevier here is partly because I’ve always seen them as having a more reasonable policy here than many journals. OUP (if I recall correctly) has a much stricter policy which, if followed, would significantly impede academic communications, whereas Elsevier’s policy doesn’t really so impede. (And it’s worth noting that arXiv, too, only displays the preprint versions, not the final documents – though the nature of physics typesetting means that the difference is perhaps smaller).

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    8. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      There’s also this link that I came across, with an example of the takedown notices:
      http://vitak.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/wordpress-dmca-takedown-web.pdf

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    9. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      Okay, that letter looks quite reasonable to me – so possibly we just have different starting assumptions here.

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    10. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      I appreciate you offering a different perspective, it makes me think harder about my assumptions here.

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    11. Sara L. Uckelman Avatar
      Sara L. Uckelman

      I’m not sure it matters except perhaps when preparing references
      Which is not as a minor a point as one might think. While I love being able to get copies of papers from author’s websites, the lack of any correlation between the preprint version’s pagination and the published version’s pagination makes proper citation a rather creative exercise.

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    12. GFA Avatar
      GFA

      Slightly tangential, but:
      “Of course, it is not too difficult for most philosophers to boycott Elsevier, who does not publish major philosophy journals.”
      This is true, but (as the case of David Wallace illustrates) Elsevier does publish three philosophy of science journals, and most (regularly publishing) philosophers of science will publish in at least one of them at least once during their career. (The three journals are Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Parts A, B, and C; A is general, B is physics (the only journal dedicated solely to philosophy of physics), and C is biology).

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    13. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      To Sara: I suppose, thinking about it, that in physics there’s quite rarely any need to reference a particular page in a paper rather than just the paper as a whole – otherwise I guess this would be more of an issue for arXiv. For myself, I increasingly try to reference by section number rather than page number for articles with sufficient substructure for that to work.
      To GFA: Yes, I’d say it’s basically not possible to work in the technical aspects of contemporary philosophy of physics and not publish in Stud.Hist.Phil.Mod.Phys. (Maybe this subconsciously explains my sanguine attitude to Elsevier? 🙂 )

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    14. Stefan Heßbrüggen Avatar
      Stefan Heßbrüggen

      Those who sign away the right to post a PDF of the published article have no prima facie legal right to complain.
      Many people sign contracts with big publishers under duress, because they are forced to publish in first-rate journals in order to secure their professional existence (i. e. tenure).
      To me, it is doubtful whether this is equitable, because publishers like Springer and Elsevier as corporate entities contribute next to nothing to the first-rate status of their journals. This privilege depends almost entirely on the standing and expertise of journal editors, reviewers etc. within their relevant subcommunities. Else, we would have to assume that journals published by Springer or Elsevier deserve their prestige due to the efficiency of their proof-readers or the taste they show in typesetting.
      Behaviour that is legally acceptable can nevertheless be morally reprehensible. If and insofar Elsevier’s measures go against people who still cannot be sure whether they will ever be able to make a living from philosophy, these take-down notices are detrimental to their careers, insofar as these careers depend on these papers being cited.
      Wikipedia defines rent-seeking as “spending resources in order to gain by increasing one’s share of existing wealth, instead of trying to create wealth”. This is exactly what Elsevier is doing here. Instead of ‘innovating in the market-place’, they try to secure their profits by using the legal system to go against what they perceive as wrong-doing. Another description for this is desperation, because these efforts surely will backfire in the long run.
      However, this is what corporations do. No reason to bitch about that (in the context of this discussion). We should rather begin to think about those tenured colleagues serving as editors, reviewers etc. for such predatory publishers. Their silent approval can, in my view, best be explained by the fact that they, too, draw various (symbolic) profits from their role – one of them consists in being perceived as a valuable member of the profession. That means that within the profession there is a silent, but powerful group of colleagues who profit from Elsevier’s takedown notices, if and insofar as these actions protect the dominant position of their journals in the market.
      If these arguments are to any extent persuasive, complacency with the status quo contributes to a state of affairs that is inherently unjust to those who must conform with job market pressures without being able to make an informed and autonomous decision on how to utilize their intellectual property.

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    15. Gordon Avatar
      Gordon

      The takedown notice is Catarina links to is instructive. I can’t speak to all the jurisdictional differences here, but it’s worth noting that takedown is entirely a one-way street. Elsevier gets to tell wordpress that there’s “infringing material” on its site. At that point, wordpress absolutely must remove access to the article. This is for business reasons: wordpress won’t be held liable for contributory infringement, iff they takedown articles when they get a notice. The idea behind this provision was straightforward enough: no website or ISP (think youtube) was going to risk posting material from third parties if they could be held liable for copyright infringement. So the deal struck was this “safe harbor” provision: remove offending materials on receipt of official notification, and you’re off the liability hook.
      What’s initially most disturbing about the process is that authors don’t get any say in this, there’s no due process, and the right of appeal is very limited (and most people don’t know about it anyway). So countless examples of fair use have been removed from the web, at least in part because the big content providers (at least in the music industry) have developed bots that search for offending content on their own. Folks who aren’t concerned about abuse in these situations point to the right of appeal. But during the 2008 (U.S.) presidential campaign, there were campaign ads and materials for both campaigns that were summarily removed from the web – some within two weeks of the election. So these takedowns demonstrably stifled political speech (more or less equally for both parties, as far as I understand).
      Insofar as that’s the law, Elsevier’s behavior is legally reasonable (I am not saying the big publishers are morally defensible!). Given that they’re finding individual papers like this, I suspect they have some bots looking for watermarks in files or something of the sort. On the other hand, there are disturbing elements to the letter, because it insinuates that wordpress needs to go on a fishing expedition to root out other articles. That’s because it erodes your safe harbor defense if you knew there was infringing material on your site. But the law isn’t designed to get wordpress to go on a fishing expedition. Notice also that WordPress cloaks itself in terms of service: if you “continue” to post infringing material [sic!: there is no finding that the material removed is infringing, except at the assertion of the copyright owner!], then your account will be terminated, and you agreed to that when you “click[ed] here” to get started (don’t worry: less than 2% of people read these contracts).
      I think we need a better law, but even more than that, I think we need a better academic publishing system. As has been documented over and over, the big publishers have quite a racket going, with extraordinarily high profit margins. I don’t have a good answer, because publishing a journal in fact takes some money. Just nowhere near as much as the Elseviers and Springers extract from the system.

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    16. Ed Kazarian Avatar
      Ed Kazarian

      I have to admit a bit of puzzlement re: the need for these established ‘big journals,’ for tenure, promotion, etc. Granting that different academic communities work differently, I can still think of quite a few (increasingly) important journals in my subfield that have more or less created themselves out of whole cloth in the past 10-15 years. At some point, getting an editorial board with good folks on it, getting pieces by good people frequently enough to attract good submissions and maintaining strong quality control produces a solid journal. And as far as I can tell, folks have done a reasonably good job of figuring out which of these publications are worthwhile.
      Perhaps I’m not taking the administrative need for metrics seriously enough here, but part of me is wondering why we’re so interested in indulging it (or at least indulging it to such an extent that we remain beholden to the exact set of ‘important journals’ that we have).

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    17. Jonathan Birch Avatar
      Jonathan Birch

      I agree with David Wallace, and I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the contribution of copyeditors and typesetters to a final journal article is ‘insignificant in terms of the amount of work involved’. Naturally, it takes less time to copyedit and typeset a single article than it takes to write one. But if you look at the total amount of work that copyeditors and typesetters put into the running of a journal, it’s a huge contribution.

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    18. Elisa Freschi Avatar
      Elisa Freschi

      Personally, I agree with David Wallace’s point. Why transgress your signed agreement if you can upload the last draft? Further, since I work on the history of philosophy, copy-editing and laying out my articles might be quite a difficult task (e.g., because of the triple apparatus of variant readings found in manuscripts and secondary witnesses and the like) and I do not think I am in the position to think that only creative research needs to be protected by copyright (by that I do not mean that anyone else here claimed it).
      Sara (and everyone else interested): A solution for references is suggested here: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2013/12/cite-by-section.html

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    19. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Agree, agree and agree. I have an idea for a different model: libraries could fund open-access journals, which is btw already the case with some such journals. The money that libraries spend on journal subscriptions would be more than enough to maintain a couple of journals. So rather than give this money to the publishers, who indeed make exorbitant profit, as is well known, invest this money directly where it belongs, i.e. in the journals, and make everything open access. Utopian perhaps, but not impossible, I think.

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    20. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Yes, point taken. I certainly don’t want to detract from the importance of the work of copyeditors and typesetters.

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    21. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Ultimately, I think that what gets people pissed off with Elsevier and a few others (Springer comes to mind) is a combination of exorbitant profits, very high subscription fees, and these ‘author-unfriendly’ practices. It is not a surprise to those who have been following these developments that Elsevier (and not, say, one of the less commercial academic publishers) issues takedown notices, because it’s part of their whole truculent approach to academic publishing.

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    22. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      And there is this:
      “In France, the present negotiations we face with Elsevier concerning subscriptions are also fierce. Yesterday all academic French institutions received the announcement that negotiations have broken down, and we will no longer be able to access their journals on December 31st.”
      https://plus.google.com/117663015413546257905/posts/3RBvY7HTSNL

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    23. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      A link in French:
      http://www.polechimie-balard.fr/actualites/335/elsevier–toujours-lincertitude-pour-le-1er-janvier-2014.htm

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    24. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      And now takedown requests to UK universities:
      http://rossmounce.co.uk/2013/12/20/elsevier-is-also-sending-takedown-requests-to-uk-universities/

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    25. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      The Washington post on Elsevier’s takedown requests:
      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/19/how-one-publisher-is-stopping-academics-from-sharing-their-research/?print=1

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    26. Stefan Heßbrüggen Avatar
      Stefan Heßbrüggen

      And here a very instructive peek into the economics of publishing: http://svpow.com/2013/12/20/elseviers-david-tempest-explains-subscription-contract-confidentiality-clauses/ Be sure to watch the embedded video, so that you don’t miss this: “[The last part (sc. of what the Elsevier representative says) is drowned in the laughter of the audience.]”

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    27. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Thanks, Stefan! You, always in the loop on this topic (and many others).

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    28. Orwin O'Dowd Avatar
      Orwin O’Dowd

      Commercial publishers today are scooping up self-published works that have taken off on Amazon etc., while Borders quietly whither away. Their market was killed by a dank tide of Socio 101 rehash posing as “relevance”. So now Newton’s alchemy lab is up and running again, and there’s colloidal silver in the health store again.
      “In face of ignorance,” Lacan said, “humans resort to political action.” So now its Strife of the Faculties II: Historicists vs. Populists. When I last looked the average psychology article was read by about 1.5 people. And I noticed Elsevier’s Modern Physics recently on route to rendering it (psychologism) completely obsolete by recovering Classical Ergonomics – in open access naturally.

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    29. Stevan Harnad Avatar
      Stevan Harnad

      http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1091-.html
      See Exchange on Elsevier Website regarding Elsevier Take-Down Notices (and please note that this concerns only authors’ final drafts, not Elsevier’s PDF version-of-record):
      December 17, 2013 at 9:05 pm
      Stevan Harnad: Tom, I wonder if it would be possible to drop the double-talk and answer a simple question: Do or do not Elsevier authors retain the right to make their peer-reviewed final drafts on their own institutional websites immediately, with no embargo? Just a Yes or No, please… Stevan
      December 18, 2013 at 2:36 pm
      Tom Reller (Elsevier): Hello Dr. Harnad. I don’t agree with your characterization of our explanation here, but nevertheless as requested, there is a simple answer to your question – yes. Thank you.
      December 20, 2013
      Stevan Harnad: Tom, thank you. Then I suggest that the institutions [and funders] of Elsevier authors ignore the Elsevier take-down notices (and also adopt an immediate-deposit mandate that is immune to all publisher take-down notices by requiring immediate deposit, whether or not access to the immediate-deposit is made immediately OA)… Stevan
      Do follow Peter Suber’s wise advice to authors to try to retain their right to self-archive with OA un-embargoed — but also deposit your final draft immediately upon acceptance whether or not you make your deposit OA immediately; and make sure your institution and funder both adopt an immediate institutional deposit mandate to ensure that all researchers deposit immediately. (And remember that this all concerns the author’s final draft, not the publisher’s PDF version-of-record.)
      Paradoxically, publisher take-down notices for the publisher’s proprietary PDF version-of-record are a good thing for the adoption of sensible, effective OA policies and practices: Sleep-walking authors and their institutions need to be awakened to the pragmatics and implications of the difference between the author’s final, peer-reviewed, revised, accepted version and the publisher’s PDF version-of-record: Green OA is all about the former, not the latter.

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    30. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Thanks, and sorry that your comment was stuck in spam-space for a while! And I agree that the take-down notices may ultimately be a good thing for the open access movement, i.e. if they get people to wake up and smell the coffee.

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