Elsevier’s Mendeley and Academia.edu – How We Distribute Scientific Research: A Case in Advocacy for Open Access Journals
Curator and Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
A strong case in Advocacy for Open Access Journals was developed in the following article, below
The Fatal Self Distraction of the Academic Publishing Industry: The Solution of the Open Access Online Scientific Journals
The Economist published on a new development taken against the common practice for Distribution of Scientific Research by Elsevier related to its Non-Open Access Journals
Academic publishing
No peeking… A publishing giant goes after the authors of its journals’ papers
Jan 11th 2014 | From the print edition
ONCE upon a time, it was common for scientists to receive letters from researchers working in other institutions, asking for reprints of papers they had published. It was the usual practice in those days for journal publishers to furnish authors with a couple of dozen such reprints, precisely for this purpose—but, if these had run out, a quick visit to the photocopier kept the wheels of scientific discourse turning, and though it was technically a violation of copyright, no one much minded.
Then, the world wide web was invented—initially, as it happens, with the intention of making it easier for scientists to share their results—and everything changed. Now, any scientist worth his grant has a website, and that site will often let the casual visitor download copies of its owner’s work. And, though it has taken a while, some publishers have decided they do mind about this—indeed one, Elsevier, based in the Netherlands, has been fighting back. It is using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), an American law that lets copyright holders demand the removal of anything posted online without their permission, to require individual scientists to eliminate from their websites papers published in its journals. In doing so it has stirred a hornets’ nest.
The first hornets to come buzzing out were members of a scientific social-networking site called Academia.edu (in which Rupert Pennant-Rea, chairman of The Economist Group, was an early investor). In early December they started receiving e-mails from Academia.edu informing them that some of their papers had been removed from the site in response to DMCA requests from Elsevier.
When some of them mentioned on Twitter what had happened, it became clear some universities had also received demands from Elsevier that papers be removed from the home pages of individual academics. There are, as a result, a lot of dischuffed scientists out there.
Elsevier (which also owns a scientific social-networking site called Mendeley—a direct competitor to Academia.edu) seems to have the law on its side. Like journalists writing for a newspaper, academics submitting an article to a journal usually sign contracts which transfer copyright to the publisher. But, though the firm may be right legally, culturally it is on trickier ground, given the ubiquity of current practice. As Thomas Hickerson, the University of Calgary’s chief librarian, puts it, “requesting such removals…seems at odds with the nature of an academic enterprise, in which the sharing of research information is an essential element.”
The short-term response from scientists and their employers seems to be that if Elsevier persists, and other publishers join in, they will try to find legal workarounds. As the University of California, Irvine, which was on the receiving end of some of the takedown notices, points out in advice to its staff, it is usually only the final version of an article, as it appears in a journal, that is covered by publisher’s copyright. There is nothing to stop scientists making earlier versions available. Many universities run repositories in which such drafts can be deposited for anyone to read. In an article posted shortly after the row started, Elsevier itself pointed out that such earlier versions can be shared freely.
In the longer run, however, cracking down in this way risks having the perverse effect, from the publishers’ point of view, of accelerating the rise of “open access” publishing, in which papers are made available online at no cost to the reader, and which therefore sidesteps at least some of the administrative headaches of traditional journal publishing.
Many advocates of open access make a moral case for it, too, arguing that freely available research is a public good—and that much of it is paid for by taxpayers in the first place. Ross Mounce, a palaeontologist at the University of Bath, in England, and an advocate of open access, is enthusiastic about what has happened. “This”, he says, referring to the row, “has been great [for open-access advocates]. Lots of people who were completely apathetic before are starting to realise the importance of how we distribute scientific research.”
That point is not lost on the publishers themselves. Elsevier has created open-access journals of its own. And the firm can take solace from the fact that—for now, at least—none of the opprobrium heaped upon it has had much effect on its bottom line. In 2012 it posted profits of £780m from revenues of £2.1 billion.
2012pharmaceutical
Amandeep Kaur
Aashir Awan, Phd
Abhisar Anand
Adina Hazan
Alan F. Kaul, PharmD., MS, MBA, FCCP
alexcrystal6
anamikasarkar
apreconasia
aviralvatsa
David Orchard-Webb, PhD
danutdaagmailcom
Demet Sag, Ph.D., CRA, GCP
Dror Nir
dsmolyar
Ethan Coomber
evelinacohn
Gail S Thornton
Irina Robu
jayzmit48
jdpmd
jshertok
kellyperlman
Ed Kislauskis
larryhbern
Madison Davis
marzankhan
megbaker58
ofermar2020
Dr. Pati
pkandala
Rosalind Codrington, PhD
ritusaxena
Rick Mandahl
sjwilliamspa
Srinivas Sriram
stuartlpbi
Dr. Sudipta Saha
tildabarliya
vaishnavee24
zraviv06
zs22
This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.
This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.
This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.