Open and Shut?: Elsevier’s Alicia Wise on the RWA, the West Wing, and Universal Access

"[T]he boycott has at least got Elsevier’s attention. Conscious of the potential harm that it could have on its business were it to escalate, Elsevier has been stung into responding to the campaign of vilification. In early January, for instance, Elsevier’s vice president of global corporate relations Tom Reller posted several rebuttals on Eisen’s blog, and Elsevier’s director of universal access Alicia Wise posted a defence of the company on the Liblicense mailing list. And as the mainstream media has begun to take notice of the boycott, Reller has been compelled to respond not only on mailing lists and blogs (e.g. the Scholarly Kitchen), but in the pages of prestigious print publications like The Chronicle of Higher Education. Meanwhile, Elsevier’s director of global academic relations Nick Fowler has found himself having to defend the company’s pricing policy in the Economist, and the company’s senior vice president for physical sciences David Clark has had to do the same in The Scientist. Elsewhere, Chrysanne Lowe, Elsevier’s VP global marketing communications, has been helping in the pushback on Liblicense. In short, Elsevier now appears to understand that it needs to talk to the world....As I suggested recently, the challenge for Elsevier is that this new willingness to engage with the outside world may prove to be too little too late — a point I made to Reller and Alicia Wise when I met them in London earlier this year. To their credit, they acknowledged my point, and promised to arrange for me to do a formal interview with Alicia...."