In Defence of Elsevier
Amsciforum 2015-05-27
Summary:
I beg the OA community to remain reasonable and realistic.
Please don't demand that Elsevier agree to immediate CC-BY. If Elsevier did that, I could immediately start up a rival free-riding publishing operation and sell all Elsevier articles immediately at cut rate, for any purpose at all that I could get people to pay for. Elsevier could no longer make a penny from selling the content it invested in.
CC-BY-NC-ND is enough for now. It allows immediate harvesting for data-mining.
The OA movement must stop shooting itself in the foot by over-reaching, insisting on having it all, immediately, thus instead ending up with next to nothing, as in the past.
As I pointed out in a previous posting, the fact that Elsevier requires all authors to adopt CC-BY-NC-ND license is a positive step. Please don't force them to back-pedal!
Please read the terms, and reflect.