Elsevier open access guidelines – Arash Sarshar's Academic Blog

"Elsevier is a conglomerate in scientific publishing business. According to their website, it is the third largest publisher of open access articles in scientific fields. Yet still, a business, the journal provides 'real' open access for a fee ranging between 500 to 5000 USD paid by the author or the institutions supporting the authors. The journal offers another 'semi' open option, that allows authors to self-archive a copy of the final version of the article after an embargo period. The period varies between subjects but is usually about 2 years.

A noteworthy move by the journal is keeping an archive of Elsevier’s responses to different legislature, guidelines and policies from countries around the globe, in which they explain their alliances, agreements as well as in some cases their disagreements. The archive can be found here (+). As an example, one interesting fact is the publisher’s doubt about Sweden’s ambitious goal to reach “real” open access status for all articles published by its contributors by 2025. Another observation I made was that the authors of the statement on open access go beyond it to advocate open data policies that allows/requires scientists  to share their data, a concept that is still young in the scientific community and needs to be championed."