Elsevier Is Becoming a Data Company. Should Universities Be Wary? - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Some open-access advocates say the situation points to an urgent need to create more robust nonprofit alternatives to Elsevier’s product line of data-compiling and sharing tools. But so far financial backing for the developmental work is thin. One of the best known attempts is the Open Science Framework, a web-based data interface built by the Center for Open Science, which has an annual budget of about $6 million, provided largely by foundations and other private donors.

In general, U.S. research universities — a $70 billion scientific enterprise — have not made major contributions to such projects. The Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities have, however, formed a team that’s begun studying the future of data sharing. So far, that effort has been focused on more basic steps such as establishing data-storage facilities, linking them together, and simply persuading scientists to take seriously the need to share data."