Open Access Archivangelism: Elsevier: Trying to squeeze the virtual genie back into the physical bottle

" ... Yes Alicia, the definition of authors providing free, immediate online access (Green OA self-archiving) has not changed since the online medium first made it possible. Neither has researchers’ need for it changed, nor its benefits to research. What has changed is Elsevier policy -- in the direction of trying to embargo Green OA to ensure that it does not put Elsevier's current revenue levels at any risk. Elsevier did not try to embargo Green OA from 2004-2012 — but apparently only because they did not believe that authors would ever really bother to provide much Green OA, nor that their institutions and funders would ever bother to require them to provide it (for its benefits to research). But for some reason Elsevier is not ready to admit that Elsevier has now decided to embargo Green OA purely to ensure that it does not put Elsevier's current subscription revenue levels at any risk. Instead, Elsevier wants to hold OA hostage to its current revenue levels -- by embargoing Green OA, with the payment of Fools-Gold OA publication fees the only alternative if an author wishes to provide immediate OA. This ensures that Elsevier's current revenue levels either remain unchanged, or increase. But, for public-relations reasons, Elsevier prefers to try to portray this as all being done out of 'fairness,' and to facilitate 'sharing' (in the spirit of OA). The 'fairness' is to ensure that no institution is exempt from Elsevier’s Green OA embargoes. And the 'sharing' is the social sharing services like Mendeley (which Elsevier owns), about which Elsevier now believes (for the time being) that authors would not bother to use them enough (and their institutions and funders cannot mandate that they use them) -- hence that that they would not pose a risk to Elsevier's current subscription revenue levels. Yet another one of the 'changes' with which Elsevier seems to be trying to promote sharing is by trying to find a way to outlaw the institutional repositories’ 'share button' (otherwise known as the 'Fair-Dealing' Button). So just as Elsevier is trying to claim credit for 'allowing' authors to do 'dark' (i.e., embargoed, non-OA) deposits, for which no publisher permission whatsoever is or ever was required, Elsevier now has its lawyers scrambling to find a formalizable way to make it appear as if Elsevier can forbid its authors to use the Share Button to provide individual reprints to one another, as authors have been doing for six decades ..."