Why Elsevier is completely in the right… and totally wrong | Reciprocal Space

"The internet was all aflutter last week because Elsevier has sent thousands of take-down notices to Academia.edu, a social networking site where many researchers post and share their published papers. This marks a significant change of tack for Elsevier. Previously the publisher had only been sending a handful of DMCAs a week to Academia.edu (the notices are named after the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but now it appears they have decided to get tough. There was the predictable outrage at the manoeuvre though, as several commentators acknowledged, Elsevier is acting entirely legally. It is simply enforcing rights that were handed to it — for no compensation — by the authors who have now been affected by the takedown demands. The company is behaving rationally. Why wouldn’t they take all reasonable steps to protect their business? The problem, and it is a fundamental one for legacy publishers as a whole, is that what seems reasonable in this market is changing. Elsevier and other companies who cleave to the subscription model of academic publishing are slowly being overwhelmed by the tide of events. They may have won a temporary victory in asserting their rights but the almost wholly negative reaction to the move suggests that they have scored another PR own goal. One of the affected authors, Guy Leonard, has made it clear that he will do what he can to avoid Elsevier in future. And although I actually have some sympathy with many who work for the company because, despite its size, it is struggling to with forces that are even bigger, I too have resolved — perhaps belatedly in some eyes — to sign the Elsevier boycott, putting them on public notice that I will refrain from refereeing and editorial work*. There is a sense that the company knows the ground is shifting beneath its feet. Its response to the adverse reaction among scholars lacked conviction. Tom Reller, Elsevier’s VP for global corporate relations explained the move in terms of protecting the discoverability of the papers they publish and the credit that should accrue to authors.  He told the Chronicle of Higher Education in an email:  'We aim to ensure that the final published version of an article is readily discoverable and citable via the journal itself in order to maximize the usage metrics and credit for our authors, and to protect the quality and integrity of the scientific record. The formal publications on our platforms also give researchers better tools and links, for example to data.'  None of these claims stands much scrutiny. Usage statistics could easily be accumulated for views of a paper on Academia.edu; separate hosting of the paper might even increase visibility and so, eventually, citation credit for authors; there is no threat to the integrity of the scientific record (especially if the final published version is uploaded) and, if authors or publishers are producing papers that don’t contain clear links to the underlying data, then neither is doing their job properly.  At the end of the day, the motive seems to me to be one of profit protection — a completely understandable one for a commercial concern but not one that is in the wider public interest. I know of no hard evidence the sharing of papers on Academia.edu has led to the cancellation of journal subscriptions, though I imagine that is the long term fear of publishers: if repositories get too good, Elsevier and co. will lose income. Hence their ongoing demands for long embargoes for papers uploaded by authors to institutional repositories ..."