Elsevier in open access row | The Bookseller

"A row has erupted between US-based open access forum Academia.edu and academic publisher Elsevier. The controversy arose after the publisher issued ‘take down’ notices for articles it owns the copyright to, which were made available for free on the website. One academic who posted his work on the research-sharing site, London-based Guy Leonard, has said that following the publisher’s demands, he would be 'avoiding Elsevier both for publication and peer review and hopefully impressing on my colleagues to do the same'. Leonard, a research fellow at the University of Exeter’s College of Life and Environmental Sciences, was one of many of academics who received a message from Academia.edu on Friday (6th December) telling him his research paper on ‘Resolving the question of trypanosome monophyly: a comparative genomics approach using whole genome data sets with low taxon sampling’ was to be delisted from the website ... Leonard, who was the first to tweet about the take-down notices, said in his blog today: 'They say all publicity is good publicity but I really don’t think Elsevier can push a positive spin on their previous conduct nor on their recent conduct . . .  2,800 requests is 2,800 pieces of research that have now become inaccessible to the public for no good reason. If one little tweet can generate this amount of interest over a Friday and a weekend then just think how much interest and knowledge you can impart on the world by not publishing with Elsevier and making any articles that you have published with them available and free to access online.'"