Elsevier Blinks, Will No Longer Support Research Works Act

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-08-20

Summary:

“In a victory for science, and those who favor open access for the easy dissemination of scientific results to the public and scientists around the world, Elsevier has withdrawn support for the Research Works Act. I think credit has to go to Tim Gowers calling for and Michael Eisen spreading the word on the boycott and getting Elsevier's attention. Eisen initially brought our attention to the bill which would have allowed Elsevier to break with the growing tendency towards putting science payed for with tax dollars into open access databases... By calling attention to it and pushing back against Elsevier, the publisher that seemed to be largely behind the new legislation, Gowers and Eisen appear to have effectively killed support for this bill... We have to be vigilant for future efforts to restrict open access such as this bill. After the public spends millions on individual research projects, scientists spend years making discoveries, and peer reviewers donate their time to critique and improve the presentation of the data in the manuscripts, it's exceedingly arrogant that publishers feel they own those results for decades just because they came in at the end as the publisher. While publishing is a capitalist enterprise and they should make money, their compensation should be proportionate to the effort and investment they put into the manuscript. The reality is, their contribution is vanishingly small...”

Link:

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2012/02/elsevier_blinks_will_no_longer.php

Updated:

08/16/2012, 06:08

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.comment oa.usa oa.legislation oa.rwa oa.nih oa.advocacy oa.signatures oa.petitions oa.boycotts oa.elsevier oa.copyright

Authors:

abernard

Date tagged:

08/20/2012, 14:46

Date published:

02/29/2012, 20:33