Elsevier's "Feeble Facade" Crumbling

Not content with keeping scientific publications off central sites like academia.edu, Elsevier now appears to have started going after individual researchers' personal sites, usually found at their home university or institute.

Mike Masnick's Techdirt piece from yesterday highlights an incident in which researchers at the University of Calgary in Canada were notified that they had posted their own research papers in violation of Elsevier's copyrights. Andrea Peters at the Washington Post reported that the campaign against authors was alive in the US as well, noting that UC-Irvine and Harvard had gotten takedown notices from the publishing dinosaur.

Mike Taylor at svpow.com hits back at Elsevier, saying

Whatever feeble facade Elsevier have till now maintained of being partners in the ongoing process of research is gone forever. [...] Elsevier have declared their position as unrepentant enemies of science."

As someone who made his living in research for many years before the Web and a few during its infancy I have to agree. The Web changed everything in terms of how knowledge is spread, how researchers learn about others' results and share their results, and in terms of the ability of new students, young graduates, and even the general public to access scientific knowledge. Elsevier is desperately trying to cling to its 1980s-style model of control in a 2014 world.

Happy holidays academics! Have a lump - of coal or on your head, take your choice. Anyone who submits a paper to an Elsevier publication after this deserves what they (don't) get, but I feel sorry for those who now have to wonder if they're about to be named defendants in "the mother of all copyright battles concerning fair use."