Elsevier Says Downloading And Content-Mining Licensed Copies Of Research Papers 'Could Be Considered' Stealing | Techdirt

"Elsevier has pretty much established itself as the most hated company in the world of academic publishing, a fact demonstrated most recently when all the editors and editorial board resigned from one of its top journals to set up their own, open access rival. A blog post by the statistician Chris H.J. Hartgerink shows that Elsevier is still an innovator when it comes to making life hard for academics. Hartgerink's work at Tilburg University in the Netherlands concerns detecting potentially problematic research that might involve data fabrication -- obviously an important issue for the academic world. A key technique he is employing is content mining -- essentially bringing together large bodies of text and data in order to extract interesting facts from them ... There are clear parallels with the situation that Aaron Schwarz found himself in, but with a key difference. Elsevier is not only stopping Hartgerink from carrying out his research, but threatening to cut off all access to the company's journals and books for everyone working at Tilburg University if he tries to continue ... What is really at stake here is control. Elsevier wants to be acknowledged as the undisputed gatekeeper for all possible uses of the research it publishes -- most of which was paid for by the public through taxes. And as far as the company is concerned, daring to use that knowledge in new ways without additional permission is simply 'stealing.'"