American Psychological Association Sends Takedown Notice to Canadian Academic Regarding Posting of his Own Article

A friend and colleague of Lumen’s brought this article “Where Research Meets Profits,” to our attention today. It is one more example of the phenomenon of an academic author – in this case a psychologist – sharing copies of their own articles on their personal website, and subsequently receiving a takedown notice from the entity with which they had officially published the article in question.

Here, after receiving a takedown notice from the American Psychological Association, Professor William Cunningham of the University of Toronto, along with many of his colleagues, started a petition to the APA asking for an acknowlegement of the inequities of the situation and a change to the way in which academic articles are written and reviewed. Professor Cunningham got an apology, but WordPress,who host his website, must still acknowledge that takedown. Too many more similar notices, and Professor Cunningham’s site might have to come down, regardless of the underlying facts

Takedown notices to authors, inadvertent or not, are unfortunately not a new issue, The Lumen database has over 1500 takedown notices from the APA alone, to say nothing of other publishers. Most of these notices have been sent to Google to achieve the de-indexing of allegedly infringing filesharing sites, but how many have been sent regarding scenarios like that of Professor Cunningham is not clear. Similar controversies have made the specialized news in 2013-- 2014, and 2017 -- 2018, and are common enough that many University library systems offer specific advice on the topic. A quick websearch will produce a wealth of articles, blog posts and official statements from various participants and commentators.

Two possible solution, both mentioned in the Inside Higher Ed piece, are: paying authors, and open access. However, what is also clear is that in order to make substantive progress on this issue more information is needed as to its scope, scale and stakeholders, information that Lumen, by virtue of aggregating takedown notices from a variety of senders and recipients, may be almost uniquely poised to offer.

For those academic psychologists, and other academic authors who are hearing about Lumen for the first time, not only is Lumen interested in hearing about and receiving a copy of any takedown notices you or your institution receive regarding your work, we likely have some data that will be of interest to you. Please reach out to us at team@lumendatabase.org.