ScienceGuide - Leaked Elsevier contract reveals pushback

lterrat's bookmarks 2017-03-28

Summary:

"n the contract Elsevier brands the deal as a pilot. From 2016 to 2018 the publisher and the institutions will ‘experiment’ with open access. However, the restrictions on the open access policy are designed to be as discouraging as possible. One primary restriction is that the corresponding author has the affiliated to a Dutch insitution, regardless of whether the publication comes from a Dutch institution. 

Another restriction is the extremely short list of Elsevier journals eligible for open access publications, which boils down to just a fraction of the entire portfolio. A quick scan of the journal titles shows that it contains titles such as: Clinical genitourinary Cancer, International Journal of Coal Geology and Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases. Prominent titles such as The Lancet, Journal of Financial Economics and Cell, Elsevier’s flag ships, are exempt from the agreement. 

Read the entire open access paragraph of the contract here.

The numbers show that researchers aren’t exactly stumbling over each other to publish open access with Elsevier. According to openaccess.nl there were only 382 Dutch publications with Elsevier titles in 2016, this is 64% of the 600 articles allowed (with 1200 and 1800 in 2017 and 2018 respectively). As of now 2017 has yielded 57, making it unlikely that the remaining 3161 will be used up until the end of 2018. 

Unclear motives

An interesting detail of the case is the stance the University of Amsterdam (UvA) has taken in the matter, being the only institution refusing to publish their contracts with Elsevier and Springer. The former stated his objection to publicizing the contracts open access clause and pricing – a case now obsolete."

Link:

http://www.scienceguide.nl/201703/leaked-elsevier-contract-reveals-pushback.aspx

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » lterrat's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.hei

Date tagged:

03/28/2017, 18:37

Date published:

03/28/2017, 14:37