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Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier

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Re: Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier

#14
post #5
post #2

Every nail in Elsevier coffin is a great news, paywaled scientific publications is an archaic, dystopian and shameful legacy that should never exist in a first place.

I agree with the sentiment but I do think the service journals provide was once worthwhile, before the web, as disseminaters of academic knowledge. Universities paid a subscription fee for physical copies of journals, allowing their employees to keep up to date with what was happening in the world of science. Once the web took off the proposition was no longer good value, as scientists could bypass publishers. It jus…

Added value:

"The Lancet finds itself connected to... global arms trade: a trade that inflicts physical and social harm in the poorest and least stable regions. Since 2003, The Lancet's owner and publisher, Reed Elsevier, has organised some of the world's largest arms" https://t.co/rIbch7S6dy

Re: Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier

#15
Just a note that we have asked the European Commission to investigate Elsevier for abuse of a dominant market position: https://zenodo.org/record/1472045, and also now Education International (32 million members, 400 member organisations) are taking the fight to them through academic unions. https://bit.ly/2PPjwRK

Re: Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier

#16

Glad to see interest in Elsevier is declining. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=elsevier...

Interesting to see the long-term decline, but to be fair, I don't think many people who are looking for a particular paper would start by Googling the word "elsevier." They would, however, Google "scihub" to find out their latest hosting domain.

Re: Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier

#17
post #2

Every nail in Elsevier coffin is a great news, paywaled scientific publications is an archaic, dystopian and shameful legacy that should never exist in a first place.

I am a bit on the fence about the violent nature but if publishers play hard ball, I'm not sure who to blame. In the meantime, if access through libraries is revoked and if that could go on for a whi... oh right, sci-hub, but that works because of running subscriptions. What's the end-game, it goes on slowly and gradually, untill the currently invaluable material became obsolete while a substantial pre-print based reaches critical mass for all disciplines? The landscape is fractured enough despite the giants. Anyhow there's overlap with the patent problematic that you can't just unsubscribe; maybe walls need to be teared down one by one, but you don't need to torch the place (to step up your rather violent imagery).

Re: Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier

#19
post #18

The Max Planck Digital Library has already set in place mechanisms to address the content needs of its researchers when Elsevier shuts off access at the beginning of January. What is it? Sci-Hub?

Some longer term solution? https://blog.scholasticahq.com/post/journals-declaring-indep...

Re: Max Planck Society Discontinues Agreement with Elsevier

#20
post #2

Every nail in Elsevier coffin is a great news, paywaled scientific publications is an archaic, dystopian and shameful legacy that should never exist in a first place.

I am a bit on the fence about the violent nature but if publishers play hard ball, I'm not sure who to blame. In the meantime, if access through libraries is revoked and if that could go on for a whi... oh right, sci-hub, but that works because of running subscriptions. What's the end-game, it goes on slowly and gradually, untill the currently invaluable material became obsolete while a substantial pre-print based re…

If publishers play hardball, no researcher will ever work for them as authors, referees or editors. Or they come down to more reasonable prices and perhaps reduce their 40% profits to ones in line with other industries?
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