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Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

latimes.com

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Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#131

Post by mayank »

a1369209993 wrote: post #122
apo wrote: post #56

The model Elsevier operates on is under attack from a number of sides. In addition to UC, there is Plan S: > The plan requires scientists and researchers who benefit from state-funded research organisations and institutions to publish their work in open repositories or in journals that are available to all by 2021.[4] The "S" stands for "shock". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_S The plan is backed by a wide range…

> Elsevier may have a right to license its content as it sees fit Elsevier doesn't have content of it's own. It takes others' content (without paying them a dime in most - if not all - cases), maybe runs it through spellcheck, slaps a legal threat and price tag on it, and milks it for as much protection money as it can. Elsevier is the very model of modern major copyright troll.

I can assure you that Elsevier does not run articles through a spellcheck.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#132

Post by [deleted] »

filleokus wrote: post #93

I’ve always thought that a more reasonable model for academic publishing would be to disconnect the availability of the content from the peer review / “publishing”. Couldn’t the PDF’s be hosted in the open, in a repository similar to arXiv, and then be “published”. Being published would then just basically mean that your paper gets tagged in the repository as “Published in Journal of X”, almost like a Twitter verific…

[deleted]

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#135

Post by gisely »

dproblem wrote: post #128
notafraudster wrote: post #76

I am an academic at a UC who publishes in Elsevier journals. I support this. I don't want copyright for anything I work on. I also work in a field where patent/IP stuff would not be relevant, so I view all of my work as public domain as far as I am concerned. With my code I either do CC0 or MIT licenses. I have had to publish in journals that are not open access -- mostly I just make pre-prints available to anyone wh…

Your university commercialization office will disagree. Check with them. From what I understand, it is illegal to release your code in CC0 or MIT unless you have taken permission from the commercialization office (Some universities allow GPL without explicit permission). Have you checked your contract ? Your work is not yours if it has any value. The value belongs to the university (mostly) - which also means you hav…

Grad student at Berkeley. The commercialization office only takes an interest if your work is high profile enough and has enough commercialization potential. Plenty of UC researchers release CC0 or MIT license code without issue.

Elsevier may be only one of many problems for the UC community, but that doesn’t mean it’s a distraction—- millions have been wasted every year subsidizing their profits. And Elsevier’s rent seeking business model is a problem for more than just the UCs. Hopefully this decision will end up being Elsevier’s death knell.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#136

Post by sitkack »

dproblem wrote: post #128
notafraudster wrote: post #76

I am an academic at a UC who publishes in Elsevier journals. I support this. I don't want copyright for anything I work on. I also work in a field where patent/IP stuff would not be relevant, so I view all of my work as public domain as far as I am concerned. With my code I either do CC0 or MIT licenses. I have had to publish in journals that are not open access -- mostly I just make pre-prints available to anyone wh…

Your university commercialization office will disagree. Check with them. From what I understand, it is illegal to release your code in CC0 or MIT unless you have taken permission from the commercialization office (Some universities allow GPL without explicit permission). Have you checked your contract ? Your work is not yours if it has any value. The value belongs to the university (mostly) - which also means you hav…

As enabled by Bayh–Dole Act [0]. Reversing this law would put publicly funded research back into the hands and minds of the public. This is the very law that creates a perverse incentive for universities to operate as for profit corporations, even with public dollars.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#137

Post by [deleted] »

apo wrote: post #45
jimbob45 wrote: post #26

Can anyone steelman the Elsevier side? I don't want to be caught in the headlights of I have to debate this.

Elsevier owns copyrighted material, which it licenses to individuals and institutions for a fee. The fee is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, which is no different than any other intellectual property such as movies, music, books, or software. If a customer is unable or unwilling to pay the prevailing rate, then no access will be granted. The argument that Elsevier uses unpaid academic labor and therefore should fa…

[deleted]

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#138

Post by dproblem »

btrettel wrote: post #121
hyperbovine wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: why do commenters here frequently seem to bear a chip on their shoulder when it comes to institutions of higher learning?

PhD student here. Here's my 20 minute rant: If I don't like academia, it's from my experience in academia. Doing good research won't guarantee you a position. On the contrary, what seems to matter is bringing in a lot of money via grants and publishing tons of papers in recognized journals. This better be done steadily too. I know one guy who didn't get tenure at my university, likely because he had a year or two wit…

Thanks for sharing this. I think it is a very good summary from a PhD student perspective. Now let me give you some more information :)

Academia wants to do research - and not pay minimum wage (not even to Tenured Full Professors - ask them how much they make from their grant during the months they are paid). Professors have figured out how to screw PhD students, and their own peers, thanks to competition.

If you look at any PhD student in a stream/major that has a value proposition, chances are - the student is imported. And in these streams (which matter?), research is value-less. Because there is no incentive to do any valuable work. Unfortunately, universities get lucky still - once in a while. Thankfully, this is beginning to end. Perhaps someone can quantitatively study this.

Interesting times - But first - in the US - health care needs a reboot ;-)

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#139

Post by sitkack »

olliej wrote: post #125
tingletech wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you put your author's final version in https://escholarship.org ? Do you ever use https://oapolicy.universityofcalifornia.edu/ ? (it's only open to senate faculty right now, be we are rolling it out for all ~240k UC employees) Also related https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu (disclosure, I'm the nominal tech lead for these)

Elsevier requires that authors do not do that - they can only provide copies of their papers in response to requests.

How about we have an autoresponder framework, like MailMain, that can handle mail with messages like

[paper-request] bacterial population analysis under exposure to fox news

?

And it would respond with the proper paper or papers attached.

Re: Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals

#140

Post by bahmboo »

sitkack wrote: post #136
dproblem wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your university commercialization office will disagree. Check with them. From what I understand, it is illegal to release your code in CC0 or MIT unless you have taken permission from the commercialization office (Some universities allow GPL without explicit permission). Have you checked your contract ? Your work is not yours if it has any value. The value belongs to the university (mostly) - which also means you hav…

As enabled by Bayh–Dole Act [0]. Reversing this law would put publicly funded research back into the hands and minds of the public. This is the very law that creates a perverse incentive for universities to operate as for profit corporations, even with public dollars. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act

Wouldn't that just put it back in the hands of the Federal Gov where it would languish like it did before?
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