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UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

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Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#81
post #11

I hope they find a long term archival approach for the literature that’s no longer being paid for. In CS, there was a transition from older journals to newer publishers around 1980, and much of the literature prior to that is simply inaccessible.

inaccessible? That's a strong word. Just because something is not digitized doesn't mean it's not there. Have you talked to a reference librarian? Material in archives may be inaccessible because of legal stipulations or just simply unindexed, or writings are known to exist only in manuscript - but "not online" or "in off-site storage" doesn't qualify.

I agree with this statement. Just it is not there didn't mean it is not around. There is a many scientific journals sites out there. In my field, I have access to journals way back to 1880s. However they are split among three sites; JSTOR, Sage and one of Elsevier largest competitor (I forgot the name). Just talk to the librarian, they have so much resources and will get the journal for anyone who need it.

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#82
post #4

This brings an interesting anecdote from when I suddenly had this question of how my seniors working in the 80s and 90s in a small Indian lab managed to get the literature they want (when their small lab was still one of the most advanced institutions in the state). My senior said they’d pretty much have to write up a literature request letter, attach a cheque and mail it to the main library in New Delhi, and they wo…

> Just like Wikipedia and the internet didn’t change everyone’s ability to know things in any meaningful way What are you talking about? Wikipedia substantially changed everyone's ability to know things. In fact, Wikipedia was so good at increasing everyone's ability to know things, I wonder if we're now having to build back a way to synthesize and ponder our desired context for all those things. That problem may be…

Actually, why isn't there a Wikipedia-like open system for scientific publication?

It doesn't seem to be too hard technically or operationally.

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#83
post #80
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they sell medical diagnostic tools, text etc. [0]. If they actually do that, that is not represented in the link you provided. The whole page is about teaching materials about the field, and one piece of software to _simulate_ "real-world patient data systems". On their whole website I couldn't find a single product/service that a company would use in their direct operative work (in contrast to training).

Sorry for the crummy link. See the LexisNexis comment above. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RELX .

Thanks for clarifying!

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#84
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's description isn't very helpful sadly - they're like the real world data version of Microsoft or SAP, they have a ton of different products that are basically databases of data collected from a ton of different sources. Lawyers use LexisNexis to find research legal precedent and find the contact information of defendants to send cease and desists or where to serve them papers; universities and public schoo…

Oh wow I had no idea, now I want to have a look at it.

When you get done I suspect you will have a strong urge to take a shower and also a newer, deeper understanding of "ignorance is bliss"

Google are amateurs compared to LN....

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only do they allow you to get your work out earlier Why can't you just upload to arxiv and perhaps places like researchgate or academia.edu ?

Uploading to arxiv is a pre-print. That's exactly what the parent is saying that they do. Some journals will forbid this as part of the publishing contract.

That can be circumvented using the standard trick:

https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/119002/7319

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#86
post #2

Elsevier knows this. We have just finish negotiating a new national contract with them, and to our surprise did they agreed to all of our demands. They know which way the wind is blowing and are trying to pivot as quickly as an old lumbering giant can.

Losing UC as a subscriber is a huge own goal for Elsevier. Researchers will get used to: 1. always posting preprints, 2. always looking for preprints first, 3. using scihub to get older papers, 4. citing and sharing material using links to preprints or scihub by default. They will spread these habits to their students and colleagues and as they move between institutions. UC is huge across all the constituent colleges…

Researchers around the world are already used to (3) and (4). I would guess also (2) but maybe that depends on age and location, and anyway I can't say for sure. We're definitely not there yet when it comes to (1), so - if you're an academic, please make sure to pre-publish all of your research so greedy corporations don't get their grubby IP hands on them.

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#87

At least in my field (applied machine learning/optics) and my partner's field (cognitive neuroscience) pre-prints are a massive deal. Not only do they allow you to get your work out earlier, google scholar will typically link your pre-print to the published article eventually so anyone who doesn't have a subscription can get a PDF no problem. This probably nullifies the negative effects of not having access to the pu…

Arxiv was a godsend.

Also https://eprint.iacr.org/, https://www.biorxiv.org/, and https://www.ssrn.com/. Probably others too.

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#88
post #84
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow I had no idea, now I want to have a look at it.

When you get done I suspect you will have a strong urge to take a shower and also a newer, deeper understanding of "ignorance is bliss" Google are amateurs compared to LN....

Yep I gave it a try today semantic/faceted searching is really the next level of search... I wish we could do that for general web search

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#89
The headline claiming "limited negative impact" does not refer to fact but to the opinion of library staff based upon complaints. The pricing of Elsevier journals and their access limitation policies keep recent research out of the hands of scholars and researchers--information which helps drive future research. Many authors choose to use Open Access journals with very different access policies.

Re: UC’s termination of Elsevier contract has had limited negative impact (2020)

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arxiv was a godsend.

Also https://eprint.iacr.org/ , https://www.biorxiv.org/ , and https://www.ssrn.com/ . Probably others too.

I made a list for linguistics here: https://gkayaalp.com/blog/20200319_lingpreprints.html

Some of them are general social sciences tho.

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