Mendeley users revolt against Elsevier takeover

Post by Someone » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 10:47 PM UTC

kriro wrote: post #100

Ideologically I feel like every tax funded researcher (i.e. the vast majority) has an obligation to make all his work publicly accessible. Change will happen once open access journals get A level status. If there's enough that are sufficiently peer reviewed a simple legislative fix (for state funded/supported education which is the case for most forms of education) would be to treat open access publications preferent…

Post by bioinformatics » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 11:23 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #27

bioinformatics wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference of Mendeley is that they had a good PR team, and composed of academic, "people like us". And they were everywhere, and this PR team banged on the note that Mendeley was going to be open and "grassroots" academic, because it was made by academics. Now, we know the real answer.

All those employees just turned into evil drones this week because of the acquisiton?

Post by bioinformatics » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 11:31 PM UTC

adimitrov wrote: post #35

res0nat0r wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those employees just turned into evil drones this week because of the acquisiton?

This week? No. One, two, or more years down the road? We shall see. I'm not 100% behind the Mendeley hate right now, but they're against all odds. While everything I've heard from the team so far, including on the prominent HN threads, has been reassuring and positive, it's still just words. People are making predictions about the future right now, and no words will be able to sway public opinion. Only action, and ti…

Post by Pitarou » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 1:16 AM UTC

bmalee wrote: post #20

Pitarou wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. My bad. I had a real need and Mendeley's software (which is awesome, by the way) came to my rescue; issues of who controls it and what they might want from me someday seemed very far away at the time.

This is how capitalism works. Companies (and individuals) try to maximise their own profits; and (ideally) the most profitable course of action is the one which is the most beneficial to the most people. Altruism has no place in it. And yet, people are continually surprised and disappointed when a company takes a profitable course of action, rather than ignoring profits for altruistic reasons.

Post by freshhawk » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:18 AM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #47

onemorepassword wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an organization dedicated, not to maximize profits for shareholders, but to keep power over scientific research in people’s hands That's why we have governments. No, I'm not being sarcastic. The public sector is there to serve the public good, and this is quite obviously a public good. I'm not anti-privatization either. Private exploitation under public laws and guidelines is a common strategy to solve these issues.…

> It's time we address the real problem. The real problem is that some companies manage to exploit a monopoly granted to them by the government in ways that are not pleasing to the public. The government is the entity which created the problem. Granted, while solving another but it will still be the government agents who break down your door and arrest you if you build an unauthorized competitor or even just try to r…