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Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

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Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#21

Post by rmk2 »

subpixel wrote: post #19
rmk2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia.edu bothers me on a somewhat different level: It becomes yet another of the levels were academia pretends to be more and more like the business world (with LinkedIn). The whole idea is to further display and reinforce your own splendour, adding subtle peer-pressure to everybody else. One of the things we get told frequently is that we need to "expand our social media presence", i.e. to get LinkedIn and acade…

"The whole idea is to further display and reinforce your own splendour, adding subtle peer-pressure to everybody else." I hadn't looked at Academia.edu through this lens before. I think it's in a position to accomplish a lot more, so here's hoping they focus on 'impact' and not just 'engagement'.

As one can see from my ever so slightly sour comments, my personal experience somewhat taints my view of the platform as a whole. Essentially, the people whose company I'd enjoy the least are most likely to have the appropriate profiles. I'm sure there are other things one could do with the platform, and I'm sure not everybody is like that. However, this isn't a balanced pro-and-con argument, it's a rant, so there is that! ;)

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#22

Post by czr80 »

moocowduckquack wrote: post #17
czr80 wrote: post #12

It's probably irrational, but Academia.edu's domain really annoys me - I dislike a company using a .edu domain. It feels deceptive, in some way. Come to think of it, implicitly calling for a boycott of another company while simultaneously trying to bootstrap a business based on violating that company's license terms feels pretty slimy too.

Is pretty slimy to misrepresent Academia.edu's business. If they were trying to bootstrap a business based on violating Elsevier's licence terms, then why have they complied with Elsevier's requests to take down content? If their business is based on violating the licence to that content then removing that content would remove their business, and this might be true if all scientific papers had to be published through…

I'm not sure why you're quoting standard boilerplate at me (as if any site with UGC would say the opposite of what you quoted), but I was just going by their official statement, which is rather hostile.

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#23

Post by moocowduckquack »

czr80 wrote: post #22
moocowduckquack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is pretty slimy to misrepresent Academia.edu's business. If they were trying to bootstrap a business based on violating Elsevier's licence terms, then why have they complied with Elsevier's requests to take down content? If their business is based on violating the licence to that content then removing that content would remove their business, and this might be true if all scientific papers had to be published through…

I'm not sure why you're quoting standard boilerplate at me (as if any site with UGC would say the opposite of what you quoted), but I was just going by their official statement, which is rather hostile.

You have a point. I may be going overboard from general dislike of Elsevier and I should probably withhold judgement for now.

edit - and sorry for quoting boilerplate at you, you are right, nobody should have to suffer that.

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#24

Post by legutierr »

czr80 wrote: post #12

It's probably irrational, but Academia.edu's domain really annoys me - I dislike a company using a .edu domain. It feels deceptive, in some way. Come to think of it, implicitly calling for a boycott of another company while simultaneously trying to bootstrap a business based on violating that company's license terms feels pretty slimy too.

I'm not terribly familiar with Academia.edu and how it operates, but from reading the article and a cursory review of their website, it seems that the papers it hosts are meant to be submitted by the authors themselves.

How is it slimy for Academia.edu to operate under the assumption that its contributors retain the right to publish their own work on the site? Or am I missing something about their business model?

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#25

Post by gphilip »

3JPLW wrote: post #4
res0nat0r wrote: post #2

Are the papers being DMCA'd under copyright by Elsevir?

That's the interesting part: Elsevier does not have copyright of these papers! The authors do. However, by publishing with Elsevier, you grant them an exclusive license for the right to publish and distribute the article.[1] Note that this even includes the author copy of the manuscript (albeit with slightly more lenient terms - the author may only post the copy to a personally operated website or their institution's…

Elsevier does not have copyright of these papers! The authors do.

This is not true for the vast majority [1] of papers; for most articles published by Elsevier, the authors have to sign away their copyright first. What the parent says applies only to papers published "open access" by Elsevier. Both the links posted by the parent talk about Elsevier's policy for this type of publication. To publish an article as open access, authors [2] have to pay nontrivial sums to Elsevier [3]:

For open access articles a fee is payable by the author, their institution or research funder to cover the costs associated with publication. Fees range from $500 - $5000 USD. Visit the individual journal homepages for specific pricing information.

Elsevier uses the term "subscription articles" for "regular" articles (where one doesn't have to pay this huge fee). For these regular articles, the authors have to sign away their copyright as part of a "Journal Publishing Agreement" before Elsevier will publish. Here is some sample legalese from a recent such agreement [4]:

I hereby assign to Elsevier Inc. the copyright in the manuscript identified above (government authors not electing to transfer agree to assign an exclusive publishing and distribution license) and any supplemental tables, illustrations or other information submitted therewith that are intended for publication as part of the manuscript (the "Article") in all forms and media (whether now known or hereafter developed), throughout the world, in all languages, for the full term of copyright, effective when and if the article is accepted for publication. This transfer includes the right to provide the Article in electronic and online forms and systems.

I strongly suspect that the number of articles published "open access" by Elsevier is a minuscule fraction of their total publication, just because there are not many academics who have that kind of money to spend.

[1] Admittedly, by my own reckoning; I couldn't find relevant publication numbers online.

[2] Or their funding agency, e.g., the institute/department/university/country where the authors work.

[3] http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/sponsored-articles

[4] http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/wstein/www/home/liangzh...

EDIT: Formatting.

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#26

Post by darkarmani »

gphilip wrote: post #25
3JPLW wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the interesting part: Elsevier does not have copyright of these papers! The authors do. However, by publishing with Elsevier, you grant them an exclusive license for the right to publish and distribute the article.[1] Note that this even includes the author copy of the manuscript (albeit with slightly more lenient terms - the author may only post the copy to a personally operated website or their institution's…

Elsevier does not have copyright of these papers! The authors do. This is not true for the vast majority [1] of papers; for most articles published by Elsevier, the authors have to sign away their copyright first. What the parent says applies only to papers published "open access" by Elsevier. Both the links posted by the parent talk about Elsevier's policy for this type of publication. To publish an article as open…

> government authors not electing to transfer agree to assign an exclusive publishing and distribution license

Can you issue a DMCA based on this type of clause? I wonder if they have issued DMCAs for documents falling under this?

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#27

Post by arabellatv »

The best things in life are free. And that's the problem here. Knowledge sharing, MOOC's (massive open online courses) and open source education is awesome and gives accessibility to the best information in the world. When you have a lot of knowledge, it becomes a commodity--and a precious commodity should have a high price tag, right?But knowledge really is priceless, and like paying for love, when you pay for knowledge, you might not get what you pay. And like paying for love, sometimes pimps want to control the market. And is that necessarily wrong? Because to make knowledge profitable means to make it sustainably accessible. A friend of mine (@habib) is a product manager at Elsevier and I wonder what he thinks about this. He happens to have been recruited by the company years ago from his blog on library science, and now he works on finding up-and-coming knowledge innovations. I'm going to tweet this to him and see what he thinks.

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#28

Post by ISL »

Osmium wrote: post #16

So I decided to finally fill out my Academia.edu profile recently and found there was no easy way to add papers. You could upload them or "import" them from another website, neither of which I could do due to the ambiguous copyright status of my papers, but you couldn't enter them manually. The most obvious and unambiguous way would be to enter a DOI, and have them query CrossRef for the paper metadata, but there see…

If they're doing that, perhaps it's because they want to leverage the "preprint server" exceptions to copyright agreements in order to amass a corpus of otherwise-locked papers. If the author doesn't upload it, it's scraping. If the author does upload it, it's at least a grey area, and may be permissible under many agreements.

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#29

Post by 3JPLW »

gphilip wrote: post #25
3JPLW wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the interesting part: Elsevier does not have copyright of these papers! The authors do. However, by publishing with Elsevier, you grant them an exclusive license for the right to publish and distribute the article.[1] Note that this even includes the author copy of the manuscript (albeit with slightly more lenient terms - the author may only post the copy to a personally operated website or their institution's…

Elsevier does not have copyright of these papers! The authors do. This is not true for the vast majority [1] of papers; for most articles published by Elsevier, the authors have to sign away their copyright first. What the parent says applies only to papers published "open access" by Elsevier. Both the links posted by the parent talk about Elsevier's policy for this type of publication. To publish an article as open…

Oh my, right you are. Here's a better source: http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re...

Isn't there a site that relies upon the "scholarly sharing" clause ("sharing individual articles with colleagues for their research use")? Where you request an article and someone can effectively email it to you?

Re: Academia.edu slammed with takedown notices from Elsevier

#30

Post by hkmurakami »

_delirium wrote: post #20
czr80 wrote: post #12

It's probably irrational, but Academia.edu's domain really annoys me - I dislike a company using a .edu domain. It feels deceptive, in some way. Come to think of it, implicitly calling for a boycott of another company while simultaneously trying to bootstrap a business based on violating that company's license terms feels pretty slimy too.

> It feels deceptive, in some way. It does violate expectations, in part because it violates the stated rules of the .edu registrar, and therefore what people expect to find under .edu. But prior to 2001 there was no formal enforcement, and a grandfather clause applies to domains registered up through late 2001. Academia.edu seems to fall in that category, even though the company and site themselves weren't started u…

Yup, IIRC the .edu domain is for universities only, but having gone to a small private school in SV, one of the parents registered the school's name under the .edu TLD and donated it to the school. I'm sure there are many elementary/middle/high schools that have .edu domains for similar reasons.
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