Elsevier is taking down papers from Academia.edu

Sat Dec 7 08:04:41 EST 2013

On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> List members may be aware that Elsevier sent out thousands of take-down
> notices for Green OA yesterday. See
> http://svpow.com/2013/12/06/elsevier-is-taking-down-papers-from-academia-edu/and much twitter discussion.
>
> These manuscripts are Green. They are self archived by authors after
> publication.
>
> But this is forbidden by Elsevier - the manuscripts can only be posted in
> an Institutional Repository (and then, I assume, only if there is no
> mandate requiring deposition).
>
> This is lunacy and it's to the discredit of the academics that they play
> this convoluted and sterile game created by the publishers. Publishers'
> reason for insisting on IRs over Academia.edu is that readers actually use
> Academia.
>
> The purpose of the BOAI declaration was to make scholarship available to
> everyone. This farce makes scholarship available to almost no-one.
>

Don't (just) boycott or fulminate: Deposit!

Elsevier may have enough clout with take-down notices to 3rd-party service
providers (and might be able to weather the backlash blizzard that will
follow) -- but not with institutions self-archiving their own research
output.

I take this as yet another cue to push 100% for immediate institutional
deposit mandates and the Button from all institutions and funders.

Since 2004 Elsevier formally recognizes their authors' right to do
immediate, unembargoed OA self-archiving on their institutional website.

And even if they ever do try to rescind that, closed-access deposit is
immune to take-down notices.

(But I don't think Elsevier will dare arouse that global backlash by
rescinding its 9-year policy of endorsing unembargoed Green OA -- they will
instead try to hope that they can either bluff authors off with their
empty-double-talk about "systematicity" and "voluntariness" or buy their
institutions off by sweetening their publication deal on condition they
don't mandate Green OA…)

>
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 12:01 AM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Bo-Christer Björk <
>> bo-christer.bjork at hanken.fi> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> The Elsevier study on OA prevalence study was part of broader report.
>>> The methods are just shortly mentioned so its a bit problematic to comment
>>> in detail.
>>> The global gold OA share found is 9,7 % of scopus articles, consisting
>>> of 5,5 % APC paid and 4,2 others (not just 5.5 % as Stevan noted below).
>>> The global hybrid share is 0.5. The green global share could be assumed to
>>> more or less be the sum of preprint versions of 6.4 % and accepted versions
>>> 5.0 %, adding directly to around 11 %. In particular if their method only
>>> took the first found full text copy and then classified it
>>>
>>> The big flaw of the study seems to be in the sample used, since it
>>> consisted of equal numbers of Scopus articles that had been published 2
>>> months, 6 months, 12 months and 24 months before the Googling. If the hits
>>> are simple added up for all the sampled articles this means that a major
>>> share of selfarchivied manuscripts are ignored, due to embargoes or author
>>> behavior in for instance selfarchiving once a year. For instance half of
>>> the copies in PMC would not be found in this way. Equally the very low
>>> figure for "Open Archives", 1.0 %, could be a result of this method. Our
>>> own results for delayed OA are around 5 %.
>>>
>>> So all in all the figures are much lower than if one includes articles
>>> made OA with at least a one year delay, which we find is the method we
>>> would recommend for studies claiming to give overall OA uptake figures.
>>> Whether this methodological choice was a conscious one from the study team
>>> or just an oversight is difficult to know. But if they would have adhered
>>> to a strict interpretation that only immediate OA is OA, the sampling
>>> should have been different. Now it's somewhere in between.
>>>
>>
>> Bo-Christer is quite right. Elsevier's arbitrary (and somewhat
>> self-serving) 6-category classification system (each of whose categories is
>> curiously labelled a "publishing system") leaves much to be desired:
>>
>> 1. Gold Open Access
>> 2. Hybrid
>> 3. Subsidised
>> 4. Open Archives
>> 5. Green Open Access: Pre-print versions
>> 6. Green Open Access: Accepted Author Manuscript versions
>>
>> It is not just what Elsevier called "Gold Open Access" that was Gold Open
>> Access, but also what they called "Subsidised." The difference is merely
>> that what they called Gold was publishing-fee-based Gold and what they
>> called subsidized was subsidy-based Gold.
>>
>> Elsevier also neglected to mention that "Subsidised" did not necessarily
>> mean subsidized either: There are also subscription-based journals that
>> make their online versions free immediately upon publication; hence they
>> are likewise Gold OA journals.
>>
>> What Elsevier called "Open Archives" is also not what it sounds like: It
>> seems to be *Delayed Access* articles, accessible only after a publisher
>> embargo, either on the publisher's website or in another central website,
>> such as PubMed Central, where publishers also deposit, sometimes
>> immediately, sometimes after an embargo.
>>
>> The two Green Open Access categories are also ambiguous.The pre-print
>> versions are (correctly) described as pre-refereeing drafts (but it would
>> take a lot closer analysis to determine whether the pre-prints differ from
>> the refereed version. It is easy to determine whether they were posted
>> before the official publication date but far from easy to determine whether
>> they were posted before refereeing. (The date of the letter of acceptance
>> of the refereed draft is often one that only the author and the editor know
>> -- though it is in some cases printed in the journal: did Elsevier look at
>> that too?)
>>
>> The post-refereeing author's drafts are presumably what they are
>> described as being, but it is not clear by what criteria Elsevier
>> distinguished them from pre-refeeeing drafts (except when they were in an
>> institutional repository and specifically tagged as unrefereed).
>>
>> So, as Bo-Christer points out, there are many methodological questions
>> about the data without whose answers their meaningfulness and
>> interpretability is limited. I would say that the timing issue is perhaps
>> the most important one. And to sort things out I would like to propose a
>> different system of classification:
>>
>> *Open Access (OA):* The term OA should be reserved for immediate OA,
>> regardless whether it is provided by the publisher (Gold) or the author
>> (Green). A reasonable error-margin for OA should be* within 3 months or
>> less from publication date*. Anything longer begins to overlap with
>> publisher embargoes (of 6, 12, 24 months or longer).
>>
>> *Delayed Access (DA): *The term DA should be used for delays of more
>> than 6 months. And besides the usefulness of separately counting 6, 12, and
>> 24 month DA, DA should also be analyzed as a continuous variable, reckoned
>> in months starting from the date of publication (including negative delays,
>> when authors post the refereed draft during the interval from acceptance
>> date to publication date. The unrefereed preprint, however, should not be
>> mixed into this; it should be treated as a separate point of comparison.
>>
>> So there is *Gold OA* (immediate), *Green OA* (immediate), *Gold DA* and *Green
>> DA* (measured by 6-month intervals as well as continuously in months.
>>
>> If a separate distinction is sought within Gold, then fee-based Gold,
>> subsidy-based Gold and subscription-based Gold can be compared, for both OA
>> and DA. The locus of deposit of the Gold is not relevant, but the fact that
>> it was done by the publisher rather than the author (or the author's
>> assigns) is extremely relevant.
>>
>> For Green OA and DA it is also important to compare locus of deposit
>> (institutional vs. institution-external). See mandates below.
>>
>> In all cases independence and redundancy should uniformly be controlled:
>> Whenever a positive "hit" is made in any category, it has to be checked
>> whether there are any instances of the same paper in other categories.
>> Otherwise the data are not mutually exclusive.
>>
>> If desired, all the above can be further subdivided in terms of *Gratis*(free online access) and
>> *Libre* (free online access plus re-use rights) OA and DA.
>>
>> Tracking Gold has the advantage of having clear unambiguous timing
>> (except if the publication date differs from the date the journal actually
>> appears) and of being exhaustively searchable without having to sample or
>> check (if one has an index of the Gold OA and DA journals).
>>
>> Tracking Green is much harder, but it must be done, because the fight for
>> OA is rapidly becoming the fight against embargoes. That's why Green OA
>> should be reserved for immediate access. It is almost certain that within
>> the next few years most journals will become Gold DA (with an embargo of 12
>> months). Hence 12 months is the figure to beat, and Green DA after 18
>> months will not be of much use at all.
>>
>> And the best way to push for immediate Green OA, is to upgrade all Green
>> mandates to require *immediate institutional deposit*, irrespective of
>> how long an embargo the mandate allows on DA. Requiring immediate deposit
>> does not guarantee immediate OA, but it guarantees immediate Almost-OA,
>> mediated by the repository's automated copy-request Button, requiring only
>> one click from the requestor and one click from the author.
>>
>> The immediate-deposit requirement plus the Button not only fits all OA
>> mandates (no matter how they handle embargoes of copyright), making it
>> possible for all institutions and funders to adopt it universally, but it
>> also delivers the greatest amount of immediate access for 100% of deposits:
>> immediate Green OA for X% plus (100-X)% Button-mediated Almost OA. And
>> this, in turn will increase the universal demand for immediacy to the point
>> where publisher embargoes will no longer be able to plug the flood-gates
>> and the research community will have the 100% immediate Green OA it should
>> have had ever since the creation of the web made it possible by making it
>> possible to free the genie from the bottle,
>>
>> *Stevan Harnad*
>>
>>
>>
>>>         On 12/6/13 5:31 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>>>
>>> Elsevier has just conducted and published a study commissioned by UK
>>> BIS: "International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base –
>>> 2013<https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/performance-of-the-uk-research-base-international-comparison-2013>
>>> "
>>>
>>> This study finds twice as much Green OA (11.6%) as Gold OA (5.9%) in the
>>> UK (where bothGreen OA repositories<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD>
>>>  and Green OA mandates<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm> began)
>>> and about equal levels of Green (5.0%) and Gold (5.5%) in the rest of the
>>> world.
>>>
>>> There are methodological weaknesses in the Elsevier study, which was
>>> based on SCOPUS data (Gold data are direct and based on the whole data set,
>>> Green data are partial and based on hand-sampling; timing is not taken into
>>> account; categories of OA are often arbitrary and not mutually exclusive,
>>> etc). But the overall pattern may have some validity.
>>>
>>> What does it mean?
>>>
>>> It means the effects of Green OA mandates in the UK<http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/geoname/geoname=5F2=5FGB.html> --
>>> where there are relatively more of them, and they have been there for a
>>> half decade or more -- are detectable, compared to the rest of the world<http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/geoname/>,
>>> where mandates are relatively fewer.
>>>
>>> But 11.6% Green is just a pale, partial indicator of how much OA Green
>>> OA mandates generate: If instead of looking at the world (where about 1% of
>>> institutions and funders have OA mandates) or the UK (where the percentage
>>> is somewhat higher, but many of the mandates are still weak and ineffective
>>> ones), one looks specifically at the OA percentages for effectively
>>> mandated institutions <http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/358882/>, the Green
>>> figure jumps to over 80% (about half of it immediate-OA and half embargoed
>>> OA: deposited, and accessible during the embargo via the repository's
>>> automated copy-request Button, with a click from the requestor and a click
>>> from the author).
>>>
>>> So if the planet's current level of Green OA is 11.6%, its level will
>>> jump to at least 80% as effective Green OA mandates are adopted.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, Gold OA will continue to be unnecessary, over-priced,
>>> double-paid (which journal subscriptions still need to be paid) and
>>> potentially even double-dipped (if paid to the same hybrid
>>> subscription/Gold publisher) out of scarce research funds contributed by UK
>>> tax-payers ("Fool's Gold<https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=b-CUUuTZNM-3kQeAj4CACA#q=harnad+%28fools+OR+fool%27s%29+gold>
>>> ").
>>>
>>> But once Green OA prevails worldwide, Fair Gold<https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=b-CUUuTZNM-3kQeAj4CACA#q=harnad+%22fair+gold%22> (and
>>> all the Libre OA re-use rights that users need and authors want to provide)
>>> will not be far behind.
>>>
>>> We are currently gathering data to test whether the immediate-deposit<https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=%22immediate+deposit%22+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg>
>>>  (HEFCE<https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=hefce+immediate+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg>
>>> /Liege<https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=liege+model++blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg>)
>>> Green OA mandate model is indeed the most effective mandate (compared, for
>>> example, with the Harvard<https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=Harvard+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbas=0&tbm=blg> copyright-retention
>>> model with opt-out, or the NIH<https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=NIH+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg> model
>>> with a 12 month embargo).
>>>
>>> *Stevan Harnad*
>>>
>>> P.S. Needless to say, the fact that the UK's Green OA rate is twice as
>>> high as its Gold OA rate is true *despite* the new Finch/FCUK policy<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1074-html> which
>>> subsidizes and prefers Gold and tries to downgrade Green -- certainly not
>>> because of it!
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> GOAL mailing listGOAL at eprints.orghttp://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> GOAL mailing list
>>> GOAL at eprints.org
>>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
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