From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 02:20:41 -0400

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ...you would like all publishers to allow immediate green oa posting.
> What do you think some of the potential concerns about this might be, and
> how might those concerns be alleviated?
>
> ...With our posting policy our intent is certainly
> not to confuse or intimidate authors, but to ensure the sustainability of
> the journals in which they choose to publish.  Perhaps the Finch group will
> shed light on how to solve this challenge!

The concern is not about Elsevier's business goals but about the
*meaning* of a self-contradictory publisher agreement (sic) on the
rights (sic) retained (sic) by Elsevier authors that states:

"[As Elsevier author you retain] the right to post a revised
personal version of the text of the final journal article
(to reflect changes made in the peer review process)
on your personal or institutional website or server for
scholarly purposes"

and then follow it by a clause that contains the following piece  of
unmitigated FUD that (if authors and institutions don't ignore it
completely, as they should) contradicts everything that came before
it:

"(but not in... institutional repositories with mandates for
systematic postings unless there is a specific agreement with the
publisher)."

An author right is either retained or it is not. And if it is a right,
and it is retained, and a publisher agreement formally states that it
is retained, then the author can exercise that retained right
irrespective of whether the author's institution mandates that the
author should exercise that retained right.

It is as simple as that. And any attempt by Elsevier to defend
retaining the clause is just more FUD: A right is a right (and a
formal publisher agreement attesting that it is a right is only an
agreement) only if the agreed author right can be exercised without
requiring further publisher agreement.

Stevan Harnad