From: Bob Persing <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2013 09:17:11 -0500


On 12/10/2013 1:00 AM, LIBLICENSE-L automatic digest system wrote:
>
> Date:    Mon, 9 Dec 2013 15:40:57 -0500
> From:    LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Elsevier's Unforced Error
>
> From: "Pikas, Christina K." <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2013 09:49:22 -0500
>
> At the risk of coming off as an Elsevier defender.... I'd like to make
> some points in response:
>
> 1) Academia.edu is a private company running on venture capital -
> presumably they aspire to make money on the content that users upload
>
> 2) Authors signed a legal agreement with the publisher to transfer
> copyright. (many would argue that they shouldn't have, but they did,
> or they wouldn't have been published)

I think this is too broad a statement, at least in the case of Elsevier.

I wrote several articles for an Elsevier journal in the early 2000s.
At that time, they routinely sent authors a Transfer of Copyright
form, and a cover letter which read in part:

"If we do not hear from you by return, the article will carry a line
in place of the copyright line merely indicating that Elsevier
published the article."

I never signed or returned any of the copyright forms.  Yet every one
of the articles, when published, included the line:

"© 200[x] Elsevier Science, Inc."

If one of these articles was offered by a company like academia.edu,
would Elsevier have the legal right to send them a takedown notice? I
don't know.  A court might say that since I didn't protest against the
copyright statements when they were published, I tacitly agreed to
them.  Whether they would or not, though, I think the question is less
obvious than it's been represented.

Bob Persing
Univ. of PA Library