From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 08:08:30 -0400

There are two issues here.

1) Elsevier's fear of losing subscription revenue. Although
unnecessarily paranoid, in my view (see experiences with arXiv), it is
perhaps understandable if you get into the mind of a large publisher.
Embargoes adequately deal with this fear.

2) Elsevier's fear of loss of control after the embargo periods.
That's why they require CC-BY-NC-ND for deposited author manuscript
versions even after embargoes. While there may be journals for which
there is a sponsored reprint market even for older articles, that is
by no means the case for all journals, and a blanket CC-BY-NC-ND is
unwarranted. For a limited number of journals it may perhaps be an
understandable policy, but if that sponsored reprint revenue is
substantial, one might expect the subscription price for those
journals to be appreciably and demonstrably lower. If not, these would
be cases of double-dipping on a par with hybrid open access journals
(for those who don't think 'double dipping' is a red herring). For all
other journals, the CC-BY-NC-ND requirement is control freakery. I see
no reason why OA advocates should give in to that.

Jan Velterop



> On 27 May 2015, at 18:53, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 27 May 2015 13:44:11 -0400
>
> I beg the OA community to remain reasonable and realistic.
>
> Please don't demand that Elsevier agree to immediate CC-BY. If
> Elsevier did that, I could immediately start up a rival free-riding
> publishing operation and sell all Elsevier articles immediately at cut
> rate, for any purpose at all that I could get people to pay for.
> Elsevier could no longer make a penny from selling the content it
> invested in.
>
> CC-BY-NC-ND is enough for now. It allows immediate harvesting for data-mining.
>
> The OA movement must stop shooting itself in the foot by
> over-reaching, insisting on having it all, immediately, thus instead
> ending up with next to nothing, as now.
>
> As I pointed out in a previous posting, the fact that Elsevier
> requires all authors to adopt CC-BY-NC-ND license is a positive step.
> Please don't force them to back-pedal!
>
> Please read the terms, and reflect.
>
> SH