From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2015 13:15:09 -0400

William Gunn (Mendeley) wrote:

“[E]verything you could post publicly and immediately before, you can
do so now. There's a NEW category of author manuscript, one which now
comes with Elsevier-supplied metadata specifying the license and the
embargo expiration date, that is subject to the embargo. The version
the author sent to the journal, even post peer-review, can be posted
publicly and immediately, which wasn't always the case before…”

Actually in the 2004-2012 Elsevier policy it was the case: Elsevier
authors could post their post-peer-review versions publicly and
immediately in their institutional repositories. This was then
obfuscated by Elsevier from 2012-2014 with double-talk, and now has
been formally embargoed in 2015.

Elsevier authors can, however, post their post-peer-review versions
publicly and immediately on their institutional home page or blog, as
well as on Arxiv or RePeC, with an immediate CC-BY-NC-ND license. That
does in fact amount to the same thing as the 2004-2012 policy (in fact
better, because of the license), but it is embedded in such a
smoke-screen of double-talk and ambiguity that most authors and
institutional OA policy-makers and repository-managers will be unable
to understand and implement it.

My main objection is to Elsevier’s smokescreen. This could all be
stated and implemented so simply if Elsevier were acting in good
faith. But to avoid any risk to itself, Elsevier prefers to keep
research access at risk with complicated, confusing edicts.