From: Fred Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2013 20:49:10 -0500

A few points.  Most faculty, unlike many of us on this list, do not
deal with licenses and copyright as a routine part of their jobs.
Most don't read and/or don't understand what they are signing.  They
are under pressure to publish; one might be able to build an effective
legal argument that they signed those contracts under duress.  While I
generally agree that people should read and abide by the terms of the
agreements that they sign, Elsevier has gone way overboard on this
one.  Posting on sites like academia.edu, etc. is very unsystematic
and sporadic. It is not going to replace library subscriptions.  Most
of the people who download articles from such sites are highly
unlikely to pay for those not available for free.  Elsevier is
probably spending more in tracking down articles and sending takedown
notices than they will make as a result.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Dean for Collections and Operations
University of Dayton Libraries
300 College Park
Dayton, OH 45469-1360



On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 3:40 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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)
>
> 3) The agreement they signed allowed them to put some version on their
> own page or in their institutional repository - not to give to a
> company with the license that the company could make it available for
> any and all users to download
>
> 4) When these authors joined Academia.edu, they had to agree to the
> terms of service here: http://www.academia.edu/terms . Uploading
> things for which you do not have the copyright is against the terms.
> It's listed in the General Prohibitions.
>
> Too bad they got caught. I'm not sure why Elsevier waited so long, but
> probably they mulled over the risk of letting this pass and decided it
> was too big. I am curious what will happen with the content on
> Mendeley.
>
> This is only my opinion (NAL) and does not reflect anything my
> employer or school have to say about anything.
>
> Christina Pikas