From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2015 12:52:52 +0000

There is so much to say in refutation of this message, but I will make
just two points.

First, I don't believe people are "confused" by Elsevier's new policy.  We
know what it says and what it is up to, in spite of the puffery and
doublespeak of the press releases.  It is not confusion but anger that is
behind the widespread rejection of the policy.  Elsevier is overreaching
itself and claiming a right to interfere with the fundamental processes of
scholarship.  The scholarly community is perfectly right to object when a
service that should be instrumental tries to claim that it is the
controlling interest in the scholarly process, such that it is entitled to
dictate the terms of that process and to impede it in order to get its way.

Second, and relatedly, I want to push back on the sentence that
says,"Generally embargoes should be set on a title-by-title basis by
publishers."  Why should they be?  For one thing, it is the authors and
the users in the academic community who should determine what is best in
terms of sharing.  Elsevier wants to control the process, but only for
reasons of preserving a business model and protecting itself from changing
conditions it still seems unable to fully understand.  That is allowing,
as I said in a previous post, the tail to wag the dog.  Of course, they
*can* do it because of a set of legal and economic relationships that made
sense once upon a time, but the backlash against the new policy indicates
a strong desire in the academy to change those relationships.

The second "why" about this statement is why embargoes should be different
from title to title?  The publishing community tries to justify this based
on a bespoke study of "article half-life," a concept that has no
demonstrable relationship to subscriptions.  If Elsevier cannot
demonstrate the specific need for 48 month embargoes in some disciplines
by showing an impact on subscriptions when embargoes in those fields are
shorter than that, there is no justification for the demands they are
making.  In any case, when subscriptions are sold as a bundle, how can
different embargoes for individual titles make any sense, since there can
be little or no impact on subscriptions to those individual titles?

Perhaps Dr. Wise would answer a simple question: Was Elsevier losing money
under its old policy?  This change has obviously not brought greater
simplicity or fairness to the process of publishing with Elsevier -- that
is just the rhetoric of the press release.  So it seems like the only real
justification would be to protect slipping income.  Is that what was
happening?  If not, why make the change?

Kevin Smith

Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications
Duke University Libraries
Durham, NC 27708
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On 6/4/15 7:11 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>From: "Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)" <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2015 16:49:31 +0000
>
>Hello Everyone ­
>
>After a week of listening to, and conversing with, a number of
>researchers, librarians, and other stakeholders, we¹ve honed in on the
>following points that seem to be causing the most confusion and angst.
>Our responses on each point are spread across comment threads and
>listservs, and I felt it might be helpful to post some key points
>here:
>
>1.      Embargoes: These are neither new, nor unique, to Elsevier.
>Publishers require them because an appropriate amount of time is
>needed for subscription journals to deliver value to customers before
>the full-text becomes available for free.  Confusion has arisen
>because we haven¹t always enforced our embargos, preferring to work
>with Institutional Repositories (IRs) directly to develop
>institution-specific agreements.  Our new policy eliminates the need
>for repositories to have agreements with us.  Instead we are now
>communicating our embargoes more clearly.
>
>2.      Embargo Lengths: Our embargo periods are typically between 12
>and 24 months, with some longer or shorter exceptions.  We are now
>hearing that it is the length of our embargo periods that is of
>concern rather than the fact of their existence. Generally embargos
>should be set on a title-by-title basis by publishers, however we
>recognize that other stakeholders seek influence over embargo lengths
>too and this is reasonable. We have already been planning a review of
>our embargo periods in 2015.  While I cannot pre-judge the outcome of
>this review, we are very conscious of the many new funding body
>policies that have emerged in the last year with 12 month embargo
>periods all of which we will factor in.
>
>3.      Author¹s rights to self-archive in their IR: We have removed
>the need for an institution to have an agreement with us before any
>systematic posting can take place in its institutional repository.
>Authors may share accepted manuscripts immediately on their personal
>websites and blogs, and they can all immediately self-archive in their
>institutional repository too.  We have added a new permission for
>repositories to use these accepted manuscripts immediately for
>internal uses and to support private sharing, and after an embargo
>period passes then manuscripts can be shared publicly as well.
>
>4.      Retrospective Action: Based on helpful conversations over the
>last week we know we need to make it much more clear that we do not
>expect IRs and other non-commercial repositories to take retrospective
>action.
>
>5.      New IR Services: We are developing protocols and technology to
>help non-commercial sites implement this policy going forward, and
>have been piloting tools and services to help automate this ­ for
>example tagged manuscripts and APIs with metadata and other
>information about articles published by researchers on your campuses.
>To register for more information or to express interest in
>participating in a pilot, please see this page.
>
>6.      More clarity: Our new sharing and hosting policies are
>intended to provide clarity to researchers so that they understand how
>they can share their research, including on newer commercial sharing
>sites, and to lift the old requirement for IRs to have agreements with
>us.
>
>I have also uploaded a slide to slideshare showing the differences
>between our old and new policies and continue to encourage you all to
>read these for yourselves:
>
>http://www.slideshare.net/aliciawise/whats-changed-in-sharing-policy
>
>see also:
>http://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-updates-its-policies-perspectives
>-and-services-on-article-sharing
>
>We appreciate the feedback we have received, and wish to continue
>these discussions.  We look forward to engaging with you ­ for example
>at the upcoming Open Repositories conference and at library
>conferences such as ALA.  You can also always email me directly at
>[log in to unmask]
>
>With kind wishes,
>
>Alicia
>
>Dr Alicia Wise
>Director of Access and Policy
>Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB
>E: [log in to unmask]