From: "Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 16:06:45 +0000

Hi there,

I'm very happy to look into this.  To get started it would be really
helpful if Bob Persing could provide a little more information -
ideally the DOI for the article in question, or else the name of the
article and the journal.  In the interests of our moderator's good
humor, and everyone's email load, could I suggest that he and I work
on bottoming this out offline and then we can report back on what we
find.  (Bob, if this is agreeable to you, my email address is
[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
M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: [log in to unmask]
Twitter: @wisealic


-----Original Message-----

From: Jennifer Howard <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 03:02:04 +0000

Perhaps Alicia Wise could comment on this from Elsevier's perspective.

Best,

Jennifer Howard

Sent from my iPhone


On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 6:38 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> 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:
>
> "(c) 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