From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 21 May 2015 13:31:58 -0400

I will not do yet another-by-point rebuttal, just to have it all once again
ignored by Alicia/Elsevier, responding yet again with nothing but empty
jargon and double talk:

"At each stage of the publication process authors can share their research:
before submission, from acceptance, upon publication, and post publication."


This “share” is a weasel word. It does not mean OA. It means what authors
have always been able to do, without need of publisher permission: They can
share copies — electronic or paper — with other individuals. That’s the
60-year old practice of mailing preprints and reprints individually to
requesters. OA means free immediate access online to all would-be users.

"For authors who want free immediate access to their articles, we continue
to give all authors a choice to publish gold open access with a wide number
of open access journals and over 1600 hybrid titles “


In other words, now, the only Elsevier-autthorized way authors can provide
OA is to pay extra for it (“Gold OA”).

Since 2004  Elsevier had endorsed authors providing free immediate
(un-embargoed) access (“Green OA”) by self-archiving in their institutional
repositories. The double-talk began in 2012.

Elsevier can’t seem to bring itself to admit quite openly (sic) that they
have (after a lot of ambiguous double-talk) back-pedalled and reneged on
their prior policy, instead imposing embargoes of various lengths. They
desperately want to be perceived as having taken a positive, progressive
step forward. Hence all the denial and double-talk.

They try to say that their decision is “fair” and “evidence based” —
whereas in fact it is based on asking some biassed and ambiguous questions
to some librarians, authors and administrators after having first used a
maximum of ever-changing pseudo-legal gibberish to ensure that they can
only respond with confusion to the confusion that Elsevier has sown.

We cannot get Elsevier to adopt a fair, clear policy (along the lines of
their original 2004 one) but we should certainly publicize as loudly and
widely as possible the disgraceful and tendentious spin with which they are
now trying to sell their unfair, unclear and exploitative back-pedalling.

Stevan Harnad