From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2013 15:37:00 +0000 In Friday's Washington Post, a major story for university's in a blog post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/19/how-one-publisher-is-stopping-academics-from-sharing-their-research/ Elsevier is sending takedown notices for publisher pdfs of Elsevier copyrighted articles on university websites, mostly individual author pages. The University of Calgary was the first institution in North America to report this new development from Elsevier. Calgary received a letter from a firm called Digimarc which identified 32 examples of articles Digimarc claimed violated Elsevier's copyright. Also reporting on takedown notices are Harvard (23 articles) and UC Irvine. It is possible many more North American institutions are receiving these same notices as DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) notices are often delivered to IT departments, not to libraries. Library institutional repositories do not seem to be a target, perhaps because those sites often accept the author's final peer reviewed article, not the publisher's pdf version. And many honor publisher embargoes of content. Elsevier's decision can in part be understood by reference to Tom Reller Elsevier VP and Head of Global Corporate Relations in a website posting at http://www.elsevier.com/connect/a-comment-on-takedown-notices responded to questionis from the Chronicle of Higher Education b explaining " Any author who publishes in an Elsevier journal can also post and share other versions of their article, following some simple guidelines that vary by the version of the article to be shared" Elsevier has made the calculation that the final version of an article is where their profitability lies, and so they have moved to protect that version. In contra to this, Thomas Hickerson, Vice Provost and Librarian at Calgary noted in the Washington Post piece that feedback on published reserach, "is the heart and soul of academe and it's really critical to the way research benefits society broadly,". By implementing rigorous toll access to all their articles, Elsevier is in effect saying that the various "green " versions of articles out there are not a threat. Scholars need the final version, the version of record to cite, to read, and ultimately to trust. This debate between Elsevier and authors is ultimately between Elsevier and institutions, going to the core of what Higher education is about. How long will institutions go along and support a system that hampers scholarly dialogue? Chuck Hamaker