The American Psychological Association started a “
pilot
program” issuing takedown notices to authors who had posted the final published pdfs of their articles on personal websites, ResearchGate, and Academia.edu (among other sites).
To be perfectly clear, APA is operating well within their rights here– authors did
sign
an agreement granting APA copyright to their works, and APA grants back the right for authors to archive their final accepted manuscript (or post prints), but not the final version of record. However, the step of issuing these notices directly
to authors is unusual, since it dispels the illusion that they still have the rights to share their work however they like, especially on scholarly social networks. This makes them more likely to re-evaluate their publishing options.