From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2018 02:17:09 +0000 Thanks, Jim. The thing that I find interesting about the monopoly argument is that it doesn’t really have anything to do with Elsevier as such. Copyright is a monopoly by its nature. (A limited one due to the Fair Use doctrine, but still a functionally pretty tight one – the document under copyright is unique, and only the copyright holder has the right to distribute, create derivative versions, publicly perform, etc. To the degree that there’s a market for an original work, the copyright holder has monopoly control of that market.) This means that the author of an article has the exact same control over the market for her article before she transfers copyright to Elsevier as Elsevier has after the copyright is transferred—no more, no less. Why is being a monopolist only objectionable when you’re Elsevier? (Of course, one possible answer is “It’s not. No one, including authors, should hold copyright in scholarly works.” I know this is a position held by some. And it’s the functional position of anyone who believes that all scholarship should be published under a CC BY license, since for all functional purposes a CC BY license places the work into the public domain.) --- Rick Anderson Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication Marriott Library, University of Utah Desk: (801) 587-9989 Cell: (801) 721-1687 [log in to unmask] From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2018 17:30:33 -0700 Rick, there were two points that struck me as particularly well-made: 1. They describe well and persuasively the de facto monopoly that publishers hold over articles whose rights have been signed over to them and make the point that this condition makes it effectively impossible to create a fair market in such information. (What is unclear is what remedies there might be at law in the EU for such a condition. I assume there must be relevant parallels.) 2. They also make the point that Elsevier and others are engaging in vertical integration with anti-competitive results thus: "Vertical integration of services creates a ‘virtual lock in’ environment for Elsevier’s customers and users, ensuring that its digital services crowd out and exclude those of its competitors from the market. This applies particularly to a range of downstream competitive services within scholarly publishing and communication, and now represents the ongoing concentration of scholarly infrastructures by Elsevier and a small number of ‘competitors’." I will just add that I well understand there will likely be response on these points from Elsevier in the process that now opens. My point in the original posting was just to say that the document struck me as thoughtful, well-argued, and unrhetorical. I may have been influenced by a recent viewing of a relevant film that struck me, apart from contributions by Anderson and Watkinson, as deficient on all those points. Jim O'Donnell ASU On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 4:45 PM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 22:45:08 +0000 > > Jim, what do you think are the strongest arguments that Tennant and Brembs make in their complaint? > > --- > Rick Anderson > Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication > Marriott Library, University of Utah > Desk: (801) 587-9989 > Cell: (801) 721-1687 > [log in to unmask] > > > From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]> > > Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 10:18:48 -0700 > > Here is a good source for the formal complaint filed on 26 October regarding RELX and the wider scholarly publishing market to the EU competition authority. Full text (22pp) PDF available -- https://zenodo.org/record/1472045#.W9iP5hNKjOR (My thanks to Gary Price's invaluable infoDOCKET for the link.) > > The complaint is partisan, no question, but represents to my eye a serious and coherent attempt to make the case for why big journal publishing can be interpreted as importantly marked by anti-competitive practices. The complaint is short, but not negligible, on practical remedies (pp. 20-21). In an environment where rhetoric and posturing often prevail in discussions of the topic, this one was refreshing. I hope that the respondents to this complaint can answer publicly with equal coherence and intelligence. > > Jim O'Donnell > Arizona State University