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Elsevier might ask you to take your PDF down from your personal webpage

I got this lead from Retraction Watch awhile ago:

But it now appears that the Academia.edu takedowns were part of a broader effort to take down unauthorized copies of articles published in Elsevier journals from across the Internet. Universities were also targeted. Earlier this week, there were reports that the University of Calgary had received takedown requests and was warning faculty about posting their research online hit the academic blogosphere.

According to Thomas Hickerson, Vice Provost and Librarian at the University of Calgary, the Canadian university received a letter from a firm called Digimarc, which identified 32 instances where they believed published versions of journal articles had been posted in violation of Elsevier's copyright. These unauthorized copies appeared on the personal pages of faculty, department, and lab class websites.

The University complied with the removal request — and they weren't the only ones. Both the University of California-Irvine and Harvard University have confirmed to the Washington Post that they received similar takedown requests.

via www.washingtonpost.com

I think Elsevier is just asking you to follow the rules that you agreed to when you signed the copyright form. 

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  1. PaulS Avatar
    PaulS

    For me, this raises a big question. Sure, got it, academics need to live up to their agreements. But what right had they in the first place, to agree to hide taxpayer-funded research behind sky-high paywalls?
    More to the point, why do companies like Elsevier continue to exist at all? Who needs them?
    Even back in the day when I was involved a little with academic papers and the like, nearly all the important communication went by way of “preprints”. “Journals” had already become mainly musty archival thingies found in the “library”, but only at whatever hours the administration deigned to open it. Their utility was minimal, aside perhaps from credentialing, since their contents were largely out-of-date due to the interminable delays between submission and actual printing and distribution. In essence their publishers functioned mainly as valueless, parasitical money-sinks.
    Nowadays we have the Internet. We don’t need academic “publishers” any more, not for any purpose whatsoever. Indeed we were needing them less and less badly ever since the mimeograph and “preprints” were invented.
    So why don’t modern universities – or their consortia – simply go over exclusively to a web-based fully-open-access model? That would be certainly be far more in keeping with their public trust and lavish tax exemptions than concealing everything we taxpayers pay dearly for behind absurdly high paywalls. In other words, with commercial publishers no longer returning anything whatever for the big bucks they absorb – heck, they don’t even pay reviewers for their time – why not dump them altogether? What could possibly be lost?

    Reply
  2. David Zetland Avatar
    David Zetland

    Yes to PaulS’s comment AND I’ll add that publication agreements NEVER favor the author. At best, they allow author’s to circulate THEIR papers “for personal use,” which can be interpreted VERY broadly (or narrowly), depending on the publisher’s interest.
    The system is also broken due to market power (as you know with JEEM), and VERY FEW authors are going to turn down acceptance and publication by the time they get to the transfer of copyright. That would change if you had to sign copyright when submitting a paper!

    Reply
  3. John Whitehead Avatar
    John Whitehead

    I have at least 2 Elsevier publications available at ResearchGate. ResearchGate finds these and asks you to one-click upload them. It will be interesting to see how long it takes Elsevier to go after them.

    Reply
  4. willwheels Avatar
    willwheels

    You can always post the final accepted manuscript (prior to the page proofs).

    Reply
  5. Drcrosson Avatar
    Drcrosson

    As a gov’t researcher, I prefer open-source journals so that the public can access it as easily as possible. Technically anything written by a federal employee is in the public domain anyway–so can I ask an academic publisher to allow free access to my works? Cambridge actually had me sign a different release form for federal employees last year for a 2013 article, acknowledging the lack of copyright, but it’s still behind a wall.

    Reply
  6. willwheels Avatar
    willwheels

    My understanding is that you would have to put the article on your own website, but you should check with your Agency’s ethics (or similar) officials.

    Reply

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