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posted by mrpg on Tuesday December 27 2016, @07:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the fight-for-your-rights dept.

Germany's DEAL project (in German), which includes over 60 major research institutions, has announced that all of its members are canceling their subscriptions to all of Elsevier's academic and scientific journals, effective January 1, 2017.

The boycott is in response to Elsevier's refusal to adopt "transparent business models" to "make publications more openly accessible."

Elsevier is notorious even among academic publishers for its hostility to open access, but it also publishes some of the most prestigious journals in many fields. This creates a vicious cycle, where the best publicly funded research is published in Elsevier journals, which then claims ownership over the research (Elsevier, like most academic journals, requires authors to sign their copyrights over, though it does not pay them for their writing, nor does it pay for their research expenses). Then, the public institutions that are producing this research have to pay very high costs to access the journals in which it appears. Journal prices have skyrocketed over the past 40 years.

No one institution can afford to boycott Elsevier, but collectively, the institutions have great power.

Germany-wide consortium of research libraries announce boycott of Elsevier journals over open access.

No full-text access to Elsevier journals to be expected from 1 January 2017 on.


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  • (Score: 2) by Ayn Anonymous on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:38PM

    by Ayn Anonymous (5012) on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:38PM (#446444)

    All scientistic journal publisher are parasites.
    Do you negotiate with a parasite ?

    Look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub [wikipedia.org]

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by nethead on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:48PM

    by nethead (4970) <joe@nethead.com> on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:48PM (#446448) Homepage

    Not all, check out: http://journal.hsforum.com/index.php/HSF/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope [hsforum.com]

    I helped the founder setup the site back in the mid-90s when he ran it from home on an ISDN line.

    --
    How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @08:55PM (#446454)

    Journals that are published by scientific societies are not parasites. But they should still be open access. Why fund society activities through library fees?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:32AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @04:32AM (#446555)

      And why do you, AC, get to make the rules? What if I (another AC) say that, while I have nothing to do with the Heart Surgury Journal, it doesn't look like a bad deal if you are interested in the papers. Why not fund the activities of the professional society (rent, IT, office help, etc) on publications? The money has to come from somewhere and annual dues don't usually go very far.

      Note, I'm not interested in funding mega-salaries for directors--those positions should pay some nominal honorarium, and be filled by retired experts in the field.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:58PM (#446732)

        different AC, but i'll respond. Recently, i have been interested in biological neural networks, neuroethology and a host of other topics related to information processing and organisation of stuff in the brain. I think i got like 4 -5 hundred papers (maybe more, the folder is like over 13 gb now) read in last 3 years.

        Had i paid for subscriptions to necessary journals.. I'm not sure how much exactly, but pretty sure i wouldn't be able to afford it. Like at least 2 times more then my former salary of 3.5-4k usd/month after taxes.

        Had i paid for all the papers i got off sci-hub for free PER PAPER, i think cost would have been higher. Some sites sell pdf files for _20 to like 45 dollars PER FILE._

        Had there been no sci-hub, id be hacking me a computer on some uni campus to have continued access. It's not about morality, fairness or ideology to me. It's about "this file has what i need to know, how can i get the file's content". I do understand the gatekeepers internal motivation, and hopefully the gatekeepers will understand mine someday. If i had the six digit budget they have, i'd pay.

  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:41AM

    by driverless (4770) on Wednesday December 28 2016, @05:41AM (#446563)

    Do you negotiate with a parasite ?

    Sure, like this [youtube.com].