Elsevier denies it will force SSRN users on to other services
Purchase
of research repository has horrified open access advocates who fear acquisition
marks attempt to maintain control over publishing
The
publishing giant Elsevier has insisted that it will not force academics to sign
up to its other services in order to use the newly acquired Social Science
Research Network (SSRN) repository.
But
Elsevier’s purchase of SSRN earlier this week, which has dismayed open access
advocates, could be the first of many as the publisher looks to build up an
online network of scholars as an alternative to its publishing business.
The
company did not disclose on what financial terms it had bought SSRN, which acts
as a repository largely for pre-publication papers in social sciences and
humanities and has more than 2 million members.
Open
access advocates, who have been highly critical of Elsevier because of its
historic opposition to open access and what they see as excessive profits, fear
that the publisher could crack down on the free dissemination of papers.
“Elsevier
will do with SSRN precisely what most benefits Elsevier. Let's not pretend any
different,” wrote Mike Taylor, a palaeontologist at the University of Bristol, on Twitter.
One
of the key issues is whether Elsevier will use its ownership of SSRN to force
academics to sign up to its Mendeley reference management service, which it
bought in 2013. Mendeley is competing with other online academic networks such
as Academia.edu and ResearchGate, and Elsevier hopes to use it to offer
academics and universities data about research dissemination.
Announcing the deal on Elsevier’s website, Gregg Gordon, SSRN’s
chief executive, said that “in time, SSRN will migrate onto the Mendeley
technology platform” and that it would “develop a timeline for eventual
integration as a separate community on the Mendeley platform”.
Speaking
to Times Higher Education,
Tom Reller, Elsevier’s head of global corporate relations, said that the
publisher was not going to force users to join Mendeley to gain access to SSRN.
“Nothing changes in the foreseeable future,” he said.
Another
question is whether Elsevier will use its ownership of SSRN to remove already
published papers which it has copyright over. In his announcement, Mr Gordon
said that the “majority” of papers on SSRN were unpublished working papers “the
versions of which Elsevier has always been open to sharing” and said that “both
existing and future SSRN content will be largely unaffected”.
Paul
Gowder, a law professor at the University of Iowa, attacked these
as “weasel words” in a post on the website Medium and warned that they gave the company “a lot of room” to
“adopt aggressive interpretations of its own contract and copyright rights and
then implement those interpretations by fiat on the massive platform that it
now owns”.
Asked
whether any papers on SSRN would be taken down after the Elsevier acquisition,
Mr Gordon told THE that
he was “certain that there are some papers that slip through the cracks” in
terms of copyright infringement, but insisted the site had “regularly” taken
down such papers in the past and that its policy of being “respectful” towards
copyright was not changing.
He
added that SSRN did not take any copyright rights over shared material and this
would not change.
The
question now concerning open access advocates is whether Elsevier will buy up
other open access repositories in order to control more of the online space in
which academics work.
Asked
whether the publisher planned further acquisitions, Mr Reller said that the
company was looking to expand its network so it was of even more use to
scholars.
Source | https://www.timeshighereducation.com
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
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