
UC terminates subscriptions with Elsevier in push for open access - tingletech
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-terminates-subscriptions-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher-push-open-access-publicly
======
pwthornton
One of the reasons you are probably seeing this happen are budget cuts. Major
university systems have seen their funding be cut by state governments.
Elsevier charges an obscene amount of money to access information that is
often publicly funded.

If money were no object, you'd probably see less university systems rejecting
Elsevier. But money is becoming a bigger issue.

Ultimately, this is starting to put major university systems in line with
individual users, and we should see an explosion of open-access information in
the next decade.

Remember when Harvard University said it can't afford journal publishers'
price: [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-
univ...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-
journal-publishers-prices)

~~~
IshKebab
The other reason is of course Scihub. You pretty much can't do research
without access to Elsevier's journal, so before Scihub, university libraries
just didn't have a choice. Now they do.

Of course, none of them are ever going to _say_ in a million years "Yeah our
researchers don't mind so much now that they can get any paper illegally.
Extortion over.", but it doesn't take much reading between the lines.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> Of course, none of them are ever going to say in a million years "Yeah our
> researchers don't mind so much now that they can get any paper illegally.
> Extortion over.

Not only do universities not openly admit to SciHub usage, but there are even
university administrations that still warn their students and staff against
using SciHub.

I recently read through a fairly prominent European university’s freshly-
revised course for undergraduates on how basic use of the library and research
methods (I saw this as part of my job, so naturally I won’t name the
institution). Among the course content on how to find journal articles in
JSTOR and Web of Science, how to properly cite your sources, etc. were
admonitions not to use SciHub because it “is illegal”, and warnings that use
of SciHub can lead to failing a course or having one’s student status revoked.

~~~
genidoi
From that information, I would actively want to check SciHub out if I had
never heard of it. Academia + notoriety sounds novel and useful.

Part of why SciHub has succeeded is just how easy it is. Copy/pasting an
arbitrary DOI from any source will always beat most journals arcane login
systems (especially on mobile) and their divine mission of obscuring "Download
PDF" buttons.

~~~
cinquemb
SciHub is amazing. I'm not in academia or industry, and I was working on
trying to find some eutectics of simple ionic halide mixtures with some
software that was missing some of the activation energy coefficients for some
of the ion interactions. Must have looked at at least 30+ papers, which if
university-publishing house cartel have their way, would have cost me
thousands of dollars just to look at. Between sci-hub and all the open source
code from labs and individuals around the world, it's just breathtaking what
can be explored now outside the confines of academia.

~~~
selimthegrim
Curious what the application was?

~~~
cinquemb
Mostly exploring molten salt mixtures for thermal energy storage with a larger
working temperature range and a reasonable melting point compared to what's
used typically.

~~~
lawrenceyan
Do you work at a molten salt energy storage company? What's the industry
landscape there like? Like still primarily R&D, or is it mostly about
production now.

~~~
cinquemb
No I don't, just a renewable energy hobbyist since about a decade ago when I
interned at P&G chemicals researching transesterifcation/industrial processes
for biodiesel production. I mostly want to experiment my own micro CSP system,
but never really had to tools to explore salt combinations theoretically in a
way that was fun for me.

------
PascLeRasc
This is great news. The UC system has a ton of academic clout and this will
push smaller universities to close their contracts and bump up the impact
factor of open access journals.

Elsevier's also by far the shittiest publisher in their practices [1]. 40%
profit margins on publicly-funded research that the public doesn't get to
access is disgusting. I can't wait for them to go out of business.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600?s...](https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600?s=09)

~~~
FabHK
> Elsevier's also by far the shittiest publisher in their practices

Yeah. Interesting: the longest part of the Wikipedia article used to be
Criticism & Controversies, but it has been restructured quite a bit. Still
lists many despicable acts.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier)

Ceterum censeo Elsevier(um) esse delendum.

~~~
PascLeRasc
The whole article is criticisms and controversies, I love it.

~~~
justwalt
I’m surprised the article doesn’t have a tag for point of view, although it’s
hard to disagree with the claims. Still, it’s one of the most hostile articles
I think I’ve read on Wikipedia.

~~~
FabHK
And if you read the Talk page, you'll realise that several Elsevier employees
have been updating the article. That it is still so hostile to Elsevier is
then maybe an indication of how despicable the company really is.

------
chrispeel
I'm a member of the IEEE, which I believe also has a problem. They charge
authors to publish, then charge IEEE members to access the journals. All this
while the reviewers and editors are working for free. At a bare minimum, they
should make the journals open to all members. One way to cut costs is to stop
printing paper journals.

I'd love to hear what the UC system has to say about the IEEE.

~~~
brandonjm
You can choose to publish open access conference papers through IEEE but you
have to pay around $2000 (I forget if it was USD or AUD). I'm not sure about
the exact costs for an open access Journal paper though. That said, IEEE don't
prevent you from listing your own paper on your own website (in it's accepted
form, not published form) provided you link the correct DOI and include the
reference.

~~~
scott_s
The ACM is similar, and I think (hope) they will eventually have to just open
up all published papers by default. The main difference between the IEEE and
the ACM to Elsevier is that the IEEE and ACM are _professional organizations_.
They have a non-profit mission, whereas Elsevier is a for-profit company. I
have no problem reviewing papers and serving on program committees when the
organizing entity is a non-profit service organization. I think the the ACM
and IEEE have a future in a fully open-access world, but Elsevier does not.

------
burtonator
If you're interested other Elsevier shenanigans they now encrypt your PDFs
that you add to Mendeley so you don't even have access to your OWN research.

[https://getpolarized.io/2019/01/23/mendeleys-encrypted-
repos...](https://getpolarized.io/2019/01/23/mendeleys-encrypted-repository-
is-fundamentally-anti-science.html)

~~~
dangom
I've recently migrated from Mendeley to Zotero. I first had to downgrade
Mendeley because recent releases also encrypt your local database to guarantee
lock-in [1]. Quite scary.

[1]
[https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import](https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/mendeley_import)

~~~
dr_coffee
Zotero has been great. I switched four years ago and never looked back. Plugin
support is great- I have drag and drop support in my latex editor and fairly
easy citation selection in Lyx

~~~
jessriedel
I love zotero, and would never switch to Mendeley because of the lock-in
problem, but the lack of any mobile apps is a real problem. Reading and
annotating on an iPad is a key ability, and the 3rd part PaperShip is buggy
and no longer under development.

------
dannykwells
I think this will be an important link to give context to this development:

[https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-
uc/pub...](https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-
negotiations/uc-and-elsevier/)

\- No matter what happens moving forward, UC scholars will still be able to
use ScienceDirect to access most articles published prior to January 1, 2019
because UC has permanent access rights to them. (Please see the Alternative
Access to Articles page for a list of titles to which UC does not have
permanent access rights and for information on how to access items UC does not
subscribe to.)

\- If access is disrupted at any point, the UC Libraries will still work with
researchers to get them the articles they need through other means, such as
interlibrary loan.

\- Our quick guide to alternative access provides an overview of the options
available to UC researchers.

________

\- If the negotiations are successful, UC’s proposed model will make it easier
and more affordable for UC faculty to publish their work as open access in
Elsevier journals.

\- No matter what happens, UC authors retain the right to publish in the
journal of their choice.

\- By providing article processing charge (APC) support through the UC
Libraries as well as an opt-out option, UC is working hard to ensure that
authors have maximum flexibility in determining where and how they want to
publish.

~~~
jrochkind1
Looks like the content at that URL has changed very recently and no longer
includes all that text. Here's an IA version that does....

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190209202821/https://osc.unive...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190209202821/https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-
access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-elsevier/)

------
ziotom78
I am really happy for UC's choice! Sadly, this reminds me that recently
Elsevier and CRUI (the association of Italian universities) sealed a 5-year-
long deal [1], despite protests from the scientific community.

[1] [https://www.crui.it/archivio-notizie/i-ricercatori-
italiani-...](https://www.crui.it/archivio-notizie/i-ricercatori-italiani-
potranno-beneficiare-dell%E2%80%99accesso-continuo-al-database-sciencedirect-
di-elsevie.html)

------
zwaps
NICE

Elsevier is really, really bad. At this point, I think they are already seeing
the end and investors are trying to squeeze every last bit out of the
publishing system before it finally collapses.

Case in point: The extremely consumer (paying!) hostile actions they took
after buying Mendeley.

~~~
Theodores
> before it finally collapses.

Nope, you are forgetting about China.

China is where it is happening for Western scientific publishing enterprises.
To get published in a Chinese journal is one thing, to get your paper
published for the global audience is true icing on the cake.

Elsevier and Springer can look at this little problem with UC and think 'meh!'
\- the travel to China and the conference scene there is much more fun anyway.

~~~
Vinnl
That's why it was extra surprising that large Chinese funders have publicly
declared support for Plan S, the coalition of funders forbidding researchers
they fund from publishing in journals that do not go fully open access:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07659-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07659-5)

------
alphagrep12345
I don't understand why companies like Elsevier are needed. Why can't every
university have their own Arxiv kind of website, upload their work? These
websites are anyways indexed by Google.

~~~
natechols
The problem is that they used to be needed, in the pre-Internet era, so the
entire academic community has evolved around the publishing ecosystem. Or
rather, the incentive system has evolved that way. Journals like
Science/Nature/Cell are essentially the gatekeepers to tenure-track jobs at
top universities, at least in the biomedical sciences. If you're a typical
postdoc trying to move to the next stage of your career, "just post it on
Biorxiv" isn't very helpful advice.

I would love nothing more than to see the entire publishing system revamped
and parasites like Elsevier and NPG disappear, but until you solve the basic
problem of academic hiring and promotion, it's an uphill battle.

~~~
FabHK
I don't know. All the real power is in the hand of the academics. For example,
Don Knuth managed to persuade the editorial board of the Elsevier _Journal of
Algorithms_ to resign, and they started the _ACM Transactions on Algorithms_
with a different, lower-priced, not-for-profit publisher instead, and (if I
understand correctly) take along the prestige. The Journal of Algorithms
folded a few years later.

Why oh why don't more editorial boards do this????

------
hyperion2010
Very happy to see my advisor's signature on the academic senate's support
letter. We have been waiting for months to see the outcome of this. I can
still get to stuff on sciencedirect but i assume that will be changing in the
near future :)

~~~
myself248
Write your advisor a brief note of thanks, would ya?

Sticking one's neck out for a thing like that, even with a bunch of other
necks, could be a harrowing thing to do. I appreciate their courage in
sticking up for this.

------
3xblah
This only applies to publications post-2018.

The UC system, i.e., its students (tuition) and state taxpayers, is still
paying Elsevier for all pre-2019 publications, including papers published by
UC authors.

~~~
elipsey
This was not evident to me after reading the article, but perhaps I did not
read carefully. Can you kindly direct me towards some textual evidence, or a
citation?

~~~
3xblah
[https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/uc-
elsevier/](https://www.library.ucdavis.edu/uc-elsevier/)

~~~
elipsey
Thank you. It seems to me like they are saying they already paid for permanent
access to most 2018 or older articles:

"What is not affected

You can still access the following content in the same way you always have:

Most Elsevier articles published in 2018 or earlier: Because the UC’s prior
contracts included permanent access to previously published content, you will
still be able to get immediate access to the full text of most articles via
ScienceDirect, just as you have in the past."

~~~
3xblah
You are correct. I apologise for the inadvertence. What I meant to say is that
access would only be affected for post-2018 publications. The only comment at
that time was one suggesting UC staff would be turning to alternative sources
for access. Aside from post-2018 publications, generally they will not need to
do that.

------
jrochkind1
Many (most?) German universities did this last June, here's a recent article
from Nature (which may not be un-biased) on how it's working out.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00492-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00492-4)

------
aboutruby
Also, usual reminder that Sci-Hub exists and has all the research papers
available for free from any journal.

~~~
AlotOfReading
Sci-Hub is great, but it absolutely does not have everything published. I try
to keep up with the archaeology journals and maybe 1/3rd of papers I look for
are available.

~~~
thatcat
IIRC they download the paper as you enter the doi if it is not already in
their catalogue; so does moscow library just not have subscriptions to the
journals you're looking for or what?

~~~
tokai
Not all articles have dois.

------
jrochkind1
See UC's Office of Scholarly Communication's guide to "Alternative Access to
Elsevier Articles."

It looks like UC actually had a license which granted them perpetual licensing
rights to most existing content? Or "post termination access rights" in the
language of the post.

[https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-
uc/pub...](https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-
negotiations/alternative-access-to-articles/)

------
gnulinux
This is huge. University of California, hosting Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego
among others, is indisputably one of the most prestigious university systems
in the world and is widely regarded as the most prestigious public school.
Them terminating their subscription of a major scientific journal sounds
unreal. Let's see if this will start any change, but I'm very hopeful.

------
musicale
Elsevier provides little value to scholars, editors, or universities

However, it seems to be correcting the problem by heading resolutely toward
oblivion.

~~~
Vinnl
If they are, that's happening very slowly. Despite several prolific
cancellations in the past year, they again posted nearly 40% profit margins.

------
jeromebaek
This is huge. Not only does it pressure publishers like Elsevier, it also
legitimizes Sci-Hub in a way: if UC, one of the biggest and most reputable
Universities in the world including Berkeley and UCLA, says thry won't pay for
Elsevier, researchers will just use Sci-Hub to access paywalled articles. And
it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone, because
the world's best researchers are all going to be using it.

~~~
jrochkind1
While they're not gonna say it in the press release, you gotta figure the
decision-makers know that many professors and students are using sci-hub
_already_, and find it _easier to use_ than the official licensed channels,
and that this was part of what gave them the ability to cancel the Elsevier
license.

~~~
jrochkind1
> And it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone,
> because the world's best researchers are all going to be using it

I wouldn't count on that, could lead to the reverse, Elsevier coming to terms
with the threat and getting serious. If the worlds best (and wealthiest
biggest-spending) research institutions are willing to go this route, Elsevier
is gonna be thinking, uh oh we're in trouble, better bring out the big guns.

The tricky thing is that it's often _authors themselves_ who willingly share
their stuff on "pirate" sites, and Elsevier wants to avoid at all costs the
academic authors realizing they have different interests and goals than
Elsevier.

Elsevier is in a tough spot in the long-term, despite their crazy profit-
margins today -- and we all want it to keep getting tougher and tougher. But
if they think they're going down, they're going to start lashing out...

~~~
philipkglass
What bigger guns do publishers have to use against sci-hub that they haven't
used yet? They have already used lawsuits against sci-hub and getting their
domain names blocked in jurisdictions where that sort of thing can happen.
Pressuring for IP-address blocks across different ISPs?

Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a
viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a
lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser
if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub.

~~~
jrochkind1
> Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a
> viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read
> a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor
> Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub

Have you done or read much UX analysis with academics? They do _not_ tend to
be adepts at things like tor browser. Not even in "hard-science" disciplines.
Some are, some aren't.

They don't want to jump through any hoops at all, they see getting/finding
articles as a necessary evil, mostly to get citations to put in papers. They
are busy, and have no time for any extra hoops, and aren't really interested
in learning new tools for accessing articles. In fact that's WHY they are
using sci-hub, simply because it's the quickest lowest barrier way to get the
stuff, without having to learn any special tools.

I'm not sure either what bigger guns Elsevier has, but they'll try to figure
it out. They have not yet tried to go against _authors_ for sharing the
articles they wrote, but Elsevier has copyright or exclusive license to
distribute. Or against individual academics for consuming pirated articles.
(You know the emails/letters you get if you're torrenting a movie from
piratebay without a VPN or what have you? Nobody has ever sent one to an
academic for sharing or downloading an article... yet).

~~~
philipkglass
_They have not yet tried to go against _authors_ for sharing the articles they
wrote, but Elsevier has copyright or exclusive license to distribute._

I can see that applying to sites like researchgate, but AFAICT there's no way
for an individual (author or not) to upload a missing paper to sci-hub. If the
paper isn't there already, looking for it triggers an automatic retrieval-and-
storage process that relies on contributed institutional logins. You can't
just choose as an individual to upload a currently-missing paper. The
watermarking on various papers could tie them back to institutions -- and in
some cases to individuals, with the institution's cooperation -- but even the
watermarking would be easy enough to strip out from the PDF if sci-hub needed
to. I've done it before.

Elsevier won't know whether individuals downloaded anything from sci-hub
without network operator cooperation. Since it's not P2P there's no public
traffic that third parties can use to tie individuals to the site.

~~~
jrochkind1
> contributed institutional logins

That is surely a violation of several different usage agreements.

> Elsevier won't know whether individuals downloaded anything from sci-hub
> without network operator cooperation.

Per perhaps _institutional_ cooperation, from the institutions that those
logins belong to. Elsevier could try to compel that as part of those
institutions contracts.

~~~
philipkglass
_That is surely a violation of several different usage agreements._

Certainly. Institutions don't hate this as much as publishers, but it
endangers institutions' access to publisher content and there are some who
will work with publishers to find violators.

That said, it may still be pretty hard to track if sci-hub's backend retrieval
process that uses institutional accounts was written with care.

I think that sci-hub may already be removing watermarks from papers now. I
know that I've seen watermarked papers there before ("Downloaded from XYZ
University at yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss"). I just tried retrieving several recent
papers in Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley journals from sci-hub. None of them
showed watermarks.

------
yzh
[https://openaccessmanifesto.wordpress.com/guerilla-open-
acce...](https://openaccessmanifesto.wordpress.com/guerilla-open-access-
manifesto/) Aaron's manifesto is getting more and more relevant. He would be
happy to see this!

------
peterwwillis
Serious question: Why do any institutions pay any publisher at all? If
everyone just published for free, nobody would need a subscription. What's the
point of the publisher?

~~~
Vinnl
But if not everybody publishes for free, you can only get access to those
articles by paying the publishers.

The follow-up question is: why do people keep publishing there? The answer to
that is that funders and institutions use journal brand names as proxies for
evaluating candidates for grants or tenure, so publishing your work in
traditional pay-walled journals is good for your career despite making your
work less accessible.

The follow-up question to _that_ is: why do funders and institutions use
journal brand names as proxies? The answer to that may lie in [1], summarised
by: there's not really a good alternative. (Full disclosure: I'm working on
setting up such an alternative.)

[1] [https://theconversation.com/why-i-disagree-with-nobel-
laurea...](https://theconversation.com/why-i-disagree-with-nobel-laureates-
when-it-comes-to-career-advice-for-scientists-80079)

~~~
peterwwillis
Hold on, that's not my follow-up question.

You've just said that some orgs publish in Elsevier because grants and tenure.

Nobody _needs_ to use them. And yet people do use them, fully aware what it
will do to the research, because it helps them personally.

My follow-up question is, why are people not mad at the funders and research
labs who insist on publishing there? They're burying the research
intentionally just to get a better job.

~~~
Vinnl
> You've just said that some orgs publish in Elsevier because grants and
> tenure.

Ah, sorry, I was unclear there. It's not organisations that publish somewhere,
but _researchers_.

And some people _are_ mad at researchers for continuing to publish there, but
I find it hard to fault them, because they would probably no longer be
researchers if they didn't.

People are also mad at funders for _that_ , but it's hard for any individual
funder to change that. For example, a coalition of primarily European funders
is currently trying to change the incentives, and they get a lot of setbacks
from European researchers who feel that when they get banned from publishing
in paywalled journals, they will miss out on foreign career opportunities -
which have become an almost required part of any academic career.

(Note that it's not "just to get a better job". It's to have a job in academia
at all. The field is _very_ competitive. There's probably people who've taken
a stand, but they're likely to have left academia.)

~~~
dguest
There are limits to how much you can give researchers a pass though. There are
plenty of senior researchers who have perfectly secure careers but want a
bigger grant, more postdocs, a more prestigious position, etc etc, and of
course they hold disproportionate clout with the funding agencies.

I'm sure they feel a genuine obligation to promote their graduate students and
ensure that their postdocs get good careers. But as altruistic as they might
want to feel, it's still ego, greed, or at best nepotism when they fight
regulation which is for the good of the field.

~~~
Vinnl
Sure, everyone is responsible to some degree. By far the most important
factor, though, is the incentive structure for academics, and I feel that
focussing on researchers misses the point at best, and is counterproductive at
worst.

------
dguest
I often wish large experiments would take a stronger stance on the supply end.
At CERN we've worked out deals with publishers mandating that _our_ content be
open access, even if the journal isn't.

Personally I feel like this is buying into the system. As it stands I have to
make political arguments about the value of open access research. I would
rather tell my colleagues we can't publish in journal-X because it won't be
accessible to as many people.

------
itsbenweeks
Finally! I've been hearing librarians gripe about the prohibitive cost of
academic subscriptions for over a decade. It's no surprised that the first
administrative body to take a $tand is from a state school system. It's
surprising that their budgets didn't bring them there sooner, though. Lets
hope that UC faculty will stop publishing with Elesevier in the future, so the
journals rankings begin to drop.

------
xvilka
It reminds me that no lawful citizen should donate to SciHub. They even have a
special link at the bottom of the main page for it!

------
elektor
In addition to Sci-Hub, another good and legal alternative tool for academics
is Unpaywall.

[https://unpaywall.org/products/extension](https://unpaywall.org/products/extension)

Although nothing beats the speed of a Sci-Hub bookmarlet.

[https://github.com/nfahlgren/scihub_bookmark](https://github.com/nfahlgren/scihub_bookmark)

~~~
dangom
Worthwhile to mention Sci-hub's telegram bot [1]. Forward any link as a
message to the bot and it's instantly send you a paper.

Also worthwhile to mention Zotero's sci-hub integration. There's a guide on
how to get it running here: [https://medium.com/@gagarine/use-sci-hub-with-
zotero-as-a-fa...](https://medium.com/@gagarine/use-sci-hub-with-zotero-as-a-
fall-back-pdf-resolver-cf139eb2cea7)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/sci_hub/status/731467465973174273](https://twitter.com/sci_hub/status/731467465973174273)

------
jascenso
Unreasonable choice by Elsevier. I never understood why the authors of a
University/Institute have to pay for open access on top of the huge
subscription bill.

------
jjoonathan
Obligatory reminder: Mendeley stores your watermarked pirated papers on
Elsevier servers. Tread carefully.

~~~
SubiculumCode
You can try using Zotero instead. Mendeley is just not that good, and Zotero
is open source and excellent.

~~~
tcpekin
This thread has convinced me to try to switch, but one thing that I love in
Mendeley is the ability to watch a folder, and have any pdf in that folder
automatically imported into my account, which then gets synced across devices.
That, and the document detail lookup based on a manually input doi, which
fixes author names etc. are the two sticking points. When I add a doi to a pdf
in Zotero, there doesn't seem to be a way to look it up and import the
relevant information to the file information in Zotero. Does anyone have any
way around them?

~~~
SubiculumCode
[https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_libra...](https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library)

Seems like you can import by doi. Zotero allows auto import from df, but
suggest that pdf metadata tends to be less accurate than importing from the
web directly using the Firefox web extension

~~~
tcpekin
Yeah, that doesn't help the huge collection of papers I already have. And I
often find that the web extensions previously broke, haven't tried it
recently. Just being able to download the pdf and have it auto watch a
folder/import it to me is an almost completely necessary feature.

------
Causality1
Using tax money to fund research and then not making the results open access
is theft. Citizens should get what they pay for.

------
zouhair
And it's starting, can't wait until Elsevier is bankrupt. Parasites.

~~~
z2
But how else can they pay for their beautiful open floor plan offices?
Standing bicycle desks! Developers, QA professionals, even DBAs! Informal
discussions! Beer-o-clock and hack days!

From the promotional video anyway:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSPUc70z_Cc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSPUc70z_Cc)

Edit: it could be worse. For kicks, I looked up Goldman's recruiting video,
and it was a careerist ego show. At least Elsevier allows commenting and
voting on their recruiting videos.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzNowvBmR3g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzNowvBmR3g)

~~~
expertentipp
> I looked up Goldman's recruiting video, and it was a careerist ego show.

These sterile inclusive environments of growth-opportunity-passion smilling
heads created by corporate America are beyond creepy.

------
refurb
I assume they won’t expect their professors to publish in pay journals? That
open access papers are rated as highly as paid when determining promotions?

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dekhn
Great news. Now there are enough dissenters that Elsevier will be forced to
come to the table upon more favorable terms.

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wanderfowl
Here's hoping this is the asteroid to Elsevier's (and their business model's)
dinosaur.

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logjammin
Proud UC employee here. Bravo.

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buboard
i wonder if the $5000 that the UC faculty will be paying for every articles
they 'll publish in elsevier is going to make up for their lost profits.

~~~
colourlessgreen
UCLA at least have been encouraging researchers to not review or publish in
Elsevier

[https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Talks-With-Elsevier-
UCL...](https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Talks-With-Elsevier-UCLA/245311)

------
formatkaka
aaron swartz would be happy !!

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padraic7a
Bravo, UC well done.

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djohnston
this is awesome, way to go UC

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hilbert42
"“Knowledge should not be accessible only to those who can pay,” said Robert
May, chair of UC’s faculty Academic Senate. “The quest for full open access is
essential if we are to truly uphold the mission of this university.” The
Academic Senate issued a statement today endorsing UC’s position."

An excellent decision by UC! This decision will likely cause some pain in the
short-term but in the long-term those who want or need access to knowledge
will be much better off.

Access to knowledge via expensive journals has long been a problem for many
primarily for reasons of expense and copyright. Whilst these barriers are
obvious, some are less so. In the past access to knowledge via these journals
worked to a degree as academic and professional institutions and university
libraries usually provided access to them but only for those associated with
said organizations—that effectively left many others locked out. Whilst not
completely satisfactory, the distribution system worked, albeit very
inefficiently. That meant that for some knowledge was readily accessible but
for others it only slowly trickled out, effectively society as a whole had
access but it was both sporadic and punctuated.

However, in recent years several factors changed to make that already-
inefficient distribution system untenable. First, there has been an explosion
of new knowledge that has pushed the old distribution to straining point, then
the development of the internet changed the paradigm completely: it both
pushed the problems of copyright to the fore and showed up how slow and
inefficient the old system was, and finally the middlemen opportunists had a
field day—publishers like Elsevier effectively became knowledge monopolies and
exploited the system to the point of breaking.

There is no doubt the knowledge distribution system has become completely
broken, one only has to look at the phenomenal success of Alexandra Elbakyan's
pirate website Sci-Hub to come to that conclusion. In turn, staid universities
and academics, etc.—those who publishers like Elsevier had already held to
ransom for some considerable time—realized that Sci-Hub's success provided the
opportunity to break free of the publishers' yokes.

When it comes to the distribution of knowledge, it is difficult for one to
over exaggerate how truly limiting and restrictive the publishers' copyright
system is. Whilst copyright has always been a limiting factor in this area, it
is especially so in this digital information age. Why it is so is a huge
subject that I cannot address in detail here, suffice to say it covers a vast
expanse: from monopolies on information, the high cost of textbooks to
restrictions on the electronic concatenation of information and research
databases through to AI processing of existing knowledge. In this area the
misuse of copyright is immense.

There is no doubt in my mind that the distribution system needs to be opened
up and that open access is the route foreword. We have to applaud the
University of California's decision to terminate subscriptions with Elsevier
in its push for open access to publicly funded research. The aim for all
published research ought to be for it to be fully open to everyone.

------
not2b
Hooray. This is a long-overdue step.

------
stevespang
They all know that anybody can just go on Sci-Hub and get most research.

My local city library offers several "legal" free access sites to published
journals - - if you have 20 minutes to wade through all the ridiculous BS on
the computer trying to discover if the article is even available.

Sci Hub takes me 25 seconds and 85 to 90% of what I need is right there.

(Be certain to donate !)

~~~
_emacsomancer_
If I go through my library site, I have a good 70% chance of this happening:
[https://twitter.com/DannyBate4/status/1092132558937169922](https://twitter.com/DannyBate4/status/1092132558937169922)

------
ahmad49
awesome

------
0815test
Good on ya, UC. Stick it to those dirty greedy double-dealing Dutch b _st_
rds.

------
0815test
Good on ya, UC. Hit those greedy, double-dealing, Dutch Elsevier b _st_ rds
where it hurts.

Next target: Nature Pigs Group, the consortium of Anglo sw _ne who have
infested every area of research with their s_ itty journals.

Of course, some of the blame goes to idjit academics who jump at the chance to
publish in any NPG journal, even if it is named "Nature Enemas and Fecal
Matter"

~~~
sctb
If you won't comment civilly and substantively we'll ban the account.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
gist
> The prices of scientific journals now are so high that not a single
> university in the U.S. — not the University of California, not Harvard, no
> institution — can afford to subscribe to them all,” said Jeffrey MacKie-
> Mason, university librarian and economics professor at UC Berkeley

What is the definition of 'afford'? Obviously Harvard (as only one example)
with a huge billion dollar endowment can easily pay for the journals that are
relevant. They just choose not to and think they don't receive value for what
they pay. But they do spend money on many other things that some people would
find to be wasteful and plenty of people and companies make money off those
institutions. I am sure their employees are very well paid.

I don't know why people have this tendency to freak out when a for profit
company like Elsvier tries to make money. It's not like the 'non profit'
colleges are some charity case they pay out plenty of money to various
entities and people (for example I am sure they have enormous legal expenses
as only one example) when they choose to do so.

~~~
yesenadam
>"I don't know why people have this tendency to freak out when a for profit
company like Elsvier tries to make money."

That's an interesting sentence, the way you've framed that. People objecting
are objecting to capitalism...and the whole natural order. "Elsevier is..just
trying to do what it was created for, like a bird singing or the sun rising or
a baby smiling, why is that such a problem? People are just freaking out! I
don't know why."

~~~
gist
Yes they freak out because it's not money going into their pocket but someone
elses. And they don't think it's fair.

You get a similar outrage for a different reason against the last mile and
cable companies. Why should they control the 'final mile'. Why can't everyone
have access to the lines which they dug? Why? Because they got there first and
spent the money to gamble when there was no guarantee of success which is
obvious now. That is capitalism and business.

