

Elsevier’s David Tempest explains subscription-contract confidentiality clauses - ChristianMarks
http://svpow.com/2013/12/20/elseviers-david-tempest-explains-subscription-contract-confidentiality-clauses/

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MWil
Websites that offer products/services but don't list any pricing information
other than contact forms for quotes might be my biggest industry pet peeve. I
will find a way to not need that product and go with a competitor or an open-
source implementation. It's what led me to do research on e-discovery
companies and confirm what people like David Tempest fear - if law firms knew
how cheap it was to develop their own technologies there's no way they'd pay
what they do except to prevent discovery in the first place.

Except in this case, there is no way or extremely limited ways of getting the
same information so they get to profit from that as well. Hopefully the
academic community comes together on this topic and maybe forms some large
alliance with the resources to compete.

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gjuggler
These clauses are aggressively anti-librarian, and unfortunately librarians
don't have a choice but to subscribe at whatever price. Academic papers don't
exist in a competitive marketplace; once a non-open access paper is published
it's considered part of the permanent academic literature, which academics are
professionally required to read and cite. Yet each paper is _only_ available
from the publisher that owns its copyright.

It's no wonder why Elsevier draws such ire from the librarian community... an
analogy would be if a company legally disallowed its employees from discussing
their salaries with anyone, in order to reduce the information available when
any other employee negotiates a salary or raise.

And even though David Tempest argues that the main reason for these clauses is
to maintain price differentiation between countries, I'd guess that this
policy is equally designed to convince small but well-funded US research
institutes to keep their non-discount subscriptions, while giving relatively
steep discounts to large accounts like the UC system that have negotiating
power due to their size.

Fundamentally, the ecosystem of subscription journals is full of non-market
dynamics and requires extensive legal management (think NDAs, copyright
transfer agreements, DMCA takedowns and copyright infringement enforcement).
On the other hand, the rise of Open Access journals has produced a healthy
competitive market, where authors can choose where to publish based on a
variety of factors including cost, quality of peer review, user-friendly
submission tools, and prestige of the journal brand. Plus, copyright is
largely a non-issue for open access: authors keep their copyright and there's
no cost to the publisher for enforcing against infringement.

I think the more market-driven nature of OA, plus the obvious desire to have
publicly-funded research be publicly available, will compound its growth and
cause it to eventually overtake the subscription journal model.

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nkurz
_It 's no wonder why Elsevier draws such ire from the librarian community...
an analogy would be if a company legally disallowed its employees from
discussing their salaries with anyone, in order to reduce the information
available when any other employee negotiates a salary or raise._

A great comment, but did you intend the part I quoted as ironic? You are
correct about the intent and the effect, but I think many (most?) companies
request this of employees, and some require it. For managers and supervisors
in some states, this is even legally defensible:
[http://ask.metafilter.com/45192/Wait-you-make-50k-more-
than-...](http://ask.metafilter.com/45192/Wait-you-make-50k-more-than-me)

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gjuggler
No, I didn't intend the irony — I didn't know it was common for employers to
formally request that salaries be kept confidential.

However, even if intra-company sharing is discouraged / disallowed, it _is_
still common for job-seekers to know what salary they could expect based on
their skill level, other offers of employment, sites like glassdoor, etc.

Perhaps more accurately, you might say journal subscription NDAs are like the
only employer in the world threatening to fire you if you ever posted your
salary to glassdoor or shared it with a friend who's just starting his career
what he might expect to make.

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paulsutter
Elsevier employees should just quit and work somewhere else. It's just a
matter of time before their business implodes. It will be a miserable process
and anything to speed it up benefits everyone.

Sure, the board has fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders to drag this
out as long as possible. But the employees should just walk. Elsevier is a
travesty and employees should feel ashamed to be associated with it.

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acadien
Hypothetically; Elsevier closes today. What happens to their mountains of
papers?

I (and many others) constantly mine their journals for old experimental data.
Don't get me wrong I'll be dancing on their grave when they close. I'm just
concerned the old journals will get sold off to the next big publication
house, or worse, get shuttered and closed off for everyone.

Edit: It occurs to me many universities have copies of the old journals and
could setup their own sites to host it as soon as copyright isn't an issue.

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mrstew
> It occurs to me many universities have copies of the old journals and could
> setup their own sites to host it as soon as copyright isn't an issue

Yep, this is what CLOCKSS
([http://www.clockss.org/clockss/Home](http://www.clockss.org/clockss/Home))
is for.

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skadamat
Best comment ever "is he admitting to price fixing?"

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justin66
For a CS student or professional, not nearly so irritating as the ACM and IEEE
duopoly.

My university subscribes to ACM and IEEE databases, so I should be in a better
position than most, but somehow that doesn't include IEEE conference
proceedings, which is where the papers that (possibly) matter appear. It's not
a mystery why people in this field are so crap at staying on top of this kind
of stuff: the stuff is hidden.

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farginay
I'd hope that all costs are transparent at public universities.

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Timmmmbob
Elsevier is a leech on society and should be destroyed.

