
Elsevier Says Content-Mining Research Papers 'Could Be Considered' Stealing - walterbell
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151117/09383132839/elsevier-says-downloading-content-mining-licensed-copies-research-papers-could-be-considered-stealing.shtml
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linhchi
Now they want to define "meta-research" as stealing, too. I can't imagine how
would someone buy that.

Knowledge is something you cannot capture, that's why they have to try to
"protect" the symbols. And they can go this far with that deed.

Why activists can read and handle degrading words from rich publishers (theft,
stealing..), but ignorants cannot read the argument of activists? This is far
too confusing to me.

[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-
avoid.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html)

(I think publishers are feeling threatened as the free culture grows)

edit: the speaker explains copyright maths (a special kind of maths used by
media lobby experts), very enjoyable :D

[http://blog.ted.com/the-numbers-behind-the-copyright-
math/](http://blog.ted.com/the-numbers-behind-the-copyright-math/)

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EngineerBetter
Is this why they bought Mendeley, a document-management start-up who did a
_lot_ of data mining on academic papers, including terabytes of Elsevier's?

Hint: probably. I used to work there.

~~~
sklogic
Shit. I'm using Mendeley and did not know this. I'll stop using it at once.
Any suggestions for alternatives?

~~~
kriro
I use Zotero (+ownCloud for storage) as well, a bit quirky at times but has
all the functionality I need. Don't know how good the standalone program is, I
only use the browser plugin+libreoffice plugin and occasionally the dreaded
ms-office plugin as well (if not working with latex).

~~~
_yy
Standalone works very well too. Can recommend.

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diakritikal
I think I probably consider tax payer funded research being locked up behind a
corporate paywall "stealing", so yeah they can go jump in a loch...

~~~
rvense
That's the thing, Elsevier know stealing when they see it.

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scotty79
Isn't theft a crime? Isn't publicly accusing someone of a crime he did not
commit a slander? Should all content-mining researches sue Elsevier for
slander? I don't see why not.

~~~
JupiterMoon
Not sure why this is being downvoted. In my personal opinion Elsevier are
slandering (actually libelling) researchers here. This could have significant
financial implications for the researchers when e.g. grant applications are
made.

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squat
The American Physical Society recently blocked my IP and contacted my
university after I downloaded about 30 papers within one hour (manually, while
researching an unfamiliar topic). My department's IT team called me and asked
me to shut down my mass download bot :D. APS staff were very friendly and
lifted all restricitons after I contacted them though.

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MrPatan
They are on the way out. Yes, they'll take a shit on the carpet before
leaving, but they are on the way out.

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claudius
I don’t quite see the issue here. Elsevier’s terms of service for
subscriptions very likely explicitly ban bulk downloading. As such, they have
every right to expect subscribers not to bulk download and further every right
to ban specific subscribers (i.e. university libraries) if they violate those
ToS. Nothing new, nothing exciting.

If you want to be able to freely access and bulk download the papers published
by your peers, maybe you should make sure that those peers publish in journals
that allow such downloads. Maybe you yourself should also only publish in
journals that allow these downloads. Possibly, you could even run your own
preprint server where everyone can submit their texts and which then can be
made available in bulk to interested parties.

Breaking contracts you (or a person acting on your behalf) agreed to doesn’t
help at all in the long run – boycotting those who only offer contracts you
don’t like until they either change or go away is a much more viable,
ethically acceptable and generally more enjoyable alternative.

And hey, if your method to detect fraud is successful, market pressure alone
might be enough: after all, who wants to submit to a shady journal which
doesn’t have its articles automatically checked for large-scale fraud
regularly? Surely, only fraudsters…

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yourepowerless
Why comply with unjust illegitimate laws created to serve a monopoly?

Why comply with a framework designed not for your benefit or societies benefit
but for the purpose of maintaining a monopoly on others peoples labor,
socializing cost and individualizing profit. Laws are not created for the
people and by the people, they are made by corrupted individuals for those
with the most wealth and power, complying with them is no better than
complying with any other sort of violent oppression.

~~~
claudius
> unjust illegitimate laws created to serve a monopoly

It’s not unjust illegitimate laws, it’s a largely valid contract you entered
into and by which you are very naturally bound. There’s nothing morally wrong
about “don’t use this access we give you to download everything”.

If your laws are, for whatever reason, unjust and illegitimate, then fix that
instead of fighting against those laws by downloading papers from Elseviere
o.O

> Why comply with a framework designed not for your benefit or societies
> benefit but for the purpose of maintaining a monopoly on others peoples
> labor, socializing cost and individualizing profit.

I don’t get what you’re trying to say. Are you saying the profit from
scientific work lies solely or even largely in bulk access to the papers
produced by that work?!

> Laws are not created for the people and by the people, they are made by
> corrupted individuals for those with the most wealth and power

If that is the case, then this is squarely the fault of “the people” to allow
that to happen.

> complying with them is no better than complying with any other sort of
> violent oppression

This is not about complying with laws but complying with a not morally
outrageously wrong contract between two private entities.

You are trolling, right?

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bigiain
In related news - "Elsevier considers citing research papers to be stealing".

Clowns...

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PaulHoule
Charging people big $$$ to read research papers that their tax dollars paid
for could also be considered stealing.

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dropit_sphere
Fortunately, we all trust Elsevier implicitly as moral arbiters.

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gamesbrainiac
I think Elsevier is resorting to things like this because it is incapable of
capitalizing on their current assets and infrastructure in a constructive
manner.

Consider the fact that Elsevier locks up millions of dollars in public funded
research behind their paywall, and then you'll see the irony of what they
claim.

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afandian
Not pertinent to this exact story but there's a cross-publisher API for Text
and Data Mining via Crossref for those of you who are interested. It defines
http links to full text and license info. Elsevier participates in this and
their API intersects with the Crossref TDM API.

Info here: [http://tdmsupport.crossref.org/](http://tdmsupport.crossref.org/)

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versteegen
The title is link-bait. That really isn't what Elsevier is saying here. They
are complaining that this researcher broke the terms for the university's
subscription. On their website they state: [0]

"""Further, we're looking at how we ensure that researchers know what they can
and cannot do with content, or where to go for further information, without
giving the impression that we are claiming ownership over non-copyrightable
facts and data."""

Regarding this case, (IANAL) it seems to be that _if_ their APIs worked
properly, then Elsevier is completely in the right (especially in the UK) in
demanding that papers only be accessed through the API. If they don't work, as
the researcher alleges, then would I agree that's he's in the right.

A couple weeks ago I was reading all about Elsevier's APIs for downloading
papers [1]. If you're at an institution that has access to ScienceDirect or
Scopus then it seems you can easily get a key that gives you full access to
everything, including papers in XML instead of PDF if you want (eg. a mathml-
like for equations, paragraphs, figures, tables all marked up). However
Elsevier make it very difficult to find the actual terms and conditions for
text mining on their website, despite numerous pages which run you in circles.
They are here [4].

To summarise them (again, IANAL): non-commercial research use only. You can't
share the raw text mining output except with other people belonging to your
institution/subscriber, although you could allow indirect access through e.g.
a website. You can also distribute short snippets from the text with a
copyright notice. You can keep the downloaded data until your API key expires,
which happens if you stop using it or your institution stops subscribing.

I also found it strange that Elsevier forbid redistributing the abstracts of
papers [3], considering that they are publicly accessible.

It would be fantastic if publishers couldn't restrict the use of the
information in the articles they published, even for commercial use. Anything
that any human learns from a copyrighted work can normally be used without
restriction, why wouldn't the same apply to machine learning? However I assume
that when you sign an agreement providing access to data (e.g. subscribe to
Scopus) that you can sign away that sort of right (e.g. NDAs). The Hague
Declaration [2] is a great initiative in this direction but unfortunately it's
only petitioning for the rights of researchers.

[0] [https://www.elsevier.com/connect/how-does-elseviers-text-
min...](https://www.elsevier.com/connect/how-does-elseviers-text-mining-
policy-work-with-new-uk-tdm-law)

[1] [http://dev.elsevier.com/](http://dev.elsevier.com/)

[2]
[https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/45456](https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/45456)

[3] [http://dev.elsevier.com/policy.html](http://dev.elsevier.com/policy.html)

[4]
[https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/102234/...](https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/102234/TDM-
sign-up-short-form.pdf)

~~~
IanCal
> I also found it strange that Elsevier forbid redistributing the abstracts of
> papers [3], considering that they are publicly accessible.

Publicly accessible and the rights to redistribution are different things.
Abstracts are protected by copyright, which may be held by the journal or the
author, and so having a blanket "you can use the abstracts" policy is very
difficult.

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davelnewton
Elsevier says a lot of things.

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DrNuke
They're looking for data scientists and engineers to monetise their archives
but also losing market to cheaper and more open publishing networks. Good
riddance, would say.

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eveningcoffee
I have simple recommendation. Stop publishing with them. Stop citing articles
that have been published with them. Treat them like they do not exist.

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bitwize
Some of the shit Elsevier's pulled "could be considered" academic fraud.

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Immortalin
This is rather similar to the web scraping problem i.e. API vs scraping.
Nothing new.

