[Open-access] Elsevier caught selling articles that should have been open access

[Couture Marc]

Wow! We are now witnessing quadruple-dipping :

1. Author of an article pays Wiley 3 000 USD OA publication charges

2. Libraries pay Wiley hefty subscription fee (journal is hybrid OA)

3. Elsevier pays Wiley commercial distribution rights

4. Ross Mounce pays Wiley 31,50 USD (plus tax) access fee

Sadly, all this seems entirely legal. Authors choosing Wiley OnlineOpen option keep their copyright but grant Wiley a license allowing it to exercise the NC (non-commercial) condition of the CC-license. It's this other license that allows Wiley to sell Elsevier the distribution rights.

Note that for an article published with CC BY, there would still be triple-dipping (step 3 wouldn't be necessary).

But what is more troubling here is that when one envisioned or mentioned such a scenario (a commercial entity selling a CC-licensed paper while hiding its free availability), it was usually with shady, predatory publishers in mind. What will we call those giants (Elsevier, Wiley) now?

So even more reasons (as if there weren't enough) to avoid hybrid OA (and Elsevier, of course, but this has become commonplace).

Marc Couture
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-access/attachments/20150309/56ba7f6a/attachment-0002.html>