[Open-access] Wiley have been caught incorrectly paywalling & selling thousands of articles

Thu Mar 26 18:08:30 UTC 2015

This has been going on for 5 years. Mike Taylor and I have documented it.
Heads of libraries (or national Library associations) should have:
* immediately publicly represented to the publisher that it was unacceptable
* threatened action if it re-occurred
* alerted their representatives
* consulted their lawyers

If they have not done all of these then they are not fully acting as
stewards of public money. Poor researchers such as Ross actually pay for
material that should be free. The opportunity costs have been huge, not
least in teaching. Academic groupd are paying for re-use of material which
should be free..

I would have expected Libraries (jointly?) to have set up processes to
monitor compliance on a large number of issues in scholarly publishing.
They have the money - 15 Billion USD - and if they acted in concert they
would be difficult to challenge. Wellcome Trust has led the way here in
exposing mis-sold (mis-paywalled) "open access" publications, and they
managed to get repaid. Ross has to act on his own to get redress from
Elsevier and ??Wiley.

On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 5:50 PM, Y.Nobis <yn235 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> I agree (as you know)
> Yvonne
>
>
>  Yes, I know individual librarians care, but the publishers have to be
>> *publicly challenged*. Taken to court by universities. Or seriously and
>> effectively boycotted. It can't be left to Ross and Mike Taylor and Tim
>> Gowers and a few others and me to make a fuss. We get almost no public
>> support.
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Y.Nobis <yn235 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>  Hi  Peter,
>>>
>>> I would just like to say many academic librarians really *do* care and
>>> are extremely frustrated by the current situation,
>>>
>>> Yvonne
>>>
>>>
>>>  I must congratulate Ross on his incredible effort and patience in
>>> bringing
>>>
>>>> to light completely unacceptable practices in scholarly publishing. At
>>>> best the crime is "we don't give a **** about readers and libraries". It's
>>>> more than incompetence - it's don't-care incompetence at best. and if it's
>>>> worse than that ...
>>>>
>>>> There is no regulator for scholpub (IMO there should be) and academic
>>>> libraries don't care - it's other people's money, not theirs. That's also
>>>> unacceptable.
>>>>
>>>> I don't have a solution, because in UK I think the trading standards
>>>> office has been discontinued otherwise we should take these cases there.
>>>> It's close to, but not identical to Copyfraud, where people have sued
>>>> breachers (though it's a great effort).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 4:48 PM, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  I didn't think we'd find more examples of 'false paywalling' so easily
>>>> or
>>>>
>>>>> so quickly but here it is:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>   http://rossmounce.co.uk/2015/03/26/wiley-are-charging-for-
>>>>> access-to-thousands-of-articles-that-should-be-free/
>>>>>
>>>>> Wiley recently (legitimately) took control of a society journal called
>>>>> Limnology and Oceanography from the Association for the Sciences of
>>>>> Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO). The association makes clear in its
>>>>> guidelines for the journal that all articles are placed into Free Access
>>>>> after three years: http://aslo.org/lo/toc/
>>>>>
>>>>> Yet for at least 2 months and 25 days, Wiley was selling access to
>>>>> articles from Limnology and Oceanography for $45.60 USD (inc. tax). I know
>>>>> this because I bought access to an article myself. Volumes 1 (1956) to 41
>>>>> (1996), consisting of thousands of articles were on sale at Wiley.
>>>>>
>>>>> I do not know how many people have bought access to one of these
>>>>> affected articles in this period. Clearly a full investigation is needed.
>>>>> Can we trust Wiley to self-report how many readers were mistakenly sold
>>>>> access to these articles?
>>>>>
>>>>> I put this in the past tense because they have just 'un-paywalled'
>>>>> these articles in the last 30 minutes or so. I still have my receipt from
>>>>> my article purchase though, so there is clear evidence that this happened.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best,
>>>>>
>>>>> Ross
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> --
>>>>> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>>>>> Ross Mounce
>>>>> Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
>>>>> University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
>>>>> http://about.me/rossmounce
>>>>> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> open-access mailing list
>>>>> open-access at lists.okfn.org
>>>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
>>>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-access
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  --
>>> Yvonne Nobis
>>>
>>> Head of Science Information Services
>>>
>>> Betty and Gordon Moore Library
>>> Wilberforce Road,
>>> Cambridge, CB3 0WD.
>>> Tel : 01223 765673
>>>
>>> Central Science Library
>>> Bene't Street,
>>> Cambridge CB2 3PY.
>>> Tel (01223)334744
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> --
> Yvonne Nobis
>
> Head of Science Information Services
>
> Betty and Gordon Moore Library
> Wilberforce Road,
> Cambridge, CB3 0WD.
> Tel : 01223 765673
>
> Central Science Library
> Bene't Street,
> Cambridge CB2 3PY.
> Tel (01223)334744
>
>

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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