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

Thu Mar 26 18:11:25 UTC 2015

Dear all,

First of all, thank you for your efforts. Exposure is important, and as 
you've written it leads to some kind of self-correcting behavior.

However, let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 12:48 AM, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com 
<mailto:ross.mounce at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 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/
First of all, _free access_ does not necessarily imply _only free 
access_ or _free access and selling it is forbidden_. I've tried to 
access the link on this page to get more information (license or so), 
but it looks as though the page no longer exists (it directs me to a 
site map). I checked one of the Journal's OA links (at Wiley, so the 
source is not objective) and picked a random article from the 80s. This 
article has the notice:
© 1985, by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and 
Oceanography, Inc.

Thus, it seems as though the copyright belongs to the ASLO; depending on 
how the contract between Wiley and ASLO works, it may be possible that 
Wiley was (also) allowed to sell the articles. At the very least, it 
isn't explicitly forbidden anywhere. This highlights the importance of 
*clearly* identifying open access rules both between editors and 
publisher, as well as publisher and reader (which has been a problem 
exposed here in the past).

On 26.03.2015 18:29, Chen-Yi Tu wrote:
> As a ASLO member, I do not think ASLO give Wiley permission to sell 
> the open-access article. This is completely unacceptable.
It would be really great if we could have a look at the copyright 
transfer form here. Something like this should be mentioned there 
explicitly. Vagueness there means (IANAL, don't take my word for it) 
that there may not be a legal basis to blame Wiley here.

To summarize my point: it is important for us not just to expose these 
faults, but also to create awareness of these issues with editors, so 
that "loopholes" like those I've described above do not allow a 
publisher to get away with it.

Greetings,
Rens van der Heijden
Ulm University

> A new journal from ASLO- Limnology and Oceanography Letter will also 
> at the hand of Wiley. ASLO already makes it clear it will be 
> open-access. Let's see how things turn out after the first issue.
> http://www.aslo.org/announce/lol_eic_search.html
>
> Best,
>
> Chen-Yi
>
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 12:48 AM, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com 
> <mailto: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 <mailto:open-access at lists.okfn.org>
>     https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
>     Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-access
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Chen-Yi Tu (Crystal)
> National Taiwan University
> Institute of Oceanography
> No.1 Sec. 4 Roosevelt Rd.
> Taipei, Taiwan 10617
> Email: tu.chenyi at gmail.com <mailto:tu.chenyi at gmail.com> / 
> d01241003 at ntu.edu.tw <mailto:d01241003 at ntu.edu.tw>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-access/attachments/20150326/3682508a/attachment-0002.html>