[Open-access] Wiley have been caught incorrectly paywalling & selling (Dirk Verdicchio)

Fri Mar 27 08:54:25 UTC 2015

Hi all,

The damage arises to the reader who pays for something that is usually
available for free. The selling party (the Publisher) will usually know
that a particular paper is available for free (they know the licensing
terms), yet they would not not inform the buyer about this fact. Isn't
this a pretense? In Germany there is offense called "Trickdiebstahl",
see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickdiebstahl
That is, party A tries to extract property (in this case money) from
party B without adequate "quid pro quo", while party B willingly agrees
to give the property away because they have been deceived. Viewed from
this angle, I wonder whether selling an open access article would not
constitute an offense in some jurisfdiction.

Best,
Dietrich

On 27.03.2015 09:20, dirk.verdicchio at ub.unibe.ch wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I just wanted to mention that Springer does such things too. We
> discovered this few days ago. Springer charges 39.95 USD for an
> article from Biologia which is available from de Gruyter for free
> with a CC BY-NC-ND license. We contacted one of the authors in order
> to get more information about the signed agreements in order to
> decide if we are going to involve the university's legal services.
> But I fear that Springer is acting legally sound here: Biologia is a
> joint venture between Springer, de Gruyter, and others. If the
> authors have given the publishers the right to exploit their article
> commercially, and I believe they have done so, then Springer is
> allowed to sell it.
>
> This does not only show that the big publishers don't care about
> their author's wishes.  It may also point towards a shortage in the
> CC licenses, which cannot prevent the publishers form selling OA
> articles. Since the publishers have proven that they see OA merely
> as an additional income source we perhaps need a license which can
> prevent this.
>
> Link to de Gruyter:
> http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/biolog.2014.69.issue-11/s11756-014-0465-6/s11756-014-0465-6.xml?format=INT
>
>
>
>
>
Link to Springer :
http://link.springer.com/article/10.2478/s11756-014-0465-6
>
> Best, Dirk
>
> --- Dr. Dirk Verdicchio Universität Bern Universitätsbibliothek Bern
>  Koordination Open Access Tel. +41 (0)31 631 9595 www.ub.unibe.ch
>
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: open-access
> [mailto:open-access-bounces at lists.okfn.org] Im Auftrag von
> open-access-request at lists.okfn.org Gesendet: Donnerstag, 26. März
> 2015 23:00 An: open-access at lists.okfn.org Betreff: open-access
> Digest, Vol 39, Issue 20
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Wiley have been caught incorrectly paywalling & selling
> thousands of articles (Rens van der Heijden) 2. Fwd: Wiley have been
> caught incorrectly paywalling & selling thousands of articles
> (Subbiah Arunachalam)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
Message: 1 Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2015 19:11:25 +0100 From: Rens van der
> Heijden <rens.vanderheijden at uni-ulm.de> To:
> open-access at lists.okfn.org Subject: Re: [Open-access] Wiley have
> been caught incorrectly paywalling & selling thousands of articles
> Message-ID: <55144BCD.5040509 at uni-ulm.de> Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"
>
> 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-th
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
ousands-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:
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> Message: 2 Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 03:30:21 +0530 From: Subbiah
> Arunachalam <subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com> To:
> "open-access at lists.okfn.org" <open-access at lists.okfn.org>,
> open-science at lists.okfn.org,  LibLicense-L Discussion Forum
> <liblicense-l at listserv.crl.edu> Subject: [Open-access] Fwd: Wiley
> have been caught incorrectly paywalling & selling thousands of
> articles Message-ID:
> <CABghs+aKU_3sMH-9p6nO90C=c6OYZ1cqZZFdzwyP==Du+LbkqQ at mail.gmail.com>
>  Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Subbiah Arunachalam
> <subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com> Date: Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 3:23 AM
> Subject: Re: [Open-access] Wiley have been caught incorrectly
> paywalling & selling thousands of articles To: Peter Murray-Rust
> <peter.murray.rust at googlemail.com> Cc: Ross Mounce
> <ross.mounce at gmail.com>, madhan muthu <mu.madhan at gmail.com>, Heather
> Morrison <hgmorris at gmail.com>
>
>
> Some time ago, if I remember right, it was reported that Elsevier
> was indulging in such practice. Now it is Wiley. Should we approach
> the Consumer International (or similar organizations) seeking justice
> and punishment for the offenders?
>
> Arun
>
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 10:53 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <
> peter.murray.rust at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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-t
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
housands-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
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever
>> Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK
>> +44-1223-763069
>>
>> _______________________________________________ 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
>>
>>
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