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

[Bjoern Brembs]

On Friday, March 27, 2015, 10:20:41 AM, you wrote:

> Now it has happened in 2015 with at least 3 of the major
> legacy publishers: Elsevier, Wiley and Springer 
>  I believe these known incidents are just the tip of the iceberg.
>  Something needs to be done about this. Libraries and
> research funders sorely need to address this issue!
>  We simply cannot trust legacy publishers not to
> re-paywall content on whim at any time they choose.
> Penalties for this 'accidents' need to be demanded to
> properly incentivize the paywallers to take more care with their actions.

I'm not aware of all instances where this has happened, but for some reports I'm getting the impression that the publishers are only selling papers which are available free of charge elsewhere? I'd see this as a grey area (as long as no licenses are violated).

For instance, as long as source and authors are mentioned, you can sell, e.g., a topical collection of OA articles. Someone has to curate the collection and it's perfectly fine to pay that curator for their work.

This example shows that the mere fact that a publishers is selling OA articles may be a *necessary* condition for an offensive or even illegal act, but it is by no means *sufficient*. There are plenty of possibilities where selling OA articles is perfectly fine, even desired!

The really egregious instances are those where no version of the article is available free of charge anywhere, because the publishers themselves have not made the articles published OA with them accessible. I've always understood that this is what Elsevier and Wiley have done: charging for articles that should be accessible free of charge from their sites. The most recent examples and discussion, however, were described in a way that have made me less sure about that.

Have I misunderstood everything? Are these all just examples of publishers selling articles from other sources? Or is each instance a little different?

Sorry for the confusion,

Bjoern




-- 
Björn Brembs
---------------------------------------------
http://brembs.net
Neurogenetics
Universität Regensburg
Germany