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

Mike Taylor mike at indexdata.com
Fri Mar 27 09:56:20 UTC 2015


Hold on, here.

What these predatory publishers are doing (selling access to OA
articles) may -- MAY -- be technically legal from a copyright/licence
perspective.

It surely is NOT legal from a contract perspective. They have accepted
APCs from authors in exchange for providing free, unlimited access to
the published work, and are not fulfilling their side of the bargain.

If I were an author who had paid an APC for one of these articles, I
would certainly write a stiff formal letter requesting the return of
the funds. (Of course it doesn't arise in my case, since I don't use
predatory publishers in the first place; and neither should anyone
else.)

-- Mike






On 27 March 2015 at 09:35, Bjoern Brembs <b.brembs at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
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