[open-science] Elsevier are telling "mis-truths" about the extent of paywalled open access

Mon Feb 20 23:02:59 UTC 2017

Ale is exactly right. Elsevier are promising to make available articles freely (no cost, and hopefully no other barriers such as logins and other bullshit) if someone ponies up a couple of grand. That is precisely what the authors are doing, but Elsevier is not keeping its side of the bargain.

> On Feb 20, 2017, at 11:53 PM, Alexandre Hannud Abdo <abdo at member.fsf.org> wrote:
> 
> This has nothing to do with copyright law. It is contract law on the service of providing open access that researchers paid for.
> 
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 11:41 PM, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca> wrote:
> CC-BY permits downstream use without restrictions except for attribution, including commercial use.
> 
> While it is problematic to define precisely what constitutes "commercial use", with respect to copyrighted works the paradigmatic meaning is sales of the works per se.
> 
> This is where copyrighted started, back with the Statute of Anne. Printers who had invested in preparing works for commercial sales objected to others making copies of their work and selling them.
> 
> If one does not wish for works or rights to be sold, do not use a license that grants blanket downstream commercial rights.
> 
> With respect to Elsevier, setting aside the ethics of the matter, they are on solid legal ground if they sell works that are licensed CC-BY. So is anyone else.
> 
> best,
> 
> Heather Morrison 
> 
> 
> …