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

Wed Mar 1 17:14:43 UTC 2017

Update:

We have now looked into some of the cases we detected initially and the
article has been updated.

Spoiler: 3 false positives, 1 hit.

https://openapc.github.io/general/openapc/2017/02/23/elsevier_hybrid_access

Best,
Christoph Broschinski

On 02/23/2017 01:57 PM, Christoph Broschinski wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> 
> I don't know if you are familiar with the OpenAPC project (https://github.com/OpenAPC/openapc-de).
> In a nutshell: We collect APC data from participating institutions, process it and disseminate it as
> Open Data.
> Ross' blog post gave me an interesting idea: Since we have a lot of articles in our database which
> were published (and paid for) as OA in hybrid Elsevier journals (more than 2600), maybe we could
> search them for more cases of wrongly paywalled articles?
> 
> I ended up putting together a small script to automatically search sciencedirect.com for additional
> cases - and we got some results. Details here:
> 
> https://openapc.github.io/general/openapc/2017/02/23/elsevier_hybrid_access
> 
> Best,
> Christoph Broschinski
> 
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 9:11 PM, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> Remember last week I found an article that had been paid-for by the
>> Wellcome Trust to be hybrid open access, except it was for sale behind an
>> Elsevier paywall at the journal *Mitochondrion* for $35.95 + tax? [0]
>>
>> Well, Elsevier have responded, first by sowing doubt on the claim, then 3
>> days later admitting I was correct. But stranger still, they said:
>>
>> “We’ve gone through the system, this [the Mitochondrion article] is the
>> only article affected.”
>>
>> Which would be great if this were true but it isn't. There are more
>> paywalled "open access" articles that are currently on sale at
>> ScienceDirect right now, including one at The Lancet, which Wellcome Trust
>> paid Elsevier £5,280 to make open access [1]. Which makes me think:
>>
>> A) Elsevier’s entire system for handling hybrid open access is broken
>> B) Elsevier are evidently incapable of accurate self-assessment
>>
>> In 2014 they eventually refunded "about $70,000" to readers who had
>> mistakenly been charged to access articles that should have been open
>> access. I wonder how much they will pay out this time...?
>>
>> Please do share this with colleagues. I am outraged.
>>
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> [0] http://rossmounce.co.uk/2017/02/14/elsevier-selling-access-
>> to-open-access-again/
>> [1] http://rossmounce.co.uk/2017/02/20/hybrid-open-access-is-unreliable/
>>
>> --
>> --
>> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>> /-/-
>> Ross Mounce, PhD
>> Software Sustainability Institute Fellow 2016
>> Dept. of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge
>> www.rossmounce.co.uk <http://rossmounce.co.uk/>
>> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>> /-/-
>>
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> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Christoph Broschinski
Department of Library Technology and Knowledge Management (LibTec)
Bielefeld University Library
Bielefeld University, Room L3-126
Tel. +49 521 106 3971
http://www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/~cbroschinski/

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