Shame it took a boycott...

Regards,

Morgan Leigh
PhD Candidate
School of Sociology and Social Work
University of Tasmania

On 1/03/2012 2:19 AM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU wrote:
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> From: *Shittu, Aminu* <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Date: Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 7:26 PM
> Subject: [nigerianbiomedicalandlifescientists] Elsevier Abandons
> Anti-Open Access Bill
> To: Nigerian Scientists
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> 
>   Elsevier Abandons Anti-Open Access Bill
> 
> 
>     The publishing giant withdraws its support of the Research Works
>     Act, which would eliminate open-access requirements on federally
>     funded work.
> 
> *By Bob Grant | February 28, 2012*
>  Comment
> <http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/28/elsevier-abandons-anti-open-access-bill/#disqus_thread>
> <http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/28/elsevier-abandons-anti-open-access-bill/>
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> Publishing company Elsevier has backpedalled on its support of the
> Research Works Act (RWA), a bill that proposes to stop federal agencies
> from requiring that their grantees deposit federally funded research
> findings in open access databases.
> Elsevier, which publishes a slew of highly cited science journals such
> as /The Lancet/ and the /Cell/series, said in a statement
> <http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/newmessagerwa> yesterday that
> it decided to cease rallying for the legislation after hearing from
> “Elsevier journal authors, editors and reviewers who were concerned that
> the Act seemed inconsistent with Elsevier’s long-standing support for
> expanding options for free and low-cost public access to scholarly
> literature.”
> US Representatives Darrel Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
> introduced the RWA into the House of Representatives last December, and
> the Association of American Publishers, a trade group to which Elsevier
> and many other journal publishers belong, contributed heavily to drawing
> up the bill. Elsevier had been staunch supporters of the RWA, which
> would have rolled back the National Institutes of Health Public Access
> Policy—a mandate that any published research that was funded by the
> federal science agency be submitted to the publically accessible digital
> archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.
> But in January, renowned Cambridge University mathematician Timothy
> Gowers <http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/%7Ewtg10/> sparked a boycott of the
> publisher based on criticism involving the company’s business practices
> and its support of the RWA. By early February, some 5,000 academics had
> signed on to the boycott, and as of this writing, more than 2,500
> additional researchers have added their names to that list.
> Tom Reller, an Elsevier spokesperson, told /The Scientist/ that the
> company still opposes rigid government mandates regarding science
> publishing but hopes that withdrawing support of the RWA will quell some
> of the complaints the company had heard. “We don’t necessarily think
> this is going to end the boycott or anything,” he said, “but hopefully
> this helps everything calm down a little bit so we can get back to
> having a dialogue with funding bodies, both nonprofit and government.”
> But some boycotters aren’t changing their positions based on Elsevier’s
> latest move. University of North Carolina theoretical biology PhD
> student Joel Adamson <http://adamsonj.ninth.su/> said that the company’s
> decision was welcomed, but that it didn’t go far enough to deter his
> support for the boycott. “Within the realm of those kinds of solutions,
> it is a good thing, but it still doesn’t go all the way toward what I
> would call a real solution to the problem,” he said. “It shows me that
> they are a predictable corporation; in other words that they’re capable
> of being scared that something might affect their profits.” Adamson
> added that if Elsevier would abandon “bundling practices,” in which the
> company allegedly groups desirable science journals with less-august
> titles in package deals for university libraries, it would go further
> towards changing his mind.
> Albert Einstein College of Medicine geneticist Brett Abrahams
> <http://www.einstein.yu.edu/home/faculty/profile.asp?id=12213> said that
> he considers the decision a token gesture that means little in light of
> what he sees as Elsevier placing “the burden of the publication cost on
> the funders and on the public.”
> “They’re still anti open-access,” Abrahams said of Elsevier. “They’ve
> just taken a very far reaching outrageous position and backed off it a
> little bit.”
> Judging from Elsevier’s statement announcing their withdrawal of support
> for the RWA, the company will continue to support similar legislation
> and oppose other open-access efforts, such as the recently introduced
> Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) of 2012, which would mandate
> federal agencies with extramural research budgets more than $100 million
> to allow public online access to taxpayer-funded research. “While
> withdrawing support for the Research Works Act, we will continue to join
> with those many other nonprofit and commercial publishers and scholarly
> societies that oppose repeated efforts to extend mandates through
> legislation,” the Elsevier statement read. “I was amazed that they still
> continue to defend the merits of the RWA,” Abrahams added.
> But Elsevier could make changes that would bring Abrahams back into the
> fold, the researcher said. “If Elsevier wants to drop their pricing 75
> percent across the board, and provide open access for everything, I’ll
> sing and dance for them.”
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