It’s challenging running an Open Access business, especially one that spends $1M per year on infrastructure and user support. So it’s perhaps not surprising that this financial deal has (eventually) been agreed.
However, Michael Jensen (Chairman and Integrity Officer of SSRN) says on the SSRN website that "SSRN does not take government grants or other subsidies, nor do we take capital from outside investors, eliminating a potential source of conflict with our authors and users. We are committed to doing our best to ensure SSRN never abandons its commitment to scholars and their readers, including ensuring that SSRN is not sold to a party that would abandon this commitment.”
The scholarly community will all agree that Elsevier is well known for its commitment to authors and users (no one loves cattle more than Burger King). Michael Jensen's email acknowledges that there will be conflicts as interests are aligned, so the scholarly community should keep watch on the way that terms and conditions are adjusted and open access resources change their availability (as they did after the acquisition of Mendeley).
—
Les Carr
On 17 May 2016, at 16:03, Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Shame on SSRN.
Of course we know exactly why Elsevier acquired SSRN (and Mendeley):
It's to retain their stranglehold over a domain (peer-reviewed scholarly/scientific research publishing) in which they are no longer needed, and in which they would not even have been able to gain as much as a foothold if it had been born digital, instead of being inherited as a legacy from an obsolete Gutenberg era.
I don't know about Arxiv (needless centralization and its concentrated expenses are always vulnerabe to faux-benign take-overs) but what's sure is that the distributed network of Green institutional repositories worldwide is not for sale, and that is their strength...
Stevan Harnad
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 8:03 AM, Bo-Christer Björk <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
This is an interesting news item which should interest the readers of this list. Let's hope arXiv is not for sale.
Bo-Christer Björk
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Message from Mike Jensen, SSRN Chairman
Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 07:40:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael C. Jensen <[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
[http://papers.ssrn.com/Organizations/images/ihp_ssrnlogo.png]<http://hq.ssrn.com/GroupProcesses/RedirectClick.cfm?partid=2338421&corid=4024&runid=15740&url=http://www.ssrn.com> [http://static.ssrn.com/Images/Header/socialnew.gif]
Dear SSRN Authors,
SSRN announced today that it has changed ownership. SSRN is joining Mendeley<https://www.mendeley.com/?signout> and Elsevier<https://www.elsevier.com/> to coordinate our development and delivery of new products and services, and we look forward to our new access to data, products, and additional resources that this change facilitates. (See Gregg Gordon’s Elsevier Connect<https://www.elsevier.com/connect/ssrn-the-leading-social-science-and-humanities-repository-and-online-community-joins-elsevier> post)
Like SSRN, Mendeley and Elsevier are focused on creating tools that enhance researcher workflow and productivity. SSRN has been at the forefront of on-line sharing of working papers. We are committed to continue our innovation and this change will enable that to happen more quickly. SSRN will benefit from access to the vast new data and resources available, including Mendeley’s reference management and personal library management tools, their new researcher profile capabilities, and social networking features. Importantly, we will also have new access for SSRN members to authoritative performance measurement tools such as those powered by Scopus<https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus> and Newsflo<http://hq.ssrn.com/GroupProcesses/RedirectClick.cfm?partid=2338421&corid=4024&runid=15740&url=http://www.newsflo.net> (a global media tracking tool). In addition, SSRN, Mendeley and Elsevier together can cooperatively build bridges to close the divide between the previously separate worlds and workflows of working papers and published papers.
We realize that this change may create some concerns about the intentions of a legacy publisher acquiring an open-access working paper repository. I shared this concern. But after much discussion about this matter and others in determining if Mendeley and Elsevier would be a good home for SSRN, I am convinced that they would be good stewards of our mission. And our copyright policies are not in conflict -- our policy has always been to host only papers that do not infringe on copyrights. I expect we will have some conflicts as we align our interests, but I believe those will be surmountable.
Until recently I was convinced that the SSRN community was best served being a stand-alone entity. But in evaluating our future in the evolving landscape, I came to believe that SSRN would benefit from being more interconnected and with the resources available from a larger organization. For example, there is scale in systems administration and security, and SSRN can provide more value to users with access to more data and resources.
On a personal note, it has been an honor to be involved over the past 25 years in the founding and growth of the SSRN website and the incredible community of authors, researchers and institutions that has made this all possible. I consider it one of my great accomplishments in life. The community would not have been successful without the commitment of so many of you who have contributed in so many ways. I am proud of the community we have created, and I invite you to continue your involvement and support in this effort.
The staff at SSRN are all staying (including Gregg Gordon, CEO and myself), the Rochester office is still in place, it will still be free to upload and download papers, and we remain committed to “Tomorrow’s Research Today”. I look forward to and am committed to a successful transition and to another great 25 years for the SSRN community that rivals the first.
Michael C. Jensen
Founder & Chairman, SSRN
________________________________
Search the SSRN eLibrary<http://hq.ssrn.com/GroupProcesses/RedirectClick.cfm?partid=2338421&corid=4024&runid=15740&url=http://papers.ssrn.com/> | Browse SSRN <http://hq.ssrn.com/GroupProcesses/RedirectClick.cfm?partid=2338421&corid=4024&runid=15740&url=http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayJournalBrowse.cfm> | Top Papers<http://hq.ssrn.com/GroupProcesses/RedirectClick.cfm?partid=2338421&corid=4024&runid=15740&url=http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/topten/topTenPapers.cfm>
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