Elsevier Abandons Anti-Open Access Bill

Elsevier Abandons Anti-Open Access Bill

the-scientist.com

The publishing giant withdraws its support of the Research Works Act, which would eliminate open-access requirements on federally funded work.


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.

(visit the link for the full news article)

....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.”

This is good news. Science - and civilization for that matter - cannot move forward if scientific information is privately owned and secret.

Our world is becoming more and more complicated - and the only way to preserve democracy is to allow the public to be fully informed. Else we will continue to be shut out of all the important decision-making processes on the grounds that we don't know what we're talking about.









the-scientist.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by soficrow


I am cautiously optimistic... the compartmentalization and sequestration of scientific data has caused a general decline in the innovation that was once the hallmark of our country.

I can understand the desire to limit dissemination for the sake of various factors... but "profit" should NOT be one of them.

reply to post by Maxmars

I can understand the desire to limit dissemination for the sake of various factors... but "profit" should NOT be one of them.

"Profit" is the only factor - no matter what the cover story might be.

S& for your post.

Originally posted by soficrow

....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.”

This is good news. Science - and civilization for that matter - cannot move forward if scientific information is privately owned and secret.

Our world is becoming more and more complicated - and the only way to preserve democracy is to allow the public to be fully informed. Else we will continue to be shut out of all the important decision-making processes on the grounds that we don't know what we're talking about.

the-scientist.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

It looks like a small victory for us "little" people.

reply to post by Maxmars

According to Elsevier's Wiki page, large and important people (Donald Knuth among others, the GrandDaddy of modern programming) are walking away from Elsevier and taking their publications with them, or rather going off to form a rival publication at a much cheaper price. Elsevier are money grabbers.

The whole board of a publication or journal resigns in unison, they go to another publisher and continue their work, often just adding the words "Journal of" to the title of the old publication.