"A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals."
Academics have protested against Elsevier's business practices for years with little effect. These are some of their objections:
They charge exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions to individual journals.
In the light of these high prices, the only realistic option for many libraries is to agree to buy very large "bundles", which will include many journals that those libraries do not actually want. Elsevier thus makes huge profits by exploiting the fact that some of their journals are essential.
They support measures such as SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, that aim to restrict the free exchange of information.
The key to all these issues is the right of authors to achieve easily-accessible distribution of their work. If you would like to declare publicly that you will not support any Elsevier journal unless they radically change how they operate, then you can do so by filling in your details on this page.
"Scientists: If you get handed the keys to the Library of Wisdom, then choose to lock the place up and hand over the keys to Elsevier et. al., don't complain about the occult bookstore across the street."
Student Statement on The Right to Research
New publishing imprint from a major publisher to use only CC works available for free on the Internet at the time of publication. Hal Abelson is on the advisory board.
