** Cross-Posted **

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)
<A.Wise@elsevier.com> wrote:

> ...you would like all publishers to allow immediate green oa posting.
> What do you think some of the potential concerns about this might be, and
> how might those concerns be alleviated?
>
> ...With our posting policy our intent is certainly
> not to confuse or intimidate authors, but to ensure the sustainability of
> the journals in which they choose to publish.  Perhaps the Finch group will
> shed light on how to solve this challenge!

The concern is not about Elsevier's business goals but about the *meaning*
of a self-contradictory publisher agreement (sic) on the rights (sic) retained
(sic) by Elsevier authors that states:

"[As Elsevier author you retain] the right to post a revised
personal version of the text of the final journal article
(to reflect changes made in the peer review process)
on your personal or institutional website or server for
scholarly purposes"

and then follow it by a clause that contains the following
piece  of unmitigated FUD that (if authors and institutions
don't ignore it completely, as they should) contradicts
everything that came before it:

"(but not in... institutional repositories with mandates
for systematic postings unless there is a specific
agreement with the publisher)."

An author right is either retained or it is not. And if
it is a right, and it is retained, and a publisher agreement
formally states that it is retained, then the author can
exercise that retained right irrespective of whether the
author's institution mandates that the author should
exercise that retained right.

It is as simple as that. And any attempt by Elsevier
to defend retaining the clause is just more FUD:
A right is a right (and a formal publisher agreement
attesting that it is a right is only an agreement) only
if the agreed author right can be exercised without
requiring further publisher agreement.

Stevan Harnad

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