Elsevier response to OpenAccess.se statement

["Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)" <A.Wise@elsevier.com>]

Dear Colleagues,

At Elsevier we have noted the statement issued by the Steering 
Committee for OpenAccess.SE following its meeting on 23 May, and 
would welcome the opportunity to clarify some items and respond. 
First, let me say that we have always welcomed the opportunity 
for dialogue with the Steering Committee.  Indeed, we have worked 
successfully in partnership with many organisations that share 
our vision for universal access to information of high-quality 
and in ways sustainable for all stakeholders in scholarly 
communications

We would like to clarify that Elsevier's posting policy is not in 
fact new, although we have been making a very conscious efforts 
to communicate it more clearly in recent months.  The policy 
supports our vision of universal access to high-quality 
information in the following ways:

*Our journal authors are able to use copies of their articles in 
a broad variety of ways.  For example authors can make copies of 
their article for personal use, for their own classroom teaching 
use, to distribute or email to research colleagues and for the 
personal use of those colleagues, to distribute to delegates at 
meetings, to post a pre-print on websites and pre-print servers, 
and to post voluntarily the accepted manuscript version on a 
personal or institutional web site or server for scholarly 
purposes. (More details are available at 
www.elsevier.com/access/).  Our usage policies are among the most 
responsive to author needs in the STM publishing industry.

*We believe the voluntary posting of manuscripts is an acceptable 
practice for authors, and that both institutions and publishers 
should respect their choices. The systematic posting of 
manuscripts, for example because of a mandate to post, is only 
agreeable if done in ways that are sustainable for the underlying 
journal.

*Our first systematic posting agreements have been with funding 
bodies and date back to 2005.  Authors funded by organizations 
such as Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and NIH could not 
have complied with the systematic posting policies of these 
funding bodies under the terms of our voluntary posting policy, 
so we created agreements or arrangements with those funders to 
enable authors to comply in ways that we believed would be 
sustainable.

*Embargo periods are a feature of these agreements or 
arrangements.  The embargo periods are journal specific and 
differ according to the varied usage patterns that exist across 
science and social science areas. A high percentage of these are 
for a 12 month period, predominantly in life and health sciences, 
but in other areas such as mathematics and social sciences longer 
embargo periods of typically 24 or 36 months are necessary to 
ensure the sustainability of the underlying journals.

*During the period when the embargo period would apply to posted 
manuscripts there is wide availability of articles.  93% of 
researchers surveyed in academic institutions reported that they 
are satisfied with access to research information in journal 
articles (Access vs. Importance, A global study assessing the 
importance of and ease of access to professional and academic 
information Phase I Results, Publishing Research Consortium, 
October 2010 - 4,109 respondents). However we are not complacent 
with even this great result, and systematically identify and 
close access gaps in sustainable ways through programmes such as 
Research4Life which provides free and very low cost access to 
researchers in the world's poorest countries.  We also have an 
extremely active program of pilots to provide innovative access 
services to members of the public, patients and their families, 
people working in small and medium sized businesses, students, 
etc.

We believe that author rights agreements and subscription 
agreements should be kept separate, but we are of course very 
happy to talk with BIBSAM or other organizations in Sweden (and, 
indeed, elsewhere) about either topic.  Please note that as our 
early systematic posting agreements have been with funding 
bodies, we are still in test-and-learn mode for institutional 
agreements.  We are therefore currently running a pilot program 
and would be willing to work with a small number of Swedish 
institutions as part of this program.

Organizations that need but do not yet have, or do not want, a 
systematic posting agreement are asked to work with us to 
minimize unauthorized distribution and use of journal article, in 
line with the following Elsevier policies:

*www.elsevier.com/copyright

*www.elsevier.com/postingpolicy

We understand the role that public access to research can have in 
enabling society to progress, and we're always happy to work with 
research institutions to find ways of achieving access objectives 
in sustainable ways.

With best wishes,

Alicia

Dr Alicia Wise
Director of Universal Access
Elsevier
I E: a.wise@elsevier.com


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Ingegerd Rabow
Sent: 24 June 2011 12:02
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Sciecom info June 2011

Welcome to the June 2011 issue of ScieCom info. Nordic-Baltic
Forum for Scientific Communication.

There has been a lot of international concern about Elsevier's 
recently changed Open Access Policy. We can now publish a formal 
statement made by the Swedish national OpenAccess.se programme, 
run by the Swedish National Library to promote OA to research 
results produced by Swedish researchers. The Steering Committee 
is deeply concerned about any changes that restrict availability 
and strongly objects to Elsevier's new policy. "OpenAccess.se 
Statement: Concern about Elsevier's Open Access Policy." 
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/5146/4608

An Open Access Policy has now been adopted by the Karolinska 
Institute (KI), Stockholm. The Policy will be in effect from July 
1, 2011. KI encourages its researchers to make their publications 
to the greatest possible extent freely available, taking into 
account publisher terms and relevant demands of grant-awarding 
bodies and government authorities.  es. Read KI's Open access 
Policy here. 
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/5146/4608

The DOAJ team in Lund is happy to announce that the DOAJ site is 
now available in French. Other languages will follow. 
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/5146/4608

Will the more mundane communication channels have any roles in 
scholarly publishing? Will they seriously challenge the old 
academic publishing traditions? We hope to inspire lively 
discussions with the article "Taking new routes: Blogs, Web 
sites, and Scientific Publishing "by Helena Bukvova, a researcher 
and lecturer at the Dresden University of Technology. Helena 
Bukova presents several new aspects of web usage for researchers. 
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/5148

We continue to follow the promising OA developments in Denmark. 
Lise Mikkelsen has earlier reported on the hearing process for 
the first draft of the "Recommendations for implementation of 
Open Access in Denmark". The final version has now been released. 
In "Central Open Access activities in Denmark" Lise Mikkelsen 
takes us through the key events related to the final 
Recommendations, and presents some of the main areas in the 
Danish Open Access Committee's final recommendations for 
implementing a national OA-policy in Denmark. 
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/5149

"Promote a national open access policy and create the necessary
conditions for an efficient implementation of it" is one of the
most important goals for the new strategy recently adopted by the
Steering Committee for the Swedish OpenAccess.se programme. The
main purpose of the Programme is to help increasing the share of
freely available research publications on the Internet. "Strategy
for the OpenAccess.se programme 2011-2013" was adopted at the
Committee's May 23rd meeting.  The new strategy also defines
goals for specific areas as well as the means to reach them.
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/5150

Jan Erik Frantsvag has earlier presented, "The Open Access
publication fund at the University of Tromso". His colleague Leif
Longva now reports on "Doctoral theses are now submitted
electronically at the University of Tromso". It all started in
late 2007, when an electronic submission portal for master theses
was introduced.  The great success of this portal led them to
consider doing the same for doctoral these. They had been
surprised to notice that doctoral candidates were reluctant to
include their theses in the Munin open archive. Encouraged by the
earlier success the library launched a similar service for
doctoral theses.
http://nile.lub.lu.se/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/5151

We hope that you will have a god read. Your comments and ideas
are very welcome

Ingegerd Rabow
Editor-in-chief
ScieCom info
http://www.sciecom.org/sciecominfo