Yesterday, I wrote about science publishing profiteer Elsevier's legal threats against Citationsy, in which the company claimed that the mere act of linking to Sci-Hub (an illegal open-access portal) was itself illegal. Read the rest
Sci-Hub (previously) is a scrappy, nonprofit site founded in memory of Aaron Swartz, dedicated to providing global access to the world's scholarship -- journal articles that generally report on publicly-funded research, which rapacious, giant corporations acquire for free, and then charge the very same institutions that paid for the research millions of dollars a year to access. Read the rest
Elsevier (previously) is one of the titans of academic and scientific publishing, a wildly profitable and politically potent corporation whose market dominance has allowed it to extract ever-larger sums from the universities whose researchers provide the vast majority of the material it publishes -- material it does not have to pay for, and in some cases, material it charges money to publish. Read the rest
The Swedish ISP Bahnhof has a strong historic commitment to free speech, so when the notoriously corrupt science publishing giant Elsevier (previously) sought to force the ISP to censor connections to the open access site Sci-Hub (previously), the ISP went to court to resist the order. Read the rest
If you are a powerful corporation or individual and someone parodies you, challenging them with copyright infringement will not make the whole thing quietly go away. Scientists are boycotting the scientific publishing giant Elsevier. @FakeElsevier is a twitter account that mocks the real Elsevier's IP and paywall practices. Real Elsevier thinks they can take the heat off themselves by hitting @FakeElsevier with a takedown notice. Inevitable Streisand Effect ensues. (Via Stephanie Zvan) Read the rest
Here's another SOPA supporter for you to boycott: Elsevier, publisher of many medical and scientific journals. You might also remember them from a 2009 scandal where Elsevier published fake journals as covert advertisements for pharmaceutical companies. Maybe it's time for scientists to consider not submitting papers to Elsevier journals or serving as peer reviewers for their journals. (Via The Quantum Pontiff and Jani Kotakoski) Read the rest
