Elsevier vs. ResearchGate

[Rodger Kram]

from Nature website:

Two large scientific publishers, Elsevier and the American Chemical Society, have filed a lawsuit against the scholarly social network ResearchGate to prevent copyrighted material appearing on its site. The publishers are two of five that on 5 October announced they had formed a coalition to start ordering ResearchGate to take down from its site papers that breach copyright. Up to 7 million papers may be affected, the coalition statement said. ResearchGate, based in Berlin, declined to comment on the lawsuit, which was filed in a German court.

Note: Elsevier is the publisher of the Journal of Biomechanics
Institutional subscription rate (i.e. your university library): $7762 per year

[Morgan Sangeux]

Re: Elsevier vs. ResearchGate

Thanks, this is a difficult issue.

I think there is a way to use Researchgate that comply with the law since "scientists are allowed to upload preprints, and peer-reviewed but unedited manuscripts, online for general access".
I have followed this rule and systematically uploaded pdf version of the word document sent out for review, and accepted for publication. A benefit is that it provides the opportunity to create a pdf version that includes any supplementary material that may accompany the main text, and create a better version of the file edited by the journal.

This way, we (as a community) benefit from the publisher's infrastructure to organise the review process while keeping access to the key material (the text) opened, and allow research to flourish. With time, I suspect following this approach will lead to reducing the subscription prices because the sole added value of the publisher (basically stamp and formatting, and some editing) will be better priced.

Cheers,

Morgan Sangeux

[Tim Wrigley]

Re: Elsevier vs. ResearchGate

Elsevier's Wikipedia entry makes interesting reading ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier

The re-jigging of some quality journals as still-rigorous / free-submission / open-access is similarly interesting to contemplate ...

http://footnote.co/the-exploitative-economics-of-academic-publishing/

http://blogs.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/

[Avril Mansfield]

Re: Elsevier vs. ResearchGate

I've always had an issue with Research Gate insisting you upload the PDF version of the paper - this is one of the reasons I deleted my account. Many of us are required by funding agencies and/or institutions to make our papers available publicly, and do so either by paying for gold open access or through various repositories (pubmed central, institutional repositories etc) after an embargo period. It would be better if Research Gate would allow users to link to the 'legal' (gold or green) open access version of the paper, rather than uploading the PDF. I think a lot of investigators have uploaded a copyrighted version without understanding if it's allowed, or without realizing there could be copyright issues, assuming there's no problem if Research Gate allows it.