Elsevier is taking down papers from Academia.edu

> Lots of researchers post PDFs of their own papers on their own web-sites. It’s always been so, because even though technically it’s in breach of the copyright transfer agreements that we blithely sign, ....

Not true. Copyright transfer agreements vary a great deal. I've published a few papers, and these days I don't sign any transfer agreement without reading it. A fair number of them specifically allow for posting copies of papers on personal websites.[1]

Probably the Elsevier agreement does not allow it. But since they've gotten so much poor publicity, no one who publishes with them has any excuse for being unaware of the consequences.

[1] OTOH, I'm in math/comp. sci., and Mike Tayor is in paleontology; maybe things are different in that field.

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EDIT. More FTA:

> Rich FitzJohn speculated: I wonder what their long game is here; petty harassment like that makes me way less inclined to publish in an Elsevier journal.

Seriously? After ridiculous subscription prices, aggressively making publicly funded research difficult to get at, revelations of fake "peer-reviewed" journals, paying for shill reviews, the resignations of several editorial boards, more than a year of a widely publicized boycott, and now this, he's just "way less inclined to publish". What does it take to get people to stop?

Alas, I know the answer. It is that tenure & promotion committees stop considering publications in journals like Elsevier's to be worth a lot more than publications in journals that are run ethically.

This claim is, of course, false. http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4527505&cid=4562...

I have asked her for an explanation; I'm sure it will be of interest.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/posting-your-latest-a... http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/12/06/1945224/elsevier-...

Those defending Elsevier need to keep in mind Elsevier’s fraudulent pseudojournals, blatant scientific fraud for marketing cash. Elsevier passed the “reasonable doubt” event horizon long ago. http://kmccready.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/elsevier-shoots-it...

If you post on papers on your ~home/ page it is fine, but if you give your papers to a third party which operates a for profit website then it is not the same.

I am generally not a big fan of Elsevier, but in this case I am totally with them on the matter.