[afandian]

This contract is causing outrage in the open science corner of the world. Many people think this is a conflict of interest. And many are unhappy that closed, private infrastructure is being used. In the broader context, hardly a day goes by without a story about problematic public infrastructure contracts. Organised commercial companies always have an advantage over open, transparent, community projects.

Here's my take on the collection of some of this kind of data:

https://blog.afandian.com/2018/05/five-principles-altmetrics...

[vanderZwan]

> In the broader context, hardly a day goes by without a story about problematic public infrastructure contracts. Organised commercial companies always have an advantage over open, transparent, community projects.

Can you clarify whether you mean if the open public infrastructure is broken, or has trouble getting contracts? Because if you mean the former, I'd say that arxiv.org has been running just fine for ages.

[afandian]

I was drawing wider parallels with processes for public contracts outside scholarly publishing, the "Big four" style government contracts. An endless stream of stories and comments appear here. Eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1740428

Edit: not comparing Elsevier to McKinsey per se, but the power imbalance of proprietary vs open.

[vanderZwan]

Thank you, that helped me make sense of your arguments and links :)