[danaris]

I can't speak for "most" professors, since I haven't done any kind of scientific survey. However, I work in academia, and every professor I personally know hates Elsevier, and wants to get away from them in any reasonable way.

But when the journals that literally define their field are monopolized by Elsevier, there's only so much they can do for the time being. To avoid them, they'd have to accept their research being ignored, their careers stagnating, and their ability to continue to do their jobs properly being threatened.

[kevin_thibedeau]

SciHub is missing an opportunity by not providing a platform for researchers to self organize and run the peer review process directly on SciHub (or a new sister domain safe from interference). That would give them immediate legitimacy.

[ravel-bar-foo]

Couple funny stories about Elsevier. I published with them, and created an account. They started sending me spam advertising new journals. So I logged in and unsubscribed from all their mailing lists. Reliably, exactly one year after unsubscribing I get spam from them. When I go to unsubscribe I find a new category of mailing list, opted in automatically.

One might call it a mistake, but is remarkably suspicious that the spam regularly arrives exactly one year (to the day) after I most recently unsubscribed.

There are the financial aspects to their exploitation, but I guess this struck a nerve because it is scummy behavior that affects me more personally.

[randomswede]

As a possible hypothesis test, next time, could you leave the new opt-in in place for a month before unsubscribing?

If that reliably then has a new list added exactly one year later, it is a strong signal that it indeed based on you unsubscribing. But, if it instead happens at 11 months, it is a string signal that new lists are added at a specific month/day.

I mean, I would not be surprised if it happens one year later, due to Elsevier tracking when you unsubscribed, but this is a testable hypothesis, so testing it would be a Good Thing.