[zvrba]

> yet they're demanding take-down notices of such pre-prints hosted on 3rd party machines.

When you agree to the copyright form, you also agree that you won't systematically distribute preprints or submit them to a systematic distribution service.

In comparison with other publishers, Elsevier is rather generous to allow authors to post a preprint on their personal web-page (whether or not it is served by their university.)

[Luc]

Generous is an unreasonable word to use in this context. Their profit margins though, those are generous.

"Elsevier made $1.1 billion in profit in 2010 for a profit margin of 36%."

https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-acc...

[res0nat0r]

Isn't this a website about startups and business? What is wrong with a healthy profit margin that is made by legal willing contracts between Elsevier and scientists?

Just because they make money and are involved with copyright they are automatically bad? If they were barely making any money and closer to broke startup founders, then they would be OK?

[jjoonathan]

40% profit margins do not exist for long in properly functioning competitive markets. Deeply entrenched companies typically run at 10%. Monopolies (example: drug companies) run at 20% (arguably in the case of drug companies this is ok because they operate with much higher risk).

If you find a 40% margin that can't be ascribed to transient behavior, you have found a market that has entered one of the (many) modes of market failure, in which the usual arguments for markets being a force for good (or least evil) go out the window. We use markets precisely because they tend to avoid situations like this; it baffles me how frequently the "market did it so it must be good" argument rears its head every time there's an exception. It's circular reasoning, at least for those of us who don't take the moral infallibility of the free-market as an article of faith.

Specifically, they are not "automatically bad" because they make money using copyright. They are bad because they've found a loophole that lets them monopolize a critical distribution channel for taxpayer-funded research, and they're milking the shit out of it at enormous cost to taxpayers and students. Broke startup founders do not get to appropriate tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded work and hold it hostage from those who have paid for it, and if they did it would not be OK.

[res0nat0r]

> They are bad because they've found a loophole that lets them monopolize a critical distribution channel for taxpayer-funded research

There would be no monopoly if scientists didn't agree to their terms and refused to submit papers to them. They'd go out of business very quickly.

[fphhotchips]

No, they're bad because the majority of their product (that is, knowledge) isn't developed by them, or paid for by them. Instead, it's funded by universities and funding agencies. It's a parasitic relationship with very little benefit to the host.

[Luc]

It's a sign their profit is not just from the service they provide, which is really rather simple, but from a historically grown, entrenched system that is very hard to get rid of. They're basically a tax on society, and we'd be much better off if authors and their institutions made a clean break.

[microtonal]

In comparison with other publishers, Elsevier is rather generous to allow authors

They are absolutely not generous. In my field, the ACL is one of the largest organisations, which publishes (among other things) two journals. Nearly (or all?) publications are publicly available at:

http://aclweb.org/anthology/

Let's not forget that a substantial share of research worldwide is paid for by tax payers. It's awful to see that most of that knowledge does not become generally available to the larger public, but ends up being used to increase the profits of an oligopoly.

[scott_s]

Both the ACM and the IEEE allow authors to post the final version on their personal website, or the website of their institution.

Of course, the ACM and IEEE are professional organizations, not for-profit publishers. So they can actually move away from the pay-per-access model and still continue to exist. I don't see how for-profit publishers can.

[Fomite]

One of the problems is the number of professional organizations who use a for-profit publisher for their journal's output.

[tehwalrus]

"When you agree to the copyright form" => presumably this is different for every publisher.

My only pre-print (hosted on arXiv) was submitted there long before it was accepted for publication in a non-Elsevier journal, who have made no attempt to take it down.

There are also open access journals which explicitly allow you to host your own pre-prints.