We cannot rely on for-profit corporations to build open scholarly infrastructure

Back in 2012, in response to the Cost Of Knowledge declaration, they made all articles in “primary math journals” free to read, distribute and adapt after a four-year rolling window. Today, as David Roberts points out, it seems they have silently withdrawn some of those rights. In particular, the “free” articles can no longer be redistributed or adapted — which, for example, prevents their use in teaching or in Wikipedia articles.

We don’t know when this changed. It just did, quietly, at some point after the Cost of Knowledge anger had died down, when no-one was watching them carefully. So here, once more, Elsevier prove that they are bad actors who simply cannot be trusted.

There is a broader and more important point here: we simply can’t build a meaningfully open scholarly infrastructure that is dependent on the whims of corporations. It can’t be done.

Whatever corporations like Elsevier give us one day, they can and will take away another day. They can’t help themselves. It’s in their nature. And, really, it’s unreasonable of us to expect anything different from a corporation whose reason for existing is to enrich its shareholders.

So to have a genuinely open scholarly infrastructure, There is no real alternative to building it ourselves, within the scholarly community. It’s worse that useless to sit around waiting for likes of Elsevier to gift us the infrastructure we need. It’s not in their interests.

So once more, folks: there’s no need for us to be hostile to Elsevier et al. Just walk away. Do not deal with them. They are not on your side. They never have been, and they never will be. They will give just enough ground to defuse anger when it threatens their bottom line; that’s all. Then they will take the ground back when it suits them.

Note. This post is based on a series of tweets.