On 2011-01-11, at 9:27 AM, FrederickFriend wrote: > I cannot see how Elsevier is fully âon the side of the angelsâ if they > make it so difficult for authors to know about and therefore use their LtP. > We cannot blame authors for not self-archiving if it has taken so much > correspondence between those of us who are supposed to know about such > matters to uncover the existence of the Elsevier LtP. Presumably Elsevier > people are watching this correspondence, so my plea to [Elsevier] is to make > life a lot easier for us all and make the LtP a visible option for authors on > their web-site.
Having given their green light (since 2004!) for immediate OA self-archiving of the author's refereed final draft on the author's institutional website, I honestly do not think it is reasonable to ask Elsevier to make life even easier, either for authors or for permissions personnel. (1) Despite Elsevier's green light to self-archive, since 2004, 85% of authors are still not self-archiving. (2) We cannot blame Elsevier for not wanting to encourage more authors to self-archive, nor for trying instead to obscure the language of their green self-archiving policy with bogus caveats. (3) It's for authors and permissions personnel to see through those bogus caveats and act (and advise acting) upon the green light, which is still there, fully verdant. (4) And it's for institutions and funders to mandate that authors self-archive. (5) We can't even blame Elsevier for trying to lobby against self-archiving mandates (though we can -- and will, and do -- counter-lobby against their efforts). (5) But we *can* blame permissions personnel (and permissions registries) for not cutting through the bogus caveats and calling green "green" for their authors. (6) And, most of all, we can (and historians certainly will) blame (most) authors for being so unremittingly obtuse. Stevan Harnad
