Elsevier's Latest Brilliant Idea: Adding Geoblocking To Open Access

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
> Date: October 5, 2017 at 7:18:16 AM EDT
> To: Infowarrior List <infowarrior () attrition org>
> Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Elsevier's Latest Brilliant Idea: Adding Geoblocking To Open Access
>
> Elsevier's Latest Brilliant Idea: Adding Geoblocking To Open Access
>
> from the how-about-no? dept
>
> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171004/09063938342/elseviers-latest-brilliant-idea-adding-geoblocking-to-open-access.shtml
>
> We've just written about a troubling move by Elsevier to create its own, watered-down version of Wikipedia in the 
> field of science. If you are wondering what other plans it has for the academic world, here's a post from Elsevier’s 
> Vice President, Policy and Communications, Gemma Hersh, that offers some clues. She's "responsible for developing and 
> refreshing policies in areas related to open access, open data, text mining and others," and in "Working towards a 
> transition to open access", Hersh meditates upon the two main kinds of open access, "gold" and "green". She observes:
>
> While gold open access offers immediate access to the final published article, the trade-off is cost. For those that 
> can't or don't wish to pay the article publishing charge (APC) for gold open access, green open access -- making a 
> version of the subscription article widely available after a time delay or embargo period -- remains a viable 
> alternative to enabling widespread public access.
>
> She has a suggestion for how the transition from green open access to gold open access might be effected:
>
> Europe is a region where a transition to fully gold open access is likely to be most cost-neutral and, perhaps for 
> this reason, where gold OA currently has the highest policy focus. This is in stark contrast to other 
> research-intensive countries such as the US, China and Japan, which on the whole have pursued the subscription/green 
> open access path. Therefore one possible first step for Europe to explore would be to enable European articles to be 
> available gold open access within Europe and green open access outside of Europe.
>
> Blithely ignoring the technical impossibility of enforcing an online geographical gold/green border, Hersh is 
> proposing to add all the horrors of geoblocking -- a long-standing blight on the video world -- to open access. But 
> gold open access papers that aren't fully accessible outside Europe simply aren't open access at all. The whole point 
> of open access is that it makes academic work freely available to everyone, everywhere, without restriction -- unlike 
> today, where only the privileged few can afford wide access to research that is often paid for by the public.
>
> It's hard to know why Elsevier is putting forward an idea that is self-evidently preposterous. Perhaps it now feels 
> it has such a stranglehold on the entire academic knowledge production process that it doesn't even need to hide its 
> contempt for open access and those who support it.



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