Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate

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

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
> Date: October 6, 2017 at 7:11:36 AM EDT
> To: Infowarrior List <infowarrior () attrition org>
> Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate
>
> Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate
>
> Academic social network accused of infringing copyright on a massive scale
>
> October 5, 2017    • By David Matthews
>
> https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/publishers-seek-removal-millions-papers-researchgate
>
> Leading publishers are stepping up their fight against ResearchGate by ordering the academic social network to take 
> down papers that they say infringe copyright.
>
> The move could see millions of articles removed from the site, as the publishers say up to 40 per cent of papers on 
> ResearchGate are copyrighted.
>
> James Milne, a spokesman for the group of five academic publishers, which includes Elsevier, Wiley and Brill, said 
> that the first batch of take-down notices would be sent “imminently”.
>
> “We’re not doing this in any way against the researchers, we’re doing this against ResearchGate,” he told Times 
> Higher Education. ​The site was “clearly hosting and happily uploading material that they know they don’t have the 
> licence or copyrights” to, and was “refusing to work with us to solve that problem”, he added. 
>
> According to a survey of academics released last year, Berlin-based ResearchGate is by some way the world’s biggest 
> academic social network, used by about 60 per cent of academics, particularly in the physical and life sciences, and 
> has raised nearly $90 million (£68 million) in funding from investors, according to the website Crunchbase.
>
> Publishers are seeing “anecdotal” evidence that the availability of papers on the site is eating into their revenues, 
> said Dr Milne. “We have heard during the subscriptions renewal process that librarians are occasionally referencing 
> ResearchGate as an alternative to resubscribing to journals,” he said.
>
> He attacked ResearchGate as being “backed by hundreds of millions of dollars [from venture capitalists,] who are 
> seeking to make a profit from what [ResearchGate] do, which is upload copyright infringed material”.
>
> “They put nothing back into the process for generating and validating and curating all that material,” he said.
>
> The publisher Elsevier drew a backlash from many academics in 2013 when it told users of Academia.edu, a rival to 
> ResearchGate, to take down papers to which it had rights. Dr Milne stressed that this time, the publishers would not 
> directly send take-down notices to academics. “We will work with ResearchGate on this, not researchers,” he said, 
> although the organisation would be communicating “en masse” with academics about how they can share their work 
> properly.
>
> But for the publishers, sending out mass take-down notices is not a permanent solution. “That in itself doesn’t solve 
> the problem, because every day ResearchGate is uploading more and more material,” said Dr Milne, trapping publishers 
> in a “perpetual loop” of having to identify infringing papers. He argued that this would be confusing for 
> researchers, as “one day there’s content, and the next day there isn’t”, he said.
>
> Elsevier and the American Chemical Society are therefore also taking ResearchGate to court where they hope to obtain 
> a ruling that would stop ResearchGate “scraping content off the web, uploading it...and asking researchers to claim 
> it” so that infringing material “is not in the public domain”, he explained. The court claim would be lodged in 
> Europe, he said.
>
> A ResearchGate spokeswoman declined to comment. The company’s founder and chief executive, Ijad Madisch, has 
> previously said that he “wouldn’t mind” if copyrighted material was removed from the site, as researchers could 
> continue to share papers privately.
>
> david.matthews () timeshighereducation com



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