OpenAccess.se's Steering Committee has issued a statement that objects to Elsevier's self-archiving policy's position on open access mandates.
Here's an excerpt:
Elsevier now requires specific agreements with universities or research funders if there is an open access mandate to deposit and disseminate articles in a specific open archive. These agreements may involve long embargo periods and restrict availability of research results. . . .
We recommend that Swedish universities with open access mandates refrain from concluding separate agreements with Elsevier. Instead, this issue should be managed along with negotiations over national license agreements with Elsevier.
Previously, UKB, a consortium of the thirteen Dutch university libraries and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, issued a statement about the policy.
Here's an excerpt:
The [Elsevier] clause states that an author "has the right to post a revised personal version of the text of the final journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review process) on your personal or institutional web site or server for scholarly purposes, incorporating the complete citation and with a link to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article (but not in subject-oriented or centralized repositories or institutional repositories with mandates for systematic postings unless there is a specific agreement with the publisher. . . .
UKB is deeply concerned about the fact that Elsevier has recently adapted its Open Access policy and has taken the initiative to negotiate directly with universities and research institutions about the conditions under which their authors may deposit manuscripts of their own articles in repositories. UKB aims to expand the digital availability of Dutch scientific output and is an advocate of publication in Open Access. UKB therefore deplores every action that results in the restriction of that accessibility, such as unacceptably long embargo periods. In addition, UKB is concerned about the consequences of this clause, namely that it will become even less clear for authors whether and according to which conditions they are allowed to post their article in a repository. This in turn will create an extra obstacle preventing authors from doing so. It is the view of UKB that an author should in principle have the right to deposit his own article, preferably in the version produced by the publisher but in any case in the final author’s version, a right which should not become dependent on (subsequent) agreements with publishers. UKB is particularly concerned about the fact that publishers may overrule agreements made between authors and funding bodies by means of this policy.
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