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Publishers Take ResearchGate To Court, Seek Removal of Millions of Papers (sciencemag.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Scholarly publishing giants Elsevier and the American Chemical Society (ACS) have filed a lawsuit in Germany against ResearchGate, a popular academic networking site, alleging copyright infringement on a mass scale. The move comes after a larger group of publishers became dissatisfied with ResearchGate's response to a request to alter its article-sharing practices. ResearchGate, a for-profit firm based in Berlin, Germany, which was founded in 2008, is one of the largest social networking sites aimed at the academic community. It claims more than 13 million users, who can use their personal pages to upload and share a wide range of material, including published papers, book chapters and meeting presentations.
Yesterday, a group of five publishers -- ACS, Elsevier, Brill, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer -- announced that ResearchGate had rejected the association's proposal. Instead, the group, which calls itself the "Coalition for Responsible Sharing," said in a October 5th statement that ResearchGate suggested publishers should send the company formal notices, called "takedown notices," asking it to remove content that breaches copyright. The five publishers will be sending takedown notices, according to the group. But the coalition also alleges that ResearchGate is illicitly making as many as 7 million copyrighted articles freely available, and that the company's "business model depends on the distribution of these in-copyright articles to generate traffic to its site, which is then commercialized through the sale of targeted advertising." The coalition also states that sending millions of takedown notices "is not a viable long-term solution, given the current and future scale of infringement Sending large numbers of takedown notices on an ongoing basis will prove highly disruptive to the research community." As a result, two coalition members -- ACS and Elsevier -- have opted to go to court to try to force ResearchGate's hand.
Yesterday, a group of five publishers -- ACS, Elsevier, Brill, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer -- announced that ResearchGate had rejected the association's proposal. Instead, the group, which calls itself the "Coalition for Responsible Sharing," said in a October 5th statement that ResearchGate suggested publishers should send the company formal notices, called "takedown notices," asking it to remove content that breaches copyright. The five publishers will be sending takedown notices, according to the group. But the coalition also alleges that ResearchGate is illicitly making as many as 7 million copyrighted articles freely available, and that the company's "business model depends on the distribution of these in-copyright articles to generate traffic to its site, which is then commercialized through the sale of targeted advertising." The coalition also states that sending millions of takedown notices "is not a viable long-term solution, given the current and future scale of infringement Sending large numbers of takedown notices on an ongoing basis will prove highly disruptive to the research community." As a result, two coalition members -- ACS and Elsevier -- have opted to go to court to try to force ResearchGate's hand.
Basically every researcher I work with, and I, share all our articles on ResearchGate. There WILL be a backlash.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
One reason this doesn't get pushed more, legally, is that there are a lot of other terms in the grant contracts that the universities really don't want enforced. The IP generated under a grant is also supposed to be owned by the government and publicly available. The facilities and equipment funded under a grant are also supposed to be public property. We'll get to that fight eventually, but the university lobby is now larger than the defense contractor lobby, so that's going to be a difficult fight.
The kind of researcher driven co-operative websites that you're wishing for do exist. Their user interfaces are not good and they have no search engine optimization (so don't show up on the first few pages when you search for something).
The simplest solution is that, if you're a scientist, you should only publish in open access journals or you should publish white papers either on something like arxiv ahead of peer review to establish copyright and an open access source before the journal publishes (they hate this, but tough for them). I am a scientist, and that is what I do. I work at a small company, so I also have a marketer who formats papers nicely and makes sure our open access white papers show up high in search rankings. My work is not publicly funded, but it's just smart to do this anyway!