elsevier

A few months ago I registered on Elsevier's clunky old on-line manuscript submissions site and submitted a paper to Journal of Archaeological Science. It got turned down because the two peer reviewers disagreed on whether it should be accepted or not. No biggie: I resubmitted elsewhere. Today Elsevier Science & Technology Journals spammed the address I submitted from with an offer of language revision! Need help getting published? Elsevier Language services can help you Dear Dr. Martin Rundkvist, Could expert language editing improve your chances of getting published? • Language Editing…

In a victory for science, and those who favor open access for the easy dissemination of scientific results to the public and scientists around the world, Elsevier has withdrawn support for the Research Works Act. I think credit has to go to Tim Gowers calling for and Michael Eisen spreading the word on the boycott and getting Elsevier's attention. Eisen initially brought our attention to the bill which would have allowed Elsevier to break with the growing tendency towards putting science payed for with tax dollars into open access databases. The Research Works Act would allow them to erect…

Eisen writes Thus, people joining in the new boycott have no excuses not to follow through. There are plenty of viable OA options and it is simply unacceptable for any scientist who decries Elsevier's actions and believes that the subscription based model is no longer serving science to send a single additional paper to journals that do not provide full OA to every paper they publish. So, come on people! If we do this now, paywalls will crumble, and we all be better off. So, come on! Let's do it! This sounds great. If you remember we were similarly disgusted since Eisen brought the…

My apologies to readers who have been looking for novel content the last few days. I am swamped with all variety of personal and professional issues but when I finally had a moment to write about something of value, I needed a copy of a short review article from a European cancer journal published by Elsevier to which my institution does not subscribe. I patiently went through their process to register for their site, told them who I was, where I worked, what subdiscipline, etc. So, I logged in clicked on the PDF link for this two-page article and was told it would be $31.50, thank-you-very-…

The Scientist revealed Thursday that pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme paid Elsevier—the world's largest publisher of medical and scientific literature—to produce a publication that gave the appearance of being a medical journal, but was actually a marketing promotion for Merck. The 2003 publication, The The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, was written by the staff of Merck to favor Merck pharmaceuticals and lacked the unbiased peer review that is crucial to the credibility of medical journals, presenting evidence for the efficacy of a Merck drug when…