Heather Morrison explores Elsevier’s current open access practices, and the feasibility of transitioning Elsevier to a full open access publisher. She concludes that although Elsevier has boosted its quantity of full and hybrid open access journals substantially in recent years (511 full OA and 2,149 hybrid OA journals), it is unlikely that the publisher will become a fully open access venture as they would miss out on substantial revenue that could not feasibly be recovered through article processing charges (APCs) alone. Further, Morrison draws attention to copyright practices that she terms “deceptive”: Elsevier employs a “nominal author copyright,” which in effect positions the author as a third party user of their own research and still retains all copyright to the work. Overall, Heather warns that pursuing a global flip to open access via committing to APCs is improbable and should be considered more cautiously.

 

Work cited

Morrison, Heather. 2017. “From the Field: Elsevier as an Open Access Publisher.” The Charleston Advisor 18 (3): 53–59. doi:10.5260/chara.18.3.53