Yeah, that was my first thought too. It's a shock because people are used to uploading their papers in final published form but I don't think it's a crazy thing for Elsevier to do.
We should take the opportunity to tell authors to upload author copies into their institutional repositories. That's do far more for open access than complaining about how evil Elsevier is.
It's a shock because the university system is paid for by us, by our tuition and taxes. People pay high tuition to go to research universities and the societal bargain USED to be that those tuitions subsidized basic research which is available to society. Elsevier isn't contributing shit compared to us, yet they can apparently lock up publication with a really small amount of money compared to the rest of the uni system.
It is my understanding that tuition never funds research, except possibly in the sense that it pays some fraction of faculty salaries and buildings in which the faculty have offices. The actual research is funded by grants.
> It's a shock because people are used to uploading their papers in final published form
How common is this? Aren't people used to reading what they're agreeing to before they sign a contract? Because:
> but I don't think it's a crazy thing for Elsevier to do
I don't think that either. Elsevier _clearly_ defines the terms ("accepted author's manuscript", "final published version", etc.) in their contract and clearly states what you're allowed to do with each one. For example, click on the "Author posting" tab on this link:
I'm not a fan of the big publishers, I'd be very happy if all journals became open access overnight, but the original article is on a witch-hunt on Elsevier and they didn't even fully check the facts first.
We should take the opportunity to tell authors to upload author copies into their institutional repositories. That's do far more for open access than complaining about how evil Elsevier is.