The thing is: Elsevier is a middle-man whose "business" (parasitism, more like) critically depends on exactly two things: scientists who want to be published in their journals, and Universities who want access to those journals. The second one of these is annoyed enough to find alternatives, there is no business.
Which makes it very, very unwise to piss off both at the same time.
Science publishers served a purpose in the past, but the cost of what they're doing has gone down dramatically and at the same time they're jacking up prices to absurd levels to extract the maximum profit from the pseudo-monopoly resulting from the non-fungibility of science results and magnified by aggregation.
And the worst thing is that they extract these profits at the expense of everyone else because it actually reduces the accessibility of scientific research and the profits are paid for from science budgets.
It's the perfect example of an entire industry whose activity is a net negative for society at large.
In fact, in this case they tried not to "piss off" both at the same time and in fact concentrated on the university, not the individual scientist. The university just tried to communicate its pressure to it scientists, but it's a long and hard road to get them to care (some then already do!).
Nope, it's quite a short route. You delist Elsevier publications fromt he impact index you calculate for measuring their productivity, and they'll intantly care.
Universities are pissed off Elsevier when buying their material, but completely in love when hiring researchers, and also wondering why researchers don't seem to get what they feel about the matter.
Which makes it very, very unwise to piss off both at the same time.
Science publishers served a purpose in the past, but the cost of what they're doing has gone down dramatically and at the same time they're jacking up prices to absurd levels to extract the maximum profit from the pseudo-monopoly resulting from the non-fungibility of science results and magnified by aggregation.
And the worst thing is that they extract these profits at the expense of everyone else because it actually reduces the accessibility of scientific research and the profits are paid for from science budgets.
It's the perfect example of an entire industry whose activity is a net negative for society at large.