A promise to publish is worth nothing. An enforceable obligation to publish might be worth something. But if I were the judge, I think I would put the onus on Elsevier to show how Elsevier's nonmonetary compensation provides value to the author, especially if they were required to transfer their copyrights. From here, it looks like an enormous scam perpetrated on researchers to force them to run full speed on a virtual hamster wheel in order to keep their jobs or get promoted.
And if you also consider all the fake papers submitted as integrity checks on the system that got accepted, it looks as though it's high time for researchers, professional associations, and universities alike to forcibly cut out the middleman and abandon his tainted brands.
A promise to publish is worth nothing. An enforceable obligation to publish might be worth something.
When copyright is transferred, the promise effectively becomes an enforceable obligation. Artists are (occasionally) able to wriggle out of contracts on the basis of the failure to publish within a particular timeframe, because popularity is arguably a function of the timely availability of new material.
Yes, and I expect you (anigbrowl) understand this, but it wouldn't even necessarily require that copyright be transferred to make a promise to publish enforceable. One view of contracts is that a contract is merely a set of legally enforceable promises. E.g., On December 1, 2013, Author and Publisher reach an agreement: Author promises that on January 1, 2014 he/she will transfer copyright to Publisher in exchange for Publisher's promise to publish sometime in 2014. Each promise serves as consideration for the other and Author becomes legally bound to transfer the copyright on January 1 as soon as the agreement is made on December 1.
All of this goes far beyond main theme of the thread, but I initially raised the point because there seemed to be some confusion on whether Elsevier could rightfully claim ownership of copyrights. . . .
Quite. I think part of the reason for the misconceptions is that many people expect contracts to be equitable, and (IMHO) equity is the poor cousin in US law because of excess proceduralism.
And if you also consider all the fake papers submitted as integrity checks on the system that got accepted, it looks as though it's high time for researchers, professional associations, and universities alike to forcibly cut out the middleman and abandon his tainted brands.