“Two things about the deal stand out. First, Elsevier may be the most loathed academic publisher in the world, a reflection of its size, ubiquitousness, and success at maintaining a high-profit business model despite pressure for greater public access to publicly funded scientific research. More than 16,000 researchers have signed on to a boycott of publishing in or performing peer review service for Elsevier-published journals, in protest of the high costs of Elsevier journal articles despite the uncompensated labor of authors, reviewers, and editors. While Elsevier practices a for-profit model much like other academic publishers, the fees it charges to libraries, individual end-users, and authors (in the form of APCs) and the greater than 30% profit margin it earns on that revenue have led to sharp criticism by academics and high-profile organizations like the Wellcome Trust….
Second, yesterday’s acquisition links Elsevier to an immensely popular service that many of its users likely never recognized as a for-profit corporation. SSRN has been hugely successful, especially in Law and Economics, where it rivals the physical science’s arXiv in popularity. With papers authored by leading scholars, “eJournals” edited by the same, and paper downloads hosted by the Chicago Booth, Stanford Law School, and elsewhere, the site gives an impression of being a purely academic entity. Yet since its founding in 1994 SSRN has been run by a privately held corporation with claims of an after-dividends annual budget in excess of $1 million….”