Scientists can pay up to 5000 USD for an “Open Access” article in Elsevier journals (i.e. published normally in a toll-access journal but free to read). Leaving aside whether this is good value I wish to know what the authors get for their money. In particular since the authors presumably wish me to be able to read them, Elsevier must make it easy for me to find them.
I ask the Director of Universal Access how I can find the articles and how they can be identified by readers:
To: “Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) [Director of Universal Access]” <A.Wise@elsevier.com>,
Dear Director of Universal Access,
I am interested in articles published in toll-access Elsevier journals as “authors-pays Open Access” often called “hybrid Gold”. See, for example, http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/authors/article-sponsorship_form.pdf
for the Lancet (for which the price is 400 GBP (ca 600 USD) per page (and 3000-5000 USD for articles in other journals). I am interested in all subjects, not just Biomedical.
I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions:
* What , if any, is Elsevier’s precise name for this scheme and where is it described?
* how many articles in total have been published under this scheme?
* what explicit licence, if any, is used on the articles?
* how are the articles labelled in the Elsevier journal (i.e. how is the licence and the Open Access information made apparent)?
* where is the machine-readable list of all articles published under this scheme? I wish to download and analyze all of them.
Thanks in advance for your answers. I shall be making the results Openly available as I shall be contributing to public discussion on this matter in a few weeks.
