>“Most papers are now freely available somewhere on the Internet, or else you might choose to work with preprint versions. Clearly our negotiating position is strong. It is not clear that we want or need a paid extension of the old contracts.”
Awesome! It's going to be fun when Elsevier eventually tries to go after SciHub in Germany for copyright violations. I can imagine state prosecutors asking: "So you want us to prosecute someone for not paying you for access to public research?". One can hope...
I don't think Elsevier see SciHub as the biggest threat. No, the biggest threat is that now the EU has told researchers "You have to publish OA", researchers have two options: publish preprints of everything, or start paying Elsevier loads of cash. Obviously everyone is now starting to do the first option (usually via institutional repos, which at least Google Scholar indexes). And people are finding it to be a good low-effort system.
Elsevier lost when they agreed to allow people (mostly just some people in math and physics back then) to post preprints online.
I think you are overestimating the system. Researchers are going for the second option in large droves, as that's the one that helps their career forward, and it's often not their own money they're paying with.
If you're interested, I've written about why they're forced to do so at [1] and [2]. (And the reason I'm following it so closely is because I'm trying to fix it - if you want to follow that, see [3].)
Well, it's not their own money (to spend on coke and whores), but typically those are still their research funds so they have to make a decision as to whether to publish or buy new equipment, supplies, or get another TA/RA position. Often the funds are pre-loaded with overhead for the department so it's more expensive than it appears.
Indexed preprints make a whole lot of sense, if they'll let you do it.
Well, to some extent. If it's their own research funds, they will have to consider what's better for their career, and often, that publication will win over new equipment, for example.
That said, there are often funds available from e.g. the library, your funder, or even nationwide funds such as in the Netherlands and I think the UK, that will cover the costs of making articles available as open access. It's pretty much a no-brainer to use them for researchers.
Obviously everyone is now starting to do the first option
Not in my experience or at least no exclusively. A lot of researchers are paying for open access. Sure they all grumble about it and think it's a stupid system, but since it's neither their money nor in many cases their decision, they still do it.
It's barely alive and it doesn't even resemble what it was supposed to be. Google Books was originally meant to scan - and make available online - all of the worlds books within 10 years. The New Yorker has a good article on how and why it failed [1].
I use Google Books. I hope it doesn't go away. My biggest gripe, though, is the inability to download books, even books that I've uploaded from a local file.
Google Books I can understand the argument against. There are actual copyrights to protect. In the case of research Elsevier does approximately nothing. The research and the peer review has already been paid for by every one of us. That we then don't get free access to it is a scandal.
States could solve this whole mess tomorrow by just passing a law that states "if you take our money to do research the end result needs to be available to the general public for free". The chicken-and-egg problem of everyone just moving to open-access journals for everything would be solved.
Agree about the legitimate copyright issues, and agree about the open access chicken-and-egg.
A law would be best, that way it instantly applies to all government grants, but it could just be terms of the grant money. "In accepting these funds you agree to only publish through open access."
I disagree because it's not even just about grants. At least in Europe most researchers are government employees so I don't care if your grant money is private, open access is still a basic requirement. If you want to publish research that requires me to pay 30$ an article to access you better not be doing that from a publicly funded job.
Awesome! It's going to be fun when Elsevier eventually tries to go after SciHub in Germany for copyright violations. I can imagine state prosecutors asking: "So you want us to prosecute someone for not paying you for access to public research?". One can hope...