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Starting around 2012, Timothy Gowers had much to say about the practices of Elsevier. Very roughly speaking, he argued that Elsevier made research articles expensive to access and profited heavily from the volunteer work of peer reviewers. Sympathetic individuals established a website called "The Cost of Knowledge", which hosts the electronic signatures of over 15,000 academics who have agreed to boycott Elsevier to some degree.

Things are relatively quiet now compared to the flurry of activity that followed Gowers' series of posts. The most recent information I can find is Greg Martin's letter of resignation from the editorial board of Elsevier's "Journal of Number Theory", which was posted to Gowers' blog in May of 2013. In it, Martin writes (emphasis mine):

As far as I can tell, Elsevier’s responses to our concerns ended up being limited to a slight easing off of support for legislation limiting access to our research, together with a nominal reduction in individual journal prices. Regarding the latter, however, Elsevier’s “bundling” practice remains in place, making individual journals’ prices essentially irrelevant. Their (aggressively defended) lack of pricing transparency from one institution to another also speaks volumes, in my mind, to the limits of their desire to seriously address our pricing concerns.

My feeling is that not much has changed in the past two years, particularly since I would expect to hear an update from Gowers if any major victories had been won.

Can anyone provide more up-to-date information about Elsevier's pricing, bundling, and access practices?

Austin Mohr
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    I don't think much has changed about pricing, but Elsevier has made open access all the content of their journals after a 48 months embargo (source). This is an important concession in my opinion. Maybe it will encourage academics from other fields to consider a similar protest to obtain the same boon... – Federico Poloni Sep 14 '15 at 19:12
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    @Federico: I think your comment is well worthy of an answer. – Pete L. Clark Sep 14 '15 at 19:16
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    @FedericoPoloni I had forgotten about the open access of older articles. Thanks for the reminder. Within mathematics, at least, this is hardly a concession, as our articles are available on arXiv even prior to publication. Further, I don't think this lessens the financial burden on libraries. Surely all institutions interested in research must still purchase bundled journals or else fall four years behind. – Austin Mohr Sep 14 '15 at 19:20
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    @AustinMohr Many of the articles being made open access were published long before the advent of arXiv, and there are no preprints to speak of. – PVAL Sep 14 '15 at 21:08
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    @AustinMohr I agree completely: this is a concession that pleases the mathematicians in their day-to-day work, but doesn't ease things for the libraries and doesn't harm their main source of income. The only thing they lose is the single-article fees, but I don't think there were many people in real life who paid 39USD to access a maths paper. – Federico Poloni Sep 14 '15 at 21:42
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    @FedericoPoloni: I teach at a community college, so I don't have any access to paywalled journals except by driving to the nearest university and walking into the library. The ability to access papers for free online after 2 years is a huge change for me. –  Sep 14 '15 at 22:16
  • Nothing has been posted on "The Cost of Knolwedge" blog since 2012. I think its fair to say that the effort to boycott Elsevier may have generated some attention for this issue but that it has done very little to change Elsevier's behavior. – Brian Borchers Sep 14 '15 at 23:04
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    My impression had always been that the boycott was fundamentally for only the privileged (who have no need to establish themselves in Elsevier's journals, as this was already done--or maybe impossible, at the other extreme) or the unflinchingly principled. Most researchers are neither of these: they can't afford to limit their options in good journals, and they're simply not that passionately convinced that the principle is worth the risk. I am certainly one of those. As such I expected it was doomed to die with a whimper. That said, the 2 year thing is hugely important for me, as with Ben. – zibadawa timmy Sep 15 '15 at 02:55
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    An important detail that I forgot to add in my first comment: Elsevier has made open access (after 48 months) the content of their journals in mathematics only. The other fields that didn't boycott got nothing. – Federico Poloni Sep 15 '15 at 06:31
  • @FedericoPoloni a 48-month embargo is barely worthwhile - in many fields, work could be obsolete four years after it was published! – Flyto Sep 15 '15 at 18:26
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    @SimonW I understand, but in mathematics it's different. We use old (sometimes very old) papers a lot. It was a very appreciated move from their side. – Federico Poloni Sep 15 '15 at 19:35
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    @FedericoPoloni Can you please convert your comments into an answer, so that I can vote for it? – jakebeal Sep 15 '15 at 20:02
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    FYI Why are journal subscriptions so expensive? ; Why don't major research institutions systematically publish their subscription fees to scientific journals? – Franck Dernoncourt Dec 19 '16 at 05:37
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    Somehow a status update: Peru, Germany and Taiwan won't have Elsevier starting 2017 (see here) – Arctic Char Jan 10 '17 at 18:24

2 Answers2

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(converted from a comment on request).

I don't think much has changed about pricing, but Elsevier has made open access all the content of their journals in mathematics after a 48 month embargo (source). This was a very appreciated move: mathematicians often rely on old articles for their research, so 4 years isn't too long to wait (for some), for this discipline. It is also a shrewd move from Elsevier, since it pleases their audience but doesn't cut into their main source of income, which are yearly subscription access deals with university libraries.

Maybe this will encourage academics from other fields to consider a similar protest to obtain the same boon...

rmounce
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Federico Poloni
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In short the current situation is pretty much the same. The peer-review process remains voluntary. What is scandalous is that Elsevier finically profits from this voluntary investment of time but academia does not. Not that academics should profit personally, however some of this should be fed back into the academic community in some way if large sums continue to be charged for access to journals. Although in fairness to Elsevier, there are costs in hosting massive amounts of the academic knowledge.

Access to articles is changing, they are allowing some sharing on personal blogs or sites (some interesting discussion in the comment section of this reference). Although researchers were doing it on closed university networks anyway, but this new approach allows researchers to share more widely. For instance if you have a list of references on your university profile page you will be able to link them to a pdf of the article. However as one commentator mentioned, there is an embargo period before this sharing can occur, these period varies, for instance cognition and Neuroscience have 12 month embargo on new articles. Whilst the Lancet is does not open access for personal posting at all.

So did it work? I would say it has been a successful start. And these embargo periods make it fair as Elsevier need to make some profit out of the facilities and services they provide. However as noted in the comments below, the articles are not automatically made available for free on the elsevier network (if at all). I hope these reference are useful to you.

Almost forgot the pricing list for 2015 and Elsevier's general info about pricing. As far as I know these price lists are for individuals not universities or libraries, which is probably discounted depending on the quantity or services being purchased.

Comte
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  • Just a side note for discussion, there are large journal publishers that are less generous with their journal article access the american psychological association, I'm also not sure about Wiley and springer. As you would have thought what effect Elsevier would also influence these two groups. – Comte Sep 15 '15 at 17:35
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    If I understand correctly, the boycotters have never been complaining about the fact that refereeing was unpaid. The main reason for the protest was the pricing and bundle policies. (Otherwise, why boycotting Elsevier only and not all other publishers, too?) – Federico Poloni Sep 15 '15 at 17:41
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    Also, if I am not mistaken, what you report are the author fees to publish an open-access article, not the fees for libraries and universities to buy access to a journal. And the "embargo period" in your linked document refers to the period after which the author can post a copy of the article online, not to the period after which the article becomes freely downloadable from its canonical DOI link on the Elsevier website, which I was mentioning in my comment. – Federico Poloni Sep 15 '15 at 17:44
  • @ Federico Poloni I was referring to the fact that Elsevier make money out of a mostly voluntary system that is supposed to make benefits. The profits of which they distribute to shareholders rather than academics. Albeit the words I used are a little more inflammatory. – Comte Sep 15 '15 at 18:43
  • @ Federico Poloni Pricing information to libraries I do not have access to, if you have it please added the reference to your answer. As to the embargo period, I was referring to when you can share it. You go back many years on their site and you will see that the majority cost $39.99 for a single article. I didn't say they open them up for free, however I will clarify this for you. – Comte Sep 15 '15 at 18:53
  • AFAIK there is no fixed price list. The rates (6- or 7-digit figures for most first-world universities, per year) depend on individual deals and are often protected by confidentiality clauses. See for instance here. – Federico Poloni Sep 15 '15 at 19:42
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    the boycotters have never been complaining about the fact that refereeing was unpaid — Indeed. I would complain more if referees were paid. – JeffE Sep 15 '15 at 22:36
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    @JeffE I am not saying academics should profit from peer review. What I wrote is that a company profits from peer-review and feeds little of it back into the academic community. How they might feed the money back in would be by allowing access to older journals. – Comte Sep 15 '15 at 23:07