Talk:Elsevier

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Suggested updates

Can I please suggest the few changes below for someone to take a look at? I'm an employee, so not posting them myself but I think they're all fair requests.

Introduction Add a mention of SciVal in the list of products in the introduction, after Scopus.

History Add bepress acquisition https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/08/02/elsevier-acquires-bepress

Resignation of editorial boards The 2002 European Economic Association, and the French Ecole Normale Superieure paragraphs don't relate to board resignations - can these be moved?

Shill review offer Can it be made clear that this happened in 2009? - there is currently no date in this section

Boycotts Cost of Knowledge Can the third paragraph be brought up to date? Maybe by bringing over the last couple of sentences from the boycott section on the RELX wikipedia page: "Between 2012 and November 2015, about 15,391 scientists signed The Cost of Knowledge boycott. In 2016, Elsevier received 1.5 million article submissions." - the details could be updated to "Between 2012 and April 2018, about 17,000 scientists..." and "in 2017 Elsevier received 1.6 million article submissions".

Can the Netherlands paragraph be made clearer to show that although a boycott was threatened, it wasn't ever launched? Many thanks Ryoba (talk) 10:40, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

@Ryoba: I estimate that in this request you are requesting 4-8 hours of volunteer time and attention. You have been around for a few years at this point raising issues. Overall either you or someone putting pressure on you probably desires about 200 hours of Wikipedia volunteer labor including writing, community engagement, consensus gathering, and branding consultation.

There is no precedent for the Wikipedia community having ongoing conversations with any commercial entity so there is no process to which I can direct you for guidance or instructions. I expect that you must already have background awareness of this and know the available options.

You are welcome to post here. I appreciate your curiosity and prodding, and I want to thank you for posting your request here because you at least engage in conversation. Perhaps about 500 requests which I would call similar come to the Wikipedia community every day and the backlog goes back years with no plan to address it, with most of those being demands with no follow up. I cannot anticipate that the request you are posting is likely to get a response in the mix of other priorities.

To what extent have you considering editing Wikipedia outside your conflict of interest to learn the rules and gaining the ability to communicate peer to peer? To what extent do you have an interest in Wikipedia beyond brand management? When you ask for these things, are you trying to make friends, recruit labor, serve the nonprofit mission here, or post on behalf of a marketing team? I am not sure how I should respond to you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:19, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: I appreciate that these things all consume someone's time, but as far as I'm aware, posting requests like this on a talk page is still the best/only route available when trying to improve pages as someone with a potential for COI? As a bit of background, I work in communications so I have an interest in seeing that the company is described fairly and accurately. However, I also respect the wikipedia aims and policies, so I don't want to do anything that goes against those, and I also understand that nobody has any obligation to do anything with my suggestions. I'd be quite happy to do any of the leg-work and make edits myself, but it always seems sensible to post on the talk page first to give people a chance to respond with any concerns.

Ultimately, my aim is just to help get the page to be accurate, balanced and encyclopedic.Ryoba (talk) 14:18, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Elsevier and its competitors have billions in cash, so of course they're acquiring hundreds of other companies. A search for "Elsevier acquisitions" finds 700 articles in the last year on Google News. RELX_Group#21st_century has a long list already. I personally consider the bepress acquisition important (for instance it triggered Operation Beprexit), but we need some criteria to decide which M&A to talk about, otherwise this article will just become an infinite list of related companies and commentary about them.

I feel the financial point of view could be covered at RELX Group, with some of the usual sources (Bloomberg, Morningstar, Crunchbase, the various rating agencies etc.) and an appropriate monetary threshold. This article could cover the matter from an academic perspective, talking about Elsevier's role in academic publishing beyond the acquisition of journals. It could be a single section about non-publishing activities where to also mention all the main things it bought or developed, including SSRN, Mendeley, PlumX and others (paying more attention to the impact on research than to the monetary aspect). --Nemo 06:21, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi - I'd like to remove the new section for Plan S which has appeared on the Elsevier page, as there seem to be a few problems with it being there: Firstly, and most importantly, Plan S isn't specific to Elsevier, so there's no reason why it should be on this page - there is no mention of it on any other publishers' Wikipedia pages.

Secondly, these points are already covered on the Plan S page, so this seems to be unnecessary duplication.

Thirdly, there are some unsourced, non-encyclopaedic statements here: "has met with strong criticism from Elsevier" and "The plan is expected to affect Elsevier's profits".

Finally, I’m not sure that an encyclopaedia necessarily should be commenting on short-term share price movements and trying to make correlations with particular announcements. The entire market was off in the 4Q of 2018, and in fact RELX Group outperformed the UK FTSE100 in 2018. Between 19 September and today – January 22 – RELX Group’s share price (not Elsevier’s as Elsevier isn’t a quote entity) has actually risen 11 per cent.

As I'm aware of the potential for NPOV here, I'm asking for people's thoughts before making any changes so I'd be grateful if someone could assist.

In the interests of transparency, I work for Elsevier's parent company. Francophile9 (talk) 16:05, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

As for the section on plan S, I've not reviewed in detail, but contrary to what you say it's very easy to find official Elsevier comments critical of (the initial version of) plan S: explicitly in [1] (Elsevier supports criticism by STM), [2] ("plan is unpopular with publishers"); or not so subtly [3] [4] [5] [6]. There are also sources which discuss the effects of plan S specifically on Elsevier [7] (cancellation "in line with plan S") [8] ("continuing the momentum" of plan S) [9] (plan S "joins the fight" of cancellations) and even its stocks [10] or otherwise link plan S to fights against Elsevier [11] [12] [13] [14]. Nemo 20:00, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Maybe we should move the parts from "Dissemination of research" to "Academic practices" for better structure and readibility of the article, what do you think? --Karlaz1 (talk) 11:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion of adding a controversies section

While I wanted to add this source (https://retractionwatch.com/2021/03/09/elsevier-journals-ask-retraction-watch-to-review-covid-19-papers/#more-121684) to Elsevier's Wiki page, I realize that there is no controversies section. The section Academic practices seems to be more of a controversies section. My question is whether we can change it to "Controversies", including the section on resignation of editorial board members, and add some subsections such as controversial articles, and editorial/review malpractices? What you think about this plan? Kenji1987 (talk) 04:39, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting a reorganization (rather than a completely new section with new information), and I think there's a strong case for doing that. The purely factual part could come first, and after that a section on "controversies" could have subsections that deal with the different controversies and criticisms of the company's practices that have been documented in reliable sources. A reader who's just interested in facts about the company would know that this is in the early sections, whereas a reader who's interested in controversies would also know where to look. I agree that such a reorganization would be an improvement. NightHeron (talk) 12:11, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Controversy sections are discouraged, but not valid criticism where due. Notable controversies could potentially be integrated in a section about history or reception, etc. Currently there's some in various relevant sections, as is recommended in the style guide. —PaleoNeonate – 15:31, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Agreed - incorporated throughout is the best practice. Also, this looks to be a WP:POINTy WP:OTHERSTUFF suggestion, based off disagreements Kenji1987 has had over MDPI#Controversies. SmartSE (talk) 16:51, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Why are controversies sections discouraged? As now on the Elsevier page there are multiple sections describing controversies. For example, where do we put controversial articles or review/editorial malpractices? I agree with NightHeron below. Kenji1987 (talk) 01:04, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that speculation about the OP's motives or mentions of discussions at other articles' talk-pages are relevant. Looking carefully at the content of the article, we see that sections 1 and 2 are factual and unconcerned with controversy (except for the paragraphs about the Mendeley acquisition and about the gender pay gap); section 3 is about half devoted to controversies (although you wouldn't guess this from the table of contents), and sections 4, 5, 6, and 7 are almost entirely about criticism and controversy. Neither the table of contents nor the lead gives the reader a good idea of the content. Only half a sentence of the lead mentions controversies. At the very least the lead should be expanded, per WP:MOSLEAD. In addition, as I suggested above, it would be nice if the section and subsection titles informed the reader where they will find factual information and where they will find summaries of the various controversies that have arisen in connection with the company's practices. NightHeron (talk) 17:53, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

the onething we now do tend to avoid, is having a section labelled "controversies" set off. from the rest of the article. It can almost alway be integrated. (I note there are tens of thousands of articles that still have such sections, but they're strongly discouraged.) DGG ( talk ) 20:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

@DGG: Would you agree to expanding the lead by mentioning several of the controversies that are covered in the main body? NightHeron (talk) 22:40, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the Academic practicies is a controversies section. On the other hand if the section will be renamed we should also add some part from Dissemination of research, many of the mention here are controversies. For example MDPI has large Controversies section. For unity of style we should use the similar structure in both cases.--Karlaz1 (talk) 14:08, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Sure, MDPI's "controversies" section should probably also be split into more specific sections. This is best discussed on Talk:MDPI. Nemo 08:18, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

my own (unpaid) coi

Since I'm doing some copyediting here,:As a librarian, like any librarian concerned primarily with purchasing electronic resources, I had many business and professional dealings with the firm and some of its executives, ending when I retired about 12 years ago. Some of them were quite extensive beyond ordinary negotiations, involving sometimes a degree of cooperation, sometimes extremely critical published or posted comments, sometimes favorable or unfavorable reviews of their products. I never was offered (and would not have taken) money from them, but I did accept hospitality. This never influenced what I said or wrote, and they were quite aware that it would not, and I did not accept everything I was offered; if anything, my contacts tended to strengthen my basic and continuing objection to the entire business model of commercial scientific publishing which they epitomize. (For that matter, I had similar but less extensive, relationship with most science publishers) DGG ( talk ) 20:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. This reminds me that I probably received goods from Elsevier as well. I think I got an Elsevier-branded note pad at a librarian conference around 2010. Nemo 08:23, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Merge sections "Academic practices" thru "Criticism & controversies" / "Dissemination of articles" into one broader criticism section?

Owing to how a fair portion of this article deals primarily with criticisms of Elsevier, lumping it altogether into one broader "criticism" section, or alternatively splitting it off into a separate Criticism of Elsevier article, could help clean up the article to some extent. Casspedia (talk) 23:40, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree. Many editors dislike separate "criticism" articles (and think of such an article as a POV fork). That's not a Wikipedia policy, but enough people feel that way that creation of such an article is likely to be disputed. Having a separate article might also provide an excuse to reduce the coverage of criticism in the main article. Readers are more likely to read what's in the main article than what's in a subsidiary one.

Also, in this case I think the section title "criticism and controversies" is inappropriate, because there's a lot of coverage of criticisms and controversies throughout the earlier sections. The ones in the last section relate to the issue of free and open dissemination of research. NightHeron (talk)

Agreed with NightHeron. The former "Criticism" section was split because it had become impossible to maintain; having a separate article would be even worse.

Discussing each aspect by topic, rather than by its supposedly being "criticism" or a "controversy", allows to more fairly and clearly discuss the "criticised" or "controversial" things right next to the neutral or "positive" information about it. For instance it would be silly to split the "Plagiarism" section in two parts, one to describe the anti-plagiarism features offered by Elsevier and another in a criticism section listing incidents where they didn't work or weren't used correctly.

Yet such silliness is precisely what happens when articles are split in a way that encourages people to only look for positive or negative coverage of a topic depending on their previous biases. Nemo 05:45, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

There is an essay about this topic which explains various approaches: WP:NOCRIT. In this case, I don't think separating criticism or controversies is a good approach, per NightHeron and Nemo explanations. MarioGom (talk) 06:59, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Mhm, I see. Elsevier has a very large amount of criticism, but keeping it neutral is probably in WP's best interest; however, I think this should be reconsidered if WP:TOOBIG ends up being violated. Should the redirect Criticism of Elsevier point towards a specific section of the page or no? (Currently it points to a section which does not exist; my (reverted) edits were partially meant to fix up that redirect.) Casspedia (talk) 14:20, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

And what about merges "Dissemination of research" to the "Academic practices"? In my point of view the "Academic practices" could be considered as a umbrella section.--Karlaz1 (talk) 13:41, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

The "Academic practices" and "Dissemination of research" sections were supposed to be distinct in that sources typically treat certain content matters (such as how peer review is arranged) as distinct from the distribution/impact matters (such as the pricing or licensing of the outputs). There is of course a relationship between the two, but it helps to keep an eye on both aspects distinctly. Nemo 08:27, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

War period

I tried to add some information to the history about war, but NightHeron rightly noticed the Elsevier's source can be biased. Nevertheless, I think the war period should be described because it is an important milestone for Elsevier. But I found just articles on it's web, any idea for others? https://www.elsevier.com/connect/in-the-shadow-of-the-nazis-this-young-executive-dared-to-publish-the-work-of-jewish-scientists --Karlaz1 (talk) 13:22, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with reliable secondary sources on the history of Elsevier. I think many readers would be interested in how Elsevier functioned during the War, when the Netherlands was occupied by the Germans. The sentence I reverted could be interpreted as saying either that (1) they began focusing on exiled scientists in 1937 and continued throughout the War even after the Germans invaded in 1940, or else (2) they only began in 1937 and soon after had to stop and start obeying Nazi policies because of the German occupation of their country. The history of Elsevier during this period is unclear to me. NightHeron (talk) 14:31, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. So I think we could use some information from this another source (although it is on Elsevier website I don't think it is misleading), what do you think?

In May 1939 – as the Nazis were burning down the Warsaw ghetto and preparing to invade other countries – Klautz established the Elsevier Publishing Company Ltd. in London to distribute these academic titles in the British Commonwealth (except Canada). When the Nazis invaded and occupied the Netherlands for the duration of five years from May 1940, he had just founded a second international office, the Elsevier Publishing Company Inc. in New York. https://www.elsevier.com/connect/in-the-shadow-of-the-nazis-this-young-executive-dared-to-publish-the-work-of-jewish-scientists Karlaz1 (talk) 15:57, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

That sounds interesting and worth including, provided there's a reliable secondary source to back it up. I believe that Elsevier is not a reliable source about itself except for straightforward factual data. NightHeron (talk) 18:16, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Who is "Klautz"? The link is obsolete! Nayano2 (talk) 10:39, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Showing how unwise it would be to use Elsevier marketing material as source... It's probably this "J.P. Klautz (1904–1990)" mentioned in an IOS Press employee booklet (Fredriksson, Einar H. (2001). The Dutch Publishing Scene: Elsevier and North-Holland. IOS Press. pp. 61–76. doi:10.3233/978-1-58603-148-0-61.). I've not checked whether this author has a conflict of interest, but the reliance on private Elsevier archives suggests a degree of dependence from Elsevier. Nemo 13:35, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

"Acta Tropica" listed at Redirects for discussion

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Undue and Recentism

I just did a quick read through of this article out of curiosity and I believe it suffers from WP:UNDUE and WP:RECENTism. I feel it unduly focuses on the criticisms of the company's business model. While I believe such a section is warranted, as the company is frequently criticised by academics, the aricle currently is totally dominated by complaints in all sections after the Company Statistics, being over half of the total word count. Furthermore, these complaints are almost all from the 21st century. The company is over a 140 years old, but almost all of the text is related to complaints about the company from the last 20 years. In my opinion, these 2 problems make the article weak as an encyclopedia article and verge on violating WP:NPOV. Ashmoo (talk) 07:50, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

WP:RECENTISM concerns “articles [that] tend to focus on recent events…current news breaks.” It does not mean a focus on the current century. Concerning WP:UNDUE, did you find any of the criticisms in the article to be petty or very minor? To me they generally seem to concern important matters that merit coverage. NightHeron (talk) 08:24, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The article is indeed unbalanced. For example, there is a list of disputes with academic institutions, but apart from MIT, all have been resolved. Eg: Germany; Hungary; Norway; Taiwan; University of California. There is no mention of these resolutions in the article. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a propaganda channel for critics of commercial publishers.

Here are some links:

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/germany-finally-seals-milestone-publishing-deal-elsevier#:~:text=The%20September%20agreement%20comes%20from,The%20Lancet%2C%20rising%20by%204

https://cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2021/03/16/uc-secures-landmark-open-access-deal-with-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher/

https://www.openscience.no/aktuelt/agreement-reached-elsevier

https://sciencebusiness.net/network-updates/elsevier-and-consortium-core-electronic-resources-taiwan-establish-agreement

https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/hungary-and-elsevier-agree-pilot-national-license-for-research-access-and-open-access-publishing-814398047.html

I shouldn't edit, because I work for Elsevier' parent company. Francophile9 (talk) 09:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for those sources. I added that information to the section on open access. NightHeron (talk) 11:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@NightHeron – This was partially reverted (with copyediting!) as the material is not reliably sourced. Burden is upon those seeking inclusion. Ideally, they should come back with a proper request and proper sources. -- dsprc ^[talk] 17:12, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

@Francophile9 – We parrot WP:RS (given the above: you should definitely go review), and what upstream finds notable. If the majority of coverage from RS is of a particular nature, then a Wikipedia article will be of similar nature. Wikipedia is warts and all – We don't censor material nor engage in hagiography to make multinational corporate conglomerates look nice. -- dsprc ^[talk] 10:19, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

This is so naive. There's plenty of coverage that shows that these disputes have been settled. It's just that such sources don't fit the narrative of those that believe that commercial publishers shouldn't be involved in the diffusion of scholarly knowledge. The result is the page is massively unbalanced, and does little credit to the credibility of Wikipedia. It's not a question of hagiography, but simple intellectual honesty. Francophile9 (talk) 10:49, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Again: please review WP:RS so we can avoid having trash like PR Newswire or other SPS being dropped in edit requests (please review that as well). If you have some evidence of particular contributors acting in bad-faith: please address such matters on their Talk pages or the appropriate noticeboards. Otherwise, please refrain from making disparaging comments of others, or insinuating there is some malicious conspiracy suppressing The Truth™ about RELX. This is not a soapbox to air grievances. Thank you. -- dsprc ^[talk] 16:24, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Please have a look at the RELX Talk page, where articles from The Guardian, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and Bloomberg aren't considered valid sources. Those aren't "trash" like PR Newswire (although you might like to know that public company announcements are all vetted by lawyers before being disseminated). Talk:RELX Whereas a random website run by one person is viewed as a valid source. https://www.climaterightscoalition.com/ Francophile9 (talk) 10:13, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

There's nothing odd or recentist about this article being focused on the last few decades, because that's the period when Elsevier became what it is. Elsevier published about 10 million papers in 2001–2020 and only 8 million before that. It's not surprising or worrying if a majority of the reliable sources and topics correspond with the majority of the activity of the company.

Complaining that there's little about the early 100 years of history is like complaining that the article on Purdue Pharma focuses on the 20 years of history when it sold OxyContin rather than the 100+ years when it didn't, or that an article about some olympic winner who retired at 40 has little to say about the second half of their life. Nemo 16:43, 6 October 2023 (UTC)