A formal complaint to the European Ombudsman has been submitted about the recent announcement that Elsevier has been subcontracted to monitor the future progress of Open Science in Europe.

The published version of the complaint is available open access on Zenodo: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1305847

The signed complaint was submitted on 5th July 2018, but a second (and third, and possibly fourth?) set of signatures is to be submitted.

More than 1000 colleagues from a variety of countries have signed so far.

Please read the full document and if you agree with the complaint please consider adding your signature to the end of the document here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WQAFUebPx5TNvgUKuIaUFPa80cdBuJhDbhwlh15EHz0/edit?usp=sharing

We need this information to circulate outside the usual scholarly communications circles, and even within them it would be good to have some more engagement or discussion with these issues. Please help us spread the word.

We are all so busy with work that issues relating to scholarly communications infrastructure (which define the whole academic workflow, including the frameworks and standards for employment and promotion) have been generally outsourced to third-parties or a few expert organisations.

In my opinion this alienation of researchers from the means of scholarly production and assessment works to the full advantage to those who profit from unfair market dominance and opaque decision-making.

In my view signing this complaint may not do much to change things directly, but expressing our legitimate concerns publicly, and leaving relevant documentation of our views in the scholarly record, is the least we can do as responsible scholars.

Reference

Jonathan Tennant. (2018, July 5). Complaint to the European Ombudsman about Elsevier and the Open Science Monitor. Zenodo http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1317961