TL;DR Elsevier are selling access to open access articles again

I saw this humorous tweet today:

Not all #OA is open

Unbelievable, I know

When you publish with Elsevier

Sometimes open is faux#ElsevierValentines for @rmounce https://t.co/lnPzkfJI3p — Nick Shockey (@nshockey) February 14, 2017

This tweet references the fact that Elsevier have been caught selling access to paid-for “open access” articles in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

After the 2014 scandal they self-reported an internal audit (with no external or independent oversight) and apparently refunded a total of “about $70,000” to readers who had ‘mistakenly’ been allowed to purchase articles that should have been open access. There was no independent audit of Elsevier’s systems – this was all self-reported. Can you imagine allowing Volkswagen to self-report diesel emissions? Not a good idea!

I do not trust Elsevier to self-report on the scale of these events – I really really think governments should step-in here and external, independent auditors should be given access to their internal systems to determine independently the scale of these “mistakes” that defraud readers to the financial benefit of Elsevier.

Now as you know recently I’ve been looking at 2-years worth of Wellcome Trust open access APC payment data.

This post is just to let the world know that in 2017 Elsevier are doing it again. They are selling articles that have been paid-for to be open access.

According to public data available on Figshare, Wellcome Trust paid Elsevier £2,168.08 to make open access an article entitled:

A multi-center comparison of diagnostic methods for the biochemical evaluation of suspected mitochondrial disorders paid to be open access on behalf of WT Grant number: 096919, Professor DM Turnbull, Newcastle University.

Today (14th February 2017), from Elsevier’s ScienceDirect website, I found that this article was behind a paywall. To be able to access this at home (outside the paywall), Elsevier charged me $43.14 including tax, in return for 24 hours access to this paid-for “open access” article. I bought access to the article to prove beyond doubt that Elsevier really were selling this open access article and it wasn’t just some fleeting browser error that they could explain away.

Below is a screenshot of my emailed electronic receipt as proof, with my home address crudely redacted to protect my privacy.

If you are a journalist and would like to talk more about this case, or the history and extent of ‘paywalled open access’ please email me at: ross.mounce@gmail.com

In the mean time I shall be contacting both the Wellcome Trust and Elsevier to alert them about this issue, again.