Heather Joseph (2018). Securing community-controlled infrastructure: SPARC’s plan of action. College & Research Libraries News, 79(8), 426. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.79.8.426
Late last year, the news of Elsevier’s acquisition of bepress, the provider of the popular Digital Commons repository platform, sent a shockwave throughout the library community. Hundreds of institutions that use Digital Commons to support their open access repositories quite literally woke up to the news that their repository services are now owned and managed by a company that is well known for its obstruction of open access in the repository space.
While this move was unwelcome, it was not surprising. For the past several years, Elsevier’s long-term strategy has visibly shifted away from an emphasis on managing content, and moved directly towards becoming a powerhouse in data analytics. This is evident in the diversity of their more recent acquisitions, which appear to be designed to allow them to stake an ownership claim in all functions vital to the research cycle—from data gathering and annotation, to sharing and publication, to analytics and evaluation. The high-profile acquisitions of SSRN and Mendeley signaled this trend, and the bepress deal simply put an exclamation point on it. And Elsevier is not the only commercial player moving in this direction. Similar actions by other large vendors are growing more common in this space, as well. […]