Reed Elsevier

BOUGHT SSRN

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University of California’s break with the biggest academic publisher could shake up scholarly publishing for good

MacKenzie Smith, University of California, Davis

Digital publishing hasn't resulted in the free and open access to information many envisioned. Universities are increasingly fed up with a system they see as charging them for their own scholars' labor.

The strategy, often with the willing cooperation of publishers, is effective and sometimes blatant. In 2009, the scientific publishing giant Elsevier was found to have invented an entire medical journal, complete with editorial board, in order to publish papers promoting the products of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck. Merck provided the papers, Elsevier published them, and doctors read them, unaware that the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was simply a stuffed dummy.

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http://www.independentsciencenews.org/science-media/the-goodman-affair-monsanto-targets-the-heart-of-science/

correction!

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/10062015/willie-soons-fossil-fuel-funded-work-draws-ethics-review-publisher

journal publisher that distributed studies written by a climate skeptic whose work was financed by fossil fuel interests has launched an ethics investigation over undisclosed funding.

The investigation by Elsevier, a global network of scientific journals, was prompted by documents showing that Harvard-Smithsonian scientist Willie Soon failed to disclose industry funding in 11 studies published by nine journals.

Six of those papers were published in four Elsevier publications. Elsevier requires its authors to disclose financial conflicts that "could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work."

The documents were obtained by Greenpeace and made public in February by the Climate Investigations Center, an environmental watchdog organization based in Virginia. After the documents were released, the center alerted the journals that the lack of disclosure violates ethical guidelines requiring authors to identify their funders and potential conflicts of interest.

"We applaud your guidelines for ethical behavior in science, but we are concerned that your conflict of interest policy has been ignored and that Dr. Soon may have hidden his funding," wrote Kert Davies, the center's executive director, in letters to the journals. "Violations of ethical norms in scientific publishing may undermine the credibility of your journal."

Elsivier's ethics inquiry was made public in a report issued by the center Wednesday that includes the responses from all nine journals.

"We have referred the matter to Elsevier and they have an ethics team investigating," Rob Hyndman, editor of International Journal of Forecasting, said in a response to Davies. "We will not be taking any action until we have received advice from the Elsevier ethics investigators."

Chris Capot, a spokesman for Elsevier, confirmed the investigation, but declined to discuss the nature of the review or any potential outcomes. "The review is still ongoing. The results of our review will be published in any affected journals," Capot said.

In addition to the Elsevier inquiry, one publication, Journal of Climate, amended a 2009 paper that Soon co-authored to clarify his funding source. The editor of Ecology Law Quarterly, published by the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the school is considering instituting a formal procedure to address conflicts in all of its publications. Others responded with noncommittal acknowledgements thanking the center for the information. One journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, dismissed Soon's failure to disclose his funding as "irrelevant."

Soon, a well-known climate contrarian, works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which houses the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. Soon has been employed by Smithsonian since 1997, but relies on grants from outside sources for his research and salary.

Soon's 11 papers question the extent, severity, cause or existence of man-made climate change. Many of the studies argue that changes in solar activity are responsible for rising global temperatures. The studies appear to have had limited impact in the scientific world, according to the number of citations by other researchers.

Soon did not respond to a request for comment from InsideClimate News.

The public records show that since 2008, Soon has received more than $800,000 from ExxonMobil, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the electric utility Southern Company Services Inc., and Donors Trust Inc., an organization that facilitates contributions largely toward conservative causes from donors who wish to remain anonymous. The funds were earmarked to pay for research papers, public speaking appearances and presentations. Soon called his studies "deliverable" to funders.

Since the controversy broke, Southern Company, a major coal utility in the southeastern United States and one of Soon's primary funders, has said it will no longer fund his research once his final project is completed later this year.

Smithsonian officials directed its inspector general to examine Soon's ethical practices regarding funders and launched separate internal and independent reviews of its ethics and disclosure policies. Soon remains a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian staff, though Smithsonian has distanced itself from his work, saying it “does not support Dr. Soon's conclusions on climate change.”

Here are the responses from the nine journals:

Ecological Complexity

Publisher: Elsevier

Journal disclosure policy: All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Response: Bia-lian (Larry) Li, editor:

Thank you for your message and mail, Director Davies. I was the Chief Editor when his paper was published. Our journal policies are set up by our publisher Elsevier, not us. The case you presented here, to my view, should be author's responsibility. We generally focus on scientific merit of the research papers. However, your concern is now well noticed.

Ecology Law Quarterly

Publisher: UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall

Journal disclosure policy: None found.

Response: Elise O’Dea, editor:

I want to thank you for bringing this issue to our attention; both ELQ and the law school take it very seriously. Your email brings up an important topic not only for ELQ, but for all the law journals on campus. Thanks to your alert, we are exploring the possibility of developing a conflict of interest policy of some nature for our law journals.

Interfaces

Publisher: The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Journal disclosure policy: None found.

Response: Miranda Walker, director of publications INFORMS:

Thank you for your letter of February 20, 2015 sent to Dr. Srinivas Bollapragada regarding the journal Interfaces and our conflict of interest policy. Maintaining the highest ethical standards is of paramount importance to Interfaces, our editors, our peer reviewers, and of course, those who read the articles published in our pages. We appreciate the information that you and others have shared with us and will ensure that it receives careful and deliberate attention. Please direct all future questions regarding or relating to [this article] to me.

International Journal of Forecasting

Publisher: Elsevier

Journal disclosure policy: All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Response: Rob Hyndman, editor:

We have referred the matter to Elsevier and they have an ethics team investigating. We have also received correspondence from Dr. Soon and from his lawyers which we have passed to Elsevier. We will not be taking any action until we have received advice from the Elsevier ethics investigators.

Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics

Publisher: Elsevier

Journal disclosure policy: All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Response: Robert Strangeway, editor:

I am aware of the New York Times article, and I have contacted the Editorial Office of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics for guidance as to what the Journal should do in response to the allegations in the New York Times article. I have also forwarded your email and the associated attachments to the Journal Publisher. While we have not yet determined what action the Journal will take, the Publisher of the Journal has made it clear that such allegations are taken very seriously.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Publisher: EDP Sciences

Journal disclosure policy: None found.

Response: Dr. Thierry Forveille, editor:

I am a bit puzzled that you contact me. (The paper) makes no claim whatsoever of any relevance to climate. It therefore clearly falls well outside the purview of Dr. Soon's contract with Southern Company Services for “publication of both original and review papers on solar variability and climate change and various environmental impacts of that related change in leading scientific journals for the advancement of climate and meteorological sciences.” Astronomy & Astrophysics has no funding disclosure requirements, since astronomy is sufficiently removed from any monetary consequences that we have never found that necessary, but had we known about Dr. Soon's contract we would have judged its existence irrelevant to the evaluation of the paper. That Dr. Soon included this totally irrelevant paper in the Year 1 Report, which you forwarded me, certainly does not reflect very well on his ethical standards, but this is an issue that I don't think the journal has standing to act on.

Journal of Climate

Publisher: American Meteorological Society

Journal disclosure policy: All funding sources should be identified in the manuscript. Authors should disclose to the editor any financial arrangement with a research sponsor that could give the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Response: Ken Heideman, director of publications at American Meteorological Society:

AMS has amended the 2009 paper that Willie Soon coauthored with a publisher’s note and an amendment to the acknowledgments that make clear his funding source.

New Astronomy

Publisher: Elsevier

Journal disclosure policy: All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.

Response: Gianfranco Brunetti, receiving editor:

I received your documents (via mail), thanks a lot. In the last several [months] we had a discussion within the board of editors about this situation, I guess that similar discussions were taken by other boards and journals involved. Obviously I cannot reveal the details of the discussion and the outcome, however I would expect...a "fair note"...from Elsevier.

Physical Geography

Publisher: Taylor & Francis Online

Journal disclosure policy: Authors must declare any potential conflict of interest – be it professional or financial – which could be held to arise with respect to the article. Authors must disclose all sources of funding for the research reported in the paper.

Response: Carol Harden, editor:

Thank you for keeping us informed about this. An important piece of information missing from the letter you sent is that Physical Geography was not published by Taylor & Francis in 2009, and it did not have a financial disclosure policy at that time. That means that Physical Geography cannot make the claim that Dr. Soon violated the journal's policy.

See Also:

A Guide To Willie Soon's Climate Research Funded by Fossil Fuel Companies

Scientific Journals Alerted to Fossil Fuel Funding of Contrarian Climate Studies

Documents Reveal Fossil Fuel Fingerprints on Contrarian Climate Research

==

Reed Elsevier is a major specialist publisher for professional users in four target areas of science & medical, legal, education and business publications and services.

In February 2005, Reed Elsevier reported revenues for 2004 of almost £5bn. "In 2004, we published more than 15,000 different journals, books and reference works, as well as more than 500 online information services and organised more than 430 trade exhibitions," it states on its website.

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

Reed Elsevier announced on April 12, 2012, that it had resigned its board seat and dropped its ALEC membership "after considering the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC"^[1]

A list of ALEC corporations can be found here. A list of corporations which have cut ties with ALEC can be found here.

Elsevier: Science and Health PublishingProperties include:BrainNavigatorCellCPMRCDatongEmbaseEngineering VillageEvolveGeofacetsGray's AnatomyInteractElsevierThe LancetThe Language of MedicineMD ConsultMEDaiMosby's IndexMosby's Nursing ConsultMosby's Nursing SkillsNetterPharmaPendiumReaxysScirusSciValSciVerseSciVerse ApplicationsSciVerse ScienceDirectSciVerse ScopusSimulation Learning SystemTetrahedron LettersReed Business Information: Business PublishingProperties include:agd.mediaAscendBankersalmanacBeleggers BelangenBoerderijBuyerZoneElsevierFarmers WeeklyFlight InternationalHotFrogICISNew ScientistReed Construction DataTotaljobsVarietyXpertHRLexisNexisLexisNexis Legal & ProfessionalCaseMapCounselLinkInterActionJurisClasseurLawyers.comLexis for Microsoft OfficeLexis Legal IntelligenceLexis.comLexisNexis Enterprise SolutionsMartindale.comMatthew BenderNexisQuicklawTolley Tax IntelligenceLexisNexis Risk SolutionsAccurintC.L.U.E.Data PrefillInstantIDLexisNexis Screening SolutionsRiskViewReed Exhibitionslast updated 7/31/2011

Reed Elsevier's Role as an Arms Fair Organiser

In September 2005 The Lancet, a leading medical journal, requested that Reed Elsevier, the journal's parent company, divest itself of business interests that "threaten human health." [1]

The magazine's editor made the request after becoming aware Spearhead Exhibitions, a Reed Elsevier subsidiary, organised the Defence Systems and Equipment international (DSEi) arms fair between September 13-16 2005 in London. [2] At the 2003 DSEi exhibition some of the arms merchants displaying their wares sold cluster bombs. While the company promotes its corporate social responsibility credentials, Reed Elsevier Group spokesman, Stephen J. Cowden, was unmoved by The Lancet's appeal. Citing its role as a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, Cowden wrote that "it is our view that the defence industry is necessary for upholding national security for the preservation of democratic values." [3] He did not address the specific concern about cluster bombs.

Political contributions

Reed Elsevier gave $64,000 to federal candidates in the U.S. 2006 election through its political action committee - 28% to Democrats and 72% to Republicans. ^[2]

Lobbying

The company spent $1,660,000 for lobbying in the U.S. in the first half of 2007. Some lobbying firms used were Venable, Podesta Group, Jefferson Consulting Group, and Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. ^[3]

Personnel

Directors

Chairman and Executive Directors

• Jan Hommen, Chairman
• Patrick Tierney
• Gerard van de Aast
• Sir Crispin Davis
• Mark Armour
• Erik Engstrom
• Andrew Prozes
• Robert Polet

Non-executive Directors

• Lord Sharman of Redlynch
• Rolf Stomberg
• Cees van Lede
• Strauss Zelnick
• Dien de Boer-Kruyt
• Mark Elliott
• David Reid

Contact details

Reed Elsevier Group Offices:

1-3 Strand

London

WC2N 5JR UK

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7930 7077

Fax: +44 (0) 20 7166 5799

Web: http://www.reed-elsevier.com/

Radarweg 29

1043 NX

Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Tel: +31 20 485 2222

Fax: +31 (0)20 618 0325

125 Park Avenue

23rd Floor

New York

NY 10017

USA

Tel: +1 212 309 5498

Fax: +1 212 309 5480

Related SourceWatch articles

• Arms control
• Campaign Against the Arms Trade
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Global Compact
• Political influence of arms companies
• U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
• Sheila Forbes
• Lisa Hook
• Peter Davis - former chief executive
• Ben van der Veer
• Anthony Habgood - chair
• Ian Smith (Health) - former CEO
• Robert B. Polet

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

References

1. ↑ Martinne Geller and Jennifer Saba, Reed Elsevier, Wendy's drop conservative group, Reuters, April 12, 2012
2. ↑ 2006 PAC Summary Data, Open Secrets, accessed November 2007.
3. ↑ Reed Elsevier lobbying expenses, Open Secrets, accessed November 2007.

External links

• "Reed Elsevier and the arms trade", The Lancet, September 10, 2005.
• Stephen J Cowden , "Reed Elsevier and the international arms trade ­ Reed Elsevier's reply", The Lancet, September 10, 2005.

Categories:

• ALEC Exposed
• Corporations
• Europe
• Publishers
• United Kingdom
• ALEC Corporations

Academic Journals and Corporate Interests: Reed Elsevier and ALEC

By:

Peter Hogness and Jake Blumgart

What do prestigious scientific journals like Cell and The Lancet have to do with privatizing public services, union-busting, or cutting corporate taxes?

The publishing company that owns these journals, Reed Elsevier, has supported all of these goals through its contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC ia a corporate-funded, politically conservative “bill mill,” which develops legislative templates for state-level laws that serve its political goals. The group holds networking conferences for politically sympathetic state legislators – such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, when he was a State Assembly member – where ideas are shared and its model bills are circulated (see sidebar).

Reed Elsevier is a leading member of ALEC – and also the parent company of Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishing companies in the world. It owns about 2,000 academic journals, primarily scientific and medical, and a diverse array of other information-related businesses, including LexisNexis.

ALEC has more than 250 corporate members (the exact number is uncertain, as the organization refuses to release a full list), but Reed Elsevier is one of just 23 that sit on ALEC’s national Private Enterprise Board [1]. Reed-Elsevier lobbyist Teresa Jennings represents the company on this board, serving alongside better-known corporations such as Wal-Mart and ExxonMobil.

As its active membership in ALEC illustrates, Reed Elsevier’s interests are more similar to those of other corporations than many would assume. The company’s academic journal division, Elsevier, had an impressive 36% profit rate [2] in 2010, on revenues of $3.2 billion. Reed Elsevier’s CEO, Erik Engstrom, was paid $2.93 million in total compensation in 2009, according to *Forbes* magazine [3].

Like other corporations, Reed Elsevier’s legislative interests are in the first place concerned with keeping those profit numbers high – even when this conflicts with the central purpose of academic journals, the dissemination of knowledge.

OWNERSHIP

For example, the company has been a vocal supporter of the Research Works Act. As The New York Times reported [2] in February,2012, this bill “would prohibit federal agencies from requiring open access to research, even if it is financed by taxpayers,” in order to protect the proprietary interests of publishing companies. Reed Elsevier also supported [4] the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a pair of bills that ran into a firestorm of grassroots opposition for the limits they would have placed on Internet free speech.

ALEC’s members are strongly supportive of corporate ownership interests in such debates, and that, plus access to ALEC’s nationwide network of legislators in all 50 states, may be reason enough for Reed Elsevier’s participation. To what extent Reed Elsevier has used ALEC to push pet bills of its own is unknown, because ALEC does not routinely make text of its model legislation public (see "How ALEC Operates" [5]). What is clear, however, is that Reed Elsevier’s participation in ALEC involves the company in a political project that sharply conflicts with academic values.

For example, many scientists who have published in Elsevier-owned journals would be surprised to know that profits from those journals are used to block action against global warming.

ALEC supports efforts to get states to withdraw from regional efforts to counter global warming, like the Western Climate Initiative, in which state, provincial and local authorities work together to reduce their carbon footprint. As the news website Grist reported [6], ALEC’s model legislation on climate change contends that “forcing business, industry, and food producers to reduce carbon emissions through government mandates and cap-and-trade policies under consideration for the regional climate initiative will increase the cost of doing business,” and calls for states to withdraw from regional climate initiatives.

WISCONSIN

Other ALEC model bills attack the rights of public employee unions [7], including faculty at public universities. When University of Wisconsin historian William Cronon published a blog post on ALEC’s role in anti-union efforts in his state, pro-ALEC activists immediately went on a legal fishing expedition into Cronon’s files and e-mail, in an unsuccessful search for something to use against him (see *Clarion*, May 2011 [8]).

ALEC’s other model bills include versions of David Horowitz’s so-called “Academic Bill of Rights [9],” which would enable state legislators to monitor the political views [10] of public university faculty – a proposal that has been condemned by the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the American Association of University Professors.

ALEC’s “140 Credit Hour Act [11]” takes one of the most punitive approaches yet to the question of college graduation rates: Students who take more than that number of credits before graduating from a public university would get hit with 25% tuition hikes, and the university could “no longer count those students as enrolled.”

BOYCOTT

Reed Elsevier’s alliance, through ALEC, with such anti-academic legislative efforts, has received little public scrutiny. But the high prices of its journals, its high profits, and the company’s support for policies that restrict the flow of information have recently made Reed Elsevier the target of a scholars’ boycott. “The Research Works Act was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many people,” Ingrid Daubechies, president of that International Mathematical Union, told the *Times* [2]. More broadly, she said, “we feel that the social compact is broken at present by some publishing houses, of which we feel Elsevier is the most extreme.” Daubechies added that Elsevier is “making much larger profits” than a few years ago, but delivering less to scholars in return.

Reed Elsevier’s membership in ALEC may be more of a symptom than a cause of the way its priorities diverge from those of working academics. But in the past, collective action by scholars and physicians has been able to force changes in the company’s conduct.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

For example, Reed Elsevier has a division that runs trade shows, such as the London Book Fair. Until 2008, it also organized trade shows for the arms industry, inviting some of the world’s most repressive regimes. After British scholars organized a petition campaign demanding that the company stop making money from the arms trade, a former editor of British Medical Journal proposed a boycott [12] of Elsevier by academics and medical professionals, arguing that making money from both the medical profession and the weapons industry represented a profound conflict of interest. Less than six months after the boycott was proposed, the company announced that it would no longer organize arms industry trade shows.

There has been no similar effort targeting Reed-Elsevier’s membership in ALEC – but its role in ALEC has not been widely known.

RELATED COVERAGE:

How ALEC Operates [5]

April 2012 [13]

http://www.psc-cuny.org/print/clarion/april-2012/academic-journals-and-corporate-interests-reed-elsevier-and-alec

 ===

ature 445, 347 (25 January 2007) | doi:10.1038/445347a; Published online 24 January 2007

There is a Correction (1 February 2007) associated with this document.

PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access

Jim Giles

Journal publishers lock horns with free-information movement.

The author of Nail 'Em! Confronting High-Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Businesses is not the kind of figure normally associated with the relatively sedate world of scientific publishing.

–

August 29, 2007

Journal Publishers Hire the “Pit Bull of PR”

Posted by John Baez

Ever hear about **PRISM**? It’s a publisher’s group — backed by **Elsevier** and others — that’s leading the fight against **open access** to scholarly publications.

To plan their strategy, PRISM hired none other than **Eric Dezenhall**:

This is the guy who BusinessWeek called the “**pit bull of PR**”. The guy whose firm Bill Moyers called “the Mafia of industry”. The guy who wrote:

Damage control used to be about soft, fuzzy concepts like image. Now it’s about survival, and this has made the battle bloodier.

And, guess what he advised the publishers to do!

According to a **January article in*****Nature***:

From e-mails passed to Nature, it seems Dezenhall spoke to employees from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting arranged last July by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). A follow-up message in which Dezenhall suggests a strategy for the publishers provides some insight into the approach they are considering taking.

The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as “Public access equals government censorship”. He hinted that the publishers should attempt to **equate traditional publishing models with peer review**, and “paint a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles”.

Dezenhall also recommended joining forces with groups that may be ideologically opposed to government-mandated projects such as **PubMed Central**, including organizations that have angered scientists. One suggestion was the **Competitive Enterprise Institute**, a conservative think-tank based in Washington DC, which has used oil-industry money to promote sceptical views on climate change. Dezenhall estimated his fee for the campaign at $300,000-$500,000.

In an enthusiastic e-mail sent to colleagues after the meeting, Susan Spilka, Wiley’s director of corporate communications, said Dezenhall explained that publishers had acted too defensively on the free-information issue and worried too much about making precise statements. Dezenhall noted that if the other side is on the defensive, it doesn’t matter if they can discredit your statements, she added: “Media messaging is not the same as intellectual debate”.

However, Dezenhall conceded that “it’s hard to fight an adversary that manages to be both elusive and in possession of a better message: Free information.”

Posted at August 29, 2007 12:07 PM UTC

ALEC-Related Contributions

Contributions from REED ELSEVIER INC

Negative contribution amounts denote returned contributions