Recently Elsevier sent Academia.edu numerous take down notices for published articles that authors had posted onto their pages in academia.edu. Elsevier claimed breach of copyright. There has been a lot of fall out over this http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/12/10/around-the-web-elsevier-vs-academia-edu-vs-researchers/
Is ResearchGate next? What will you do if RG start removing your published papers? Does it bring into focus just who does 'own' your work?
Thanks Andrew for putting up this interesting question. Honestly it was the first thing that popped in my head when I signed up with RG (I am a newcomer).
Think as long as papers are well cited, OA journals wouldn't care much. However journals and their publishers who either require institutional access or individual payments would definitely mind seeing their potential incomes go down the drain. So I reckon authors should refrain posting non-OA journal on RG. Wonder if RG takes a note of it.
Elsevier and other publishers earn trillions of dollars every year from the works of authors by subscription fee. They keep on hiking the subscription fee annually. (The institute in which I worked previously in INDIA could not afford the hike and cancelled all subscription from sciencedirect at one point of time ) What penny amount have they ever given to purchase the copyright from authors? According to me, no author should give copyright at free of cost to any publishers. The system should change. Let the publisher pay for the copyright for every work from authors and then do the business of subscription.
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