I have heard of several research groups who were unsatisfied with Elsevier approaches in obser authors rights and different puishing policies. Even some groups joined the boycott movements of Elsevie. I have not joined such movements as I did not believe such accusations. Recently, I personally faced such unfair policy. I do not want to judge on personal experience. I would like to hear similar opinions of the researchers. Any similar experiences?
Unless you pay an open access fee, Elsevier holds the copyright to your paper if you publish with them. Unless the work was funded by a group (Welcome Trust, NIH) that requires open access after a year, the paper remains behind a pay wall. Elsevier does give the author an electronic copy to use in filling requests for the paper BUT does not allow the author to post that copy or a working paper equivalent on the web. That's the traditional publishing model and there is nothing unfair about it. They are a business, not a charity. If they publish your article at no charge to you, they have to recover the publication cost from readers. Incidentally, most university libraries buy a subscription that provides access to all Elsevier journals and they have special access arrangements for researchers in low-income countries.
Dear Miller
The subscription and OA platforms have the straightforward routes and no issue. The fairness matters when special cases emerge. My point was based on some direct or indirect experiences where Elsevier did not farily behave. As an example, some of my students and coworkers registered for conferences host by Elsevie, but due to a reason they did not attend. As I know, they canceled the registration. But, after 2 years, Elsevier asked for the full amount of the registration fee. When authors cancelled or even the cancellation did not effectively submit, they should have asked the amount that time. Now, as per cancellation. And more general issue, several times that happened a journal with lower IF, rejected a manuscript which was then accepted by higher IF journals. Some cases, reviewers asked directly or indirectly asked authors to cite specific references. I know such things happen in any journal or publishers but high frequency matters.
My experience: for OA, it happens when a student can not afford the APC of a journal and asked for some protion waiver. Elsevier is too strict on such cases. Though there are some OA publishers who give significant or full waiver to such student.
Regarding the Bern Convention about copyright law most publishing houses are acting against it. I would tell that the idea behind modern academic world is a comeback to the ancient Egypt or Rome - in the time of slavery. Most of academic journals and reviews are collecting publishing fees from authors and in most cases submissions are not publicly available. They even not pay the reviewers. So, they make a profit on both fields. Indeed the authors are thus pushed in the position of slavery. To gain the academic title they must publish. But to publish they should pay. Thus the publishing house gains two times - they get an article (they market forward) free of charge and they even charge the publishing of the same article. It's a classical abuse of oligopoly. There are some articles showing that IF could be manipulated and that journals with high IF publish also bad academic papers. It's not surprising that most of the academic papers with high IF are located in the US. Just the citations of the published papers show the logic of IF casino behind the IF. The author has a right to one copy. If the publishing house doesn't send the copy, than this is a clear offense of the mentioned convention. As an author I have a right to personal archive (in a paper or e version). How the Bern Convention regulates the free use of published works is known. Maybe the big publishing houses should read that convention again and prosecutors should start some criminal procedures against the management of such publishing houses. The end question is whether the knowledge should be monopolized or should stay public.