Citation

"People seem to think Elsevier is a company dedicated to promulgating scientific truth or something. But Elsevier is a business, and their goal is to MAKE MONEY. It turns out they're pretty good at it, too. They get governments and universities to fund scientific research, get the researchers to give them free content, review and edit that content for free, and then sell the content back to the universities. The point here should be clear. The folks at Elsevier are clever; librarians and researchers and suckers."

"The way I understand it, Elsevier has a monopoly on a large number of important scientific journals, and also a bunch of crappy ones. They like to sell them all to you in a big package for a big price. If you only want the important journals, because no one will ever read the crappy ones, they'll be happy to sell you just the good ones, for the same big price. Like Chippendale dancers, they'll jiggle their package any way you like, as long as you pay the price. And what have libraries done? They just keep on paying. The point? Elsevier is a business run by clever people making a lot of money; librarians and researchers are suckers."

"Thanks to the cleverness of Elsevier and others, libraries don't even have much content left to classify. These companies that rent us access to journals are brilliant. It used to be the case that libraries would at least be able to keep the journals they bought, but now we pay and pay and get to keep...nothing. Stop the subscription and you don't have the journal. No access, no preservation. (When we all go to ebooks it will be the same thing. Yay!!) Elsevier is right up there at the forefront of this movement. The point? Elsevier is clever; librarians and researchers are suckers."

(source: Annoyed Librarian, 13/05/09)