“‘WikiGate’ Raises Questions About Wikipedia’s Commitment to Open Access”

From ars technica:

Scientific publisher Elsevier has donated 45 free ScienceDirect accounts to “top Wikipedia editors” to aid them in their work. Michael Eisen, one of the founders of the open access movement, which seeks to make research publications freely available online, tweeted that he was “shocked to see @wikipedia working hand-in-hand with Elsevier to populate encylopedia w/links people cannot access,” and dubbed it “WikiGate.” Over the last few days, a row has broken out between Eisen and other academics over whether a free and open service such as Wikipedia should be partnering with a closed, non-free company such as Elsevier.
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Eisen went on to tweet: “@Wikipedia is providing free advertising for Elsevier and getting nothing in return,” and that, rather than making it easy to access materials behind paywalls, “it SHOULD be difficult for @wikipedia editors to use #paywalled sources as, in long run, it will encourage openness.” He called on Wikipedia’s co-founder, Jimmy Wales, to “reconsider accommodating Elsevier’s cynical use of @Wikipedia to advertise paywalled journals.” His own suggestion was that Wikipedia should provide citations, but not active links to paywalled articles.
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It is that cosy relationship with publishers and their paywalled articles that Eisen is concerned about, especially the latest one with Elsevier, whom he described in a tweet as “#openaccess’s biggest enemy.” Eisen wrote: “it is a corruption of @Wikipedia’s principles to get in bed with Elsevier, and it will ultimately corrupt @Wikipedia.” But in a reply to Wikipedia Library on Twitter, Eisen also emphasised: “don’t get me wrong, i love @wikipedia and i totally understand everything you are doing.”

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UPDATE Jake Orlowitz, leader of the Wikipedia Library Project, who is not mentioned or quoted in the article, has shared a response to the article here.
Btw, the Wikipedia Library Project is not new. It has been around for about five years and currently has partnerships with about 40 publishers and database providers (with more announcements coming) including Credo, De Gruyter, JSTOR, MIT Press, and OCLC. Recently, the project launched a French-language branch. See: “The Wikipedia Library Project Launches French-Language Branch With Three Content Partners” (June 28, 2015)
See Also: The Wikipedia Library Project Announces Visiting Scholar Positions at Five Research Libraries (July 13, 2015)

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Elsevier, Libraries, News, Open Access, Publishing