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Community Unhappy About Elsevier Acquisition of Mendeley

April 9, 2013

By Gilbert Falso :: 1:54 PM

Community unhappy over Elsevier acquisition of Mendeley.That collective gasp you heard from Twitter early this morning was the sound of thousands of academics, librarians, and fans of the Mendeley service, after hearing that it has been acquired by Elsevier.

Mendeley is an application that allows users to organize, annotate, read, share and collaborate on documents. It had been embraced by the academic community and library community in particular, and enjoyed a large following because of its open, non-corporate background. In addition to the app, Menedely also offered an open API that allowed developers to work on projects that allowed transfer of data in and out of the Mendeley system.

Elsevier is a publisher of educational books and journals, and also hosts a number of research databases and services geared towards academics. However, in much of the academic community, Elsevier is scorned, and seen as an “evil empire” – serving only to make money off of the research and works of others.

To this community, Mendeley was a beacon of freedom that has now been gobbled up by the much-reviled corporate publisher. Many took to Twitter this morning to voice their displeasure:

 

 

 

 

 

The community is already rallying, offering alternatives to the much-loved Mendeley. The free research tool Zotero, is quickly rising to the top as a popular alternative.