Community Unhappy About Elsevier Acquisition of Mendeley
By Gilbert Falso :: 1:54 PM
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:
And talking of the Mendeley sale, the academics on my feed have melted in disgust. Elsevier, if this is your market you have a problem.
— emily bell (@emilybell) April 9, 2013
The extent to which @mendeley was becoming an integral part of the knowledge ecosystem = how much the @elsevier acquisition disappoints me.
— David Weinberger (@dweinberger) April 9, 2013
Mendeley cannot fix Elsevier’s reputation. Elsevier published fake journals, backed SOPA, uses bundles to screw scholars/libraries. Too evil
— danah boyd (@zephoria) April 9, 2013
Bad news. Cool, innovative, company sells its soul to the most evil & rapacious corporation in academia. #mendeley tinyurl.com/brwojsa
— Rob Knell (@RobKnell1) April 9, 2013
Mendeley joins Elsevier, acknowledges criticism of the behemoth but does it anyway – aka evil empire strikes again.blog.mendeley.com/start-up-life/…)
— Kathleen Searles (@kesearles) April 9, 2013
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.