Do *not* give Elsevier your data when they ask you stuff like this, even if it is *required*. Their main business is now data analytics, and they sell your information for profit. eiko-fried.com/welcome-to-h... - ThreadSky

eikofried.bsky.social • 188 days ago

Do *not* give Elsevier your data when they ask you stuff like this, even if it is *required*.
Their main business is now data analytics, and they sell your information for profit.

https://eiko-fried.com/welcome-to-hotel-elsevier-you-can-check-out-any-time-you-like-not/

Comments

brandane.bsky.social•188 days ago

Good to know, wasn’t aware of this.

lafferty.bsky.social•187 days ago

I talked to an Elsevier employee who works on Reaxys at the ACS meeting this week and learned that users who want to use the retrosynthesis feature have to sign in "so you can save your results", but thus puts that in another light

eikofried.bsky.social•187 days ago

Signing in is for tracking (combining and comparing user data) across platforms. If you don't sign it, how would they otherwise know that the person primarily reading genetics papers working primarily weekends ordering primarily these products publishing in these journals is also the person who ..

ccfears.bsky.social•187 days ago

I'm anxious about this on behalf of the authors, reviewers etc. who submit to our society journals, which are published by Elsevier. I would say that they're incredibly disorganised with this data (they cannot target a marketing email properly for example, as you note) but not sure that's a comfort!

arthurdeodat.bsky.social•187 days ago

That doesn't mean they don't sell it all to others who are not so disorganized.

ccfears.bsky.social•187 days ago

Absolutely! And I'm not defending it, I think we can give too much credence to big organisations like Elsevier's spin about being a big tech/data player now - a bigger risk to me having worked with them is disorganisation and leakiness with our data, including onwards sale.

roguehci.bsky.social•187 days ago

I would suggest not giving Elsevier _anything_

simonhammann.bsky.social•187 days ago

I had not even considered this...sounds like the publishing thing might just become a vehicle for data collection. Or already is.

eikofried.bsky.social•187 days ago

Already is, if you read the blog post. This is literally what RELX, Elsevier's parent company, does.

simonhammann.bsky.social•187 days ago

We don't have numbers about profit from regular publishing and from data tinkering, right?

(I replied before I had finished reading, admittedly)

eikofried.bsky.social•187 days ago

I wouldn't know, sorry

altibel.bsky.social•187 days ago

📌

wamsleylab.bsky.social•188 days ago

Interesting. I never really thought about these types of things as among the data about me that are monetized... But of course they are.

eikofried.bsky.social•188 days ago

I thought the same about the hundreds of thousands of data point Elsevier collected on me via Mendeley (every time I open it etc), until I realized they know 1) my work load, 2) preferred working hours, 3) my vacation time etc. Crucial data to monetize.

anarchicaesthete.bsky.social•187 days ago

You mention it in the comments of your post, but I can't beg people enough to use Zotero rather than Mendeley or Endnote. It's just better software, but also from a privacy and data standpoint there's no contest.

eikofried.bsky.social•187 days ago

Yeah, 100%. I moved to Zotero a few years back, way too late unfortunately.

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