Latest horror from Elsevier: published scientific manuscripts littered with links whose ALT text says:
"Learn more about common descent from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages"
Like trying to discredit published research papers by pointing to AI-generated drivel?
The Law360 union, editors at LexisNexis and RELX owned publication Law360, are on a ULP strike. They've been bargaining since November 2022, management has refused a proposal that would give the union control over health insurance, and has illegally laid off unionized workers.
https://newsguild.org/law360-journalists-go-on-strike/
Unfortunately behind a paywall, but a former #Elsevier #RELX employee has sued the corporation for greenwashing:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/dutch-publisher-sued-by-ex-employee-over-greenwashing-concerns
some quotes:
According to the complaint, Lyall discovered in 2020 that the companies were "actively supporting fossil fuel expansion while they pledged to protect the climate as part of their public-facing marketing."
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Ende Oktober findet wieder das Familientreffen der #FiveEyes statt, die DoDIIS Worldwide Conference (https://www.ncsi.com/event/dodiis/). Viele hochdekorierte Speaker und jede Menge military contractors als Aussteller und Sponsoren wie Booz Allen, AWS, Microsoft und Google. Mittendrin dabei auch #RELX mit LexisNexis:
@nemobis@mamot.fr@11011110 I had missed the news of the upcoming strike at Law360, a #RELX company!
https://www.nyguild.org/post/law360-union-to-bosses-the-verdict-is-in-its-time-to-strike
(via a comment there: https://www.metafilter.com/205114/Overwhelmingly-positive#8613558)
2/ Was das Besondere der wissenschaftlichen Infrastrukturen in diesem Überwachungswahn ist: sie sind Teil der Vorgeschichte. In dem Moment, als die Wissenschaft sich mit Verbreitung des Internets rasant digitalisierte, suchten die großen Player wie Reed Elsevier (heute #relx ) und #thomsonreuters nach Alternativen – sie fürchteten, abgehängt zu werden.
@nemobis@mamot.fr@ilumium Oh dear. Now I have to praise Jim Jordan for fighting on the right side against #RELX / #LexisNexis. #uspol #privacy
Folks this #LexisNexis risk assessment product that vacuums up all automotive data and uses it to raise your insurance rates is none other than the offspring of #RELX, parent of #Elsevier. Far from being an isolated product unrelated to scholarly publishing, year after year in their promotional material they boast how these are integrated systems at both a technical and operational level - your prestige publications fund this, and your professional metrics sold via SciVal are part of the same pool of data.
Who wants to bet that funders wont blink at an "aggregated funding risk score that draws from our proprietary analytics data for a whole-researcher productivity profile." We're beyond surveillance conspiracy theories, these products are here today, and every prestige publication makes us complicit and digs the grave for our own profession.
