In recent years, major publishers of scientific publications have invested heavily in data collection. Researchers fear that research sinks into a performance race.
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Jonny Saunders, Neuroscientific from the University of Oregon (United States), has made this winter a surprising discovery. Since his workstation, he has been a December evening thanks to the network of his Faculty on the website of the Renot Elsevier Scientific Editor. “I had heard of these scientific publishers who collected data on their users,” he says to the world. I just asked about what means they did and if these traps appeared in the code of their web pages. “For some time, the scientific community is concerned about a new practice of major publishers: the collection of increasingly fine data on researchers and their work.
That night, Jonny Saunders then opens a text in Elsevier’s online software and, after some quick manipulations, realizes that it is “observed” by three different tools that send in real time information to third-party servers. “One of them communicated to the Identifying data servers, including the University’s proxy since which I was connected, which allows them to identify precisely,” he remembers. Further, it notes between the code lines as “events” are also described and harvested by the publisher and inform it very precisely on its reading behavior. Different information is then coded if it places its cursor on the top of the text, if it reduces the browser window, if it stays long on the page or not, etc.
Elsevier prefers dodge the controversy
Surprised by the accuracy of the data collected by Elsevier, Jonny Saunders sends a tweet in the stride to alert his peers. But a month later, except for a small wave of indignation remained confined to the English-speaking scientific community, the news did not make much noise. We solicited Elsevier to react.
The Dutch publisher refuses to “specifically” what Jonny Saunders revealed but recognizes the existence of a significant collection of data on its users. And this for many purposes, ensures the company: “We use data tracking tools to provide and improve our services, (…) to help us authenticate users, secure our services, to detect fraud and abuse, (…) to facilitate efficiency and productivity in research. “Elsevier also mentions, without direct reference, the very precise methods detected by Jonny Saunders:” the data we collect to test, analyze and Optimize the size and positions of the buttons on our web pages are not directly identifiable by users. “
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