Munich Court Ruling Sides with Elsevier, ACS over ResearchGate

The academic networking service ResearchGate was infringing on copyrights held by scientific publishers when it hosted manuscripts from their journals, the European court said, but the website will not have to pay damages.

Written byJef Akst

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In 2017, academic publishers Elsevier and the American Chemical Society sued ResearchGate for alleged copyright infringement, specifically regarding 50 papers uploaded by users to the academic networking site. A Munich court issued a ruling on January 31 that ResearchGate was indeed in the wrong and that the site will be prohibited from hosting the papers (all of which have already been taken down), but declined to grant the publishers’ request for damages, Nature reports. However, the publishers now say they plan to appeal the decision.

“We are pleased with the verdict,” a spokesperson for the Coalition for Responsible Sharing, a group of publishers that includes Elsevier and the ACS, tells Nature. “The clear aim of the legal action was to clarify the responsibilities of ResearchGate for the content that it illicitly distributes on its site, which it does for its own commercial gain.”

ResearchGate also plans to appeal parts of ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
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Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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