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Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

sci-hub.io

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Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#111
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She? Is there someone publicly affiliated with the project?

Yes, Alexandra Elbakyan, a researcher from Kazakhstan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

>Despite seizure of the websites as ordered by a New York district court on October 28, 2015, the site is still accessible through alternative domains as of December 2015.

So a court in the United States could seize a site just because the plaintiff was based there?

Or because the .org domain registry (PIR) is based in the US?

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#114

I've used sci-hub a few times. It's a little buggy and not every article can be accessed, but it works well enough to try when I'm not on campus. $30 to read a single article is ridiculous anyway and presents a barrier to scientists who don't have, can't afford, or don't want to pay for access. I hope sci-hub stays up and improves for some time.

No doubt $30 is expensive, but many journals do provide free access to their content in developing countries.

Not in Russia

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#115
post #112

How is this diffrent(better) from http://arxiv.org ?

Arxiv is by its nature open access; Arxiv does not charge for access.

On the other hand, the articles that this site hosts require payment to access. The journals typically charge $30 / article, or roughly $2,000 / year subscription.

Note that for both the open access or paid journals, researchers do NOT receive any compensation when users download articles. That is, despite the research being mostly paid by taxpayers, a PRIVATE company receives compensation for the work done by the researchers. Not only that, but the researchers have to PAY a publication fee, and that fee is higher if they want to allow open-access.

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#116
It paints a bulls-eye on her back and its use of the term "piracy" to "free knowledge" doesn't flow well in western sentiments. While I get that the "booty" she is stealing are the fees that the journals would like you to charge, the acts she are creating are more like a librarian letting people check out books without a library card because she has an infinite supply of said books.

I am hoping that the rent-seeking behavior of the science journals can be used as the canonical example of how copyright can harm the common good.

By endorsing and upholding this egregious use of copyright, our elected officials are clearly causing more harm than good, and the perversion of the spirit of copyright, that an author is granted a temporary monopoly so that they might recover some of their investment, portrays this use as indentured servitude at best, and outright theft at its worst.

So while I don't think anyone is really "harmed" because Disney won't release the original Cinderella or employs measures to keep it from being copied. It is very much the case that by creating this barrier to scientific research, a person or group who might change the world in a positive way if they had access, is perhaps even unaware that there is relevant work that they cannot get access to. That is definitely a harm in my opinion.

So I hope that the narrative here, which has been dominated by big media for so long, might get some interjection of a more nuanced understanding of why copyright exists, and how to craft laws that embrace that spirit, rather then the rent-seeking interests of the people who live off the work of others.

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#117
post #47

Is there a tarball of the data somewhere that one could download, redistribute and host somewhere (on the darknet, assumedly)?

I don't think that's feasible -- scihub requests articles directly from publishers (using legit accounts). Each requested article is cached by libnet.io, so articles are not re-requested twice

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#118

Looks like it is piping the queries over to scholar.google.com - getting only timeouts right now though.

It uses scholar as a search engine, but then it replaces the links in the results. e.g. http://link.springer.com/link-to-paper becomes: http://link.springer.com.sci-hub.io/link-to-paper As far as I can tell, it works for some articles.

Just use DOI of the article, then it's instant and bypasses Google search

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#119
post #112

How is this diffrent(better) from http://arxiv.org ?

Arxiv is a place to host scientific articles for free. Journals are institutions that scientists submit articles to, get them reviewed, published, and then charge a fee to access them. Sci hub takes the papers in the closed access journals and distributes them online for free.

Hope that made it clear.

Re: Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science

#120
post #112

How is this diffrent(better) from http://arxiv.org ?

Arxiv is by its nature open access; Arxiv does not charge for access. On the other hand, the articles that this site hosts require payment to access. The journals typically charge $30 / article, or roughly $2,000 / year subscription. Note that for both the open access or paid journals, researchers do NOT receive any compensation when users download articles. That is, despite the research being mostly paid by taxpayer…

How come all papers i have come across at the arXiv are readily downloadable as PDF?
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