Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by dalke » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

ansgri wrote: post #150

qft wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of paying the publishers, who contribute nothing to the work at all (remember they also charge us researchers hundreds of dollars just to get our work published), I'd rather donate the same $30 to sci-hub.

Another option: pay $5 to actual editors and designers, and $15 to reviewers. And save $10. Remember, the publisher typically doesn't even help with paper formatting, never mind copyediting. Unpaid reviewers (who allegedly agree to work for some 'reputation' — BS, they're anonymous) delegate the actual scientific review to the least busy student of those capable to write a syntactic semblance of a positive review. An…

Where do you get good editing and design work for $5?

Most reviewers don't want $15 from the author. Quoting http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/peer-review-survey-20... :

> Reviewers divided over incentives: Just over half of reviewers think receiving a payment in kind (e.g. subscription) would make them more likely to review; 41% wanted payment for reviewing, but this drops to just 2.5% if the author had to cover the cost. Acknowledgement in the journal is the most popular option.

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

#162

Post by dang » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 6:33 PM UTC

smanzer wrote: post #46

Previous HN discussion (article has neat details of how sci-hub works): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074638

There was another shortly before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070192.

We're bending the rules not to treat the current post as a duplicate, but the community interest seems stronger than usual.

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

#163

Post by Cyph0n » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 6:36 PM UTC

alphydan wrote: post #156

Cyph0n wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a student, your university likely has a proxy service that allows you to access journals from anywhere using your credentials. My previous uni gives access to alumni for life, so I can access journals for free from wherever.

What about poor countries who can't afford to pay for many subscriptions in the field? Should their scientists be banned from making contributions to science? Spain is not very poor, but when I was doing research in Seville, the department simply could not afford subscriptions to most physics journals, so we had to write directly to the authors with mixed success. How do you think a scientist in Senegal would feel ab…

I agree completely. Open access is really the only way to go if we want scientific knowledge to be equally accessible everywhere.

However, if you were fortunate enough to attend a college that does have access, you should take advantage of it.

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

#164

Post by dang » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

We changed the title from "Sci-Hub – Pirate website providing public access to millions of research papers" to what the site itself says.

I don't think this was an egregious title rewrite, but the word "pirate" was becoming the subject of discussion, which a title shouldn't be (and that goes double for extraneous ones).

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

#165

Post by nine_k » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #109

njharman wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. We should also start owning the term and framing the debate around it. Cast it in positive anti-establishment terms. Like pirate radio, Robin Hood, V4vendetta. Lone, beleaguered hero(s) fighting for the peoples against tyrannical and oppressive regimes.

What might help is if someone started a file sharing site and named it after a place where pirates hung out and incorporated a pirate ship and the word "pirate" into their logo. Then maybe if it became popular these so-called "pirates" could cast off the shame of being tarnished by an image they clearly don't embrace at all.

I heard about a certain site named "The Pirate Bay". They sort if got some publicity, but a positive reframing did not occur for some reason.

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

#166

Post by dalke » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 7:01 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #151

I think people haven't totally thought this open access thing through. First, publishing costs money, even in the digital age. It costs money to comb through submissions and decide which ones are worth pursuing. It costs money to hassle scientists into reviewing the submissions. It costs money to convert every submission into the same format. It costs money to develop and host a website to disseminate the articles. A…

They've been plenty explored, discussed, chewed over, and more, including the scenarios your presented. The costs have been analyzed in dozens of different ways, with many business models proposed and some executed upon.

(Note that your mathematician gets indirect funding by having access to the university library. As a non-academic, I can use the local college library but must pay access fees for some services that are free to staff and students. At a somewhat further away university library, as a visitor I can read journals online but am not permitted to make copies.)

Nor is our "current system", concentrated as it is in the hands of Elsevier (and its 37% profit on revenue), all that old. Most people outside the big publishing companies didn't fully explore the downsides of moving away from the system we had before the 1980s - or at the least, nothing like the ongoing discussions concerning open access.

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

#167

Post by coliveira » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 7:10 PM UTC

bpg_92 wrote: post #158

Welp, I used to get books, papers and software from non-legal sources when I was in undegrad, because I just couldn't afford it, now that I make some money I buy most of this stuff. The thing is, without all those resources in the past I couldn't have made it to where I am now. Just my 2 cents.

Kudos to you, there is little respect these days for personal decisions in the area of information access. Pirating information is wrong, doesn't matter how you twist it. There is big difference between creating and promoting free content (great) and trying to break the law to access content that already exists and is subject to copyright law. After all, requesting payment is a deal between publishers and writers. By pirating copyrighted works you're not just breaking the right of publishers, but also the rights of millions of small content creators.

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

#168

Post by afandian » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 7:11 PM UTC

noelsusman wrote: post #151

I think people haven't totally thought this open access thing through. First, publishing costs money, even in the digital age. It costs money to comb through submissions and decide which ones are worth pursuing. It costs money to hassle scientists into reviewing the submissions. It costs money to convert every submission into the same format. It costs money to develop and host a website to disseminate the articles. A…

http://arxiv.org/

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

#169

Post by logicrook » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 7:19 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #167

bpg_92 wrote: post #158

Welp, I used to get books, papers and software from non-legal sources when I was in undegrad, because I just couldn't afford it, now that I make some money I buy most of this stuff. The thing is, without all those resources in the past I couldn't have made it to where I am now. Just my 2 cents.

Kudos to you, there is little respect these days for personal decisions in the area of information access. Pirating information is wrong, doesn't matter how you twist it. There is big difference between creating and promoting free content (great) and trying to break the law to access content that already exists and is subject to copyright law. After all, requesting payment is a deal between publishers and writers. By…

What do you do of researchers that pirate their own books, and tell you never ever to buy their books, but go to libgen? I have met at least 5 world-class scientists say that "because I don't do any money on it anyway", "it's a scam", and "I wrote this book to be read". And tell "it's wonderful to imagine that this poor student read my book, and she was afraid to say she downloaded it illegally"...

"Piracy" is a very nuanced subject, depending on what/who you are talking about.

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

#170

Post by kanzure » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 7:21 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #141

A long time ago (even before Aaron Swartz), when I was still familiar with the active and rapidly growing filesharing community of the time, I vaguely remember reading about an effort by some of the "ebookers" to plant proxies in various universities' networks that would perform much the same function. I wonder what eventually became of it besides the large paper torrents that appeared, but I wouldn't be surprised if…

> an effort by some of the "ebookers" to plant proxies in various universities' networks that would perform much the same function

Yep they did that, it's called ezproxy.

https://github.com/kanzure/ezproxy-urls/blob/master/urls.txt

scihub uses this AFAIK.