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

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

#181

Post by coliveira » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

logicrook wrote: post #169

coliveira wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is no nuance there, these people had a personal choice of publishing their books through a traditional publisher and decided for that. It is just a tradeoff that you need to honor. Maybe next time they will just self-publish and have a book that is truly free without the need of pirating.

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

#182

Post by Al-Khwarizmi » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #181

logicrook wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is no nuance there, these people had a personal choice of publishing their books through a traditional publisher and decided for that. It is just a tradeoff that you need to honor. Maybe next time they will just self-publish and have a book that is truly free without the need of pirating.

We have no real choice. Self-publishing means that the book doesn't count at all in the CV for grant applications, tenure applications, etc. Only the very top scientists that no longer have to fight for all these things can afford to make that "personal choice". For the rest, it's suicidal.

I also have a book at a major publisher, with an outrageous price, and when I saw it "pirated" I only felt joy at the fact that more people will get to read it and thus my work is more meaningful. And I also downloaded it myself, because I actually didn't have it in PDF, only in physical form.

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

#183

Post by dbcooper » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 9:37 PM UTC

There is very little innovation from academic publishers. Most don't even offer a single download that includes the paper and supplementary materials. E-book files are non-existent.

Very expensive publications, like Nature Biotechnology, should at the very least provide a single download (preferably epub) of each issue.

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

#184

Post by mavdi » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 9:59 PM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #153

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kazakh.

Attributing the correct ethnicity seems to matter a lot more outside of the US, Canada, and Commonwealth. I got an earful (screenful?) for calling a historical ethnic Russian painter Ukrainian, just because he was born in current-day Ukraine. This all predates the current conflict, and was from someone I'd consider educated, too.

In my experience US, Canada and Commonwealth are the ones obsessed with (positively or negatively) ethnicity and race.

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

#185

Post by gardano » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #159

cyphar wrote: post #79

I didn't know that you could raid ships using a website(!). In all seriousness, the act of "sharing the collective knowledge of mankind publicly" isn't morally equivalent to attacking ships and killing people. We should stop using terms that are clearly propaganda created by the film and music industry to try to muddy the waters.

Some people also make the case that the pirates, rather than the navy, were the 'good guys' of the maritime era.

The word "privateer" comes to mind.

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

#186

Post by roywiggins » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #153

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kazakh.

Attributing the correct ethnicity seems to matter a lot more outside of the US, Canada, and Commonwealth. I got an earful (screenful?) for calling a historical ethnic Russian painter Ukrainian, just because he was born in current-day Ukraine. This all predates the current conflict, and was from someone I'd consider educated, too.

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

#187

Post by peterhuston » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

r3bl wrote: post #54

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.

And what are people outside of the U.S. supposed to do?

From a Norwegian IP you can get access to many medical journals, see http://www.helsebiblioteket.no/om-oss/english. This can be achieved through TOR if you choose only to exit through a node in Norway.

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

#188

Post by drethemadrapper » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 10:49 PM UTC

There is another service in the pipeline. I came across it very recently; it is in a public-beta phase. It appears to focus on providing access to all digital libraries and specifically serving the third-world or developing countries, mostly in Africa. It has got a different (business) model and uses some advanced technologies for provisions of the articles. Given that they intend subscribing to the publishers, there is no doubt that they will remain in business for as long as the publishers themselves exist.

The projects like sci-hub.io, library.no and libgen are highly commendable. It is no news that the third-world countries are destabilized by war, economic sanctions, e.t.c. perpetuated by the world powers thereby making them re-prioritize (access to) their resources. And it is not surprising that webrtc/p2p related services are often times blocked in the first world institutions with access to articles from those digital libraries. Such technologies/protocols/tools are defined/shaped (at standardization meetings - IETF, W3C, e.t.c.) by big corporations in order to preserve their own product offerings.

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

#189

Post by coliveira » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 11:00 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #182

coliveira wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no nuance there, these people had a personal choice of publishing their books through a traditional publisher and decided for that. It is just a tradeoff that you need to honor. Maybe next time they will just self-publish and have a book that is truly free without the need of pirating.

We have no real choice. Self-publishing means that the book doesn't count at all in the CV for grant applications, tenure applications, etc. Only the very top scientists that no longer have to fight for all these things can afford to make that "personal choice". For the rest, it's suicidal. I also have a book at a major publisher, with an outrageous price, and when I saw it "pirated" I only felt joy at the fact that…

I have published academic books like you, and I never had a problem with this once I understood the consequences of traditional publishing. These books are cataloged in good libraries and available in Amazon. If people don't have money they can go to a library and get a free copy. The day I want a book freely available in the web I will just write one and post it on in my web page. I like the idea that authors have the option to go one route or another. Pirating books doesn't enter into this equation.

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

#190

Post by mynewtb » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 11:09 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #96

oxplot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://libgen.io/ which archives the sci-hub's newly accessed papers distributes the copies through BitTorrent. Libgen itself is also mirrored in multiple locations. Even if Sci-hub is taken down, it shouldn't take long for another to pop up.

They encrypt their torrents, so it's pretty useless.

What makes you think that? If the filenames confused you, those are checksums. The metadata is available as database.