Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

bjoern.brembs.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 160 posts

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#131

Post by raverbashing »

okc wrote: post #125

A simple fair circumvent: Any freely published article should not be allowed to be cited by a non-free one. This puts the power into the hands of the author, who could decide if they want this as part of the open license. Rather than the current robinhood type system. Does this already exist, anyone seen anything similar? (edited, typo)

This is as absurd as prohibiting hyperlinks because the site being pointed to might have copyright violations

Not to mention completely non-enforceable. You're forbidding people to say "David et al. [3] did a work in this area"

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#132

Post by lambdadmitry »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #127
lambdadmitry wrote: post #105

This whole story and the narrative of "civil activist Alexandra Elbakyan" sickens me to no end. In reality, Alexandra is an avid supporter of Putin's regime and a borderline fascist (in the original sense of cooperative state). Last year, when Dynasty non-profit fund (which sponsored thousands of Russian researchers, mostly in natural sciences) got expelled from Russia because of political reasons, she welcomed it be…

So maybe this shows that people don't fit neatly into categories like "good" and "bad", they can do both, and shades of grey in-between.

Or maybe this shows that bad people sometimes do good things out of serendipity; sometimes they even get credit and manage to hide their evilness. It doesn't make them in any way similar to Aaron Swartz, though.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#133

Post by RogerL »

nemothekid wrote: post #29
bcook wrote: post #6

I am poor, which I use as my primary excuse to pirate software, movies, books, etc. To those who are not financially struggling: Why do you pirate? What is your moral justification?

"I am poor" is a poor moral justification to pirate software, movies & books. Software, movies and books are written and funded by private individuals, and if you are pirating entertainment its wrong. I'm not the moral police, but "I'm poor" isn't a very good excuse. The stand I take with Scientific Papers is much different - these papers are backed by institutions which are commonly tax-payer funded or non-profits.…

It's not black and white, IMO. Say I write a screenplay that gets turned into a Hollywood blockbuster that makes 9 figures. I'd reasonably want my fair share of that money.

But what would I care if some 13 yo kid in a developing nation watches it on the internet? They will never be able to pay for this movie. There is nothing to be made from this.

And, you know, entertainment has value. Sure, my script could be fluff, but maybe i have a disabled kid in it, and this brings a lot of internal growth and strength to some.

It's a tradeoff, and it isn't clear what the answers are (again, IMO). Rights of the creator to control the destiny of their creation vs the rights of humanity. In the US we have decided that libraries are legal, for example. I can read and consume movies endlessly and never pay a cent, legally. Also, I can open a used book and CD store, and resell products. That hurts the economics of the publisher and producer, but is a net gain to humanity (IMO). Publishers don't get a dime of the money from my used book store, yet it is legal because we have determined that in this case the rights of the consumer trump the rights of the publisher. A different nation, or different time, might lead to different decisions. Let's not get too 'judgey' over people that fall in a different place on that spectrum.

OTOH, if there is no way to get paid at all, movies in their current will essentially disappear - essentially no one is going to do a Hollywood type production as a hobby. So, conundrum.

Personally, I will never judge somebody that thirsts for information, can't pay for it, and downloads it instead. There is no harm to the producer other than "I want to control my creation". I recognize that desire, but I personally think there are bigger things in play here that trump that.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#134

Post by okc »

raverbashing wrote: post #131
okc wrote: post #125

A simple fair circumvent: Any freely published article should not be allowed to be cited by a non-free one. This puts the power into the hands of the author, who could decide if they want this as part of the open license. Rather than the current robinhood type system. Does this already exist, anyone seen anything similar? (edited, typo)

This is as absurd as prohibiting hyperlinks because the site being pointed to might have copyright violations Not to mention completely non-enforceable. You're forbidding people to say "David et al. [3] did a work in this area"

Ok, that makes sense. But is it an absurd proposition to say that people who release non-open articles should not be allowed to directly build on the work of those who did it for free?

So how about if part of the agreement of accessing an open article was that any published work citing it would have to be open too. is that absurd in principle? and is it really non-enforceable?

An offshoot of this would be that anyone who goes on to cite something in a non-open article, could academically be accused of not reading the article their citing, and therefor mis-attributing information. This could lessen there creditability or even be grounds for a specific type of plagiarism.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#135

Post by Lawtonfogle »

ideonexus wrote: post #122
notalaser wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter is a point that's often forgotten, and is very true. I used to do research a long time ago, prior to deciding I'm not quite academia material. If I ever get nostalgic, I literally have to pay between 30 USD and 100 USD just to get PDFs of articles that I wrote. Of course, this is upsetting only on a personal level, but the entire process is extremely toxic to learning.

I don't think it's just on a personal level. The lack of access to journal articles is actually quite detrimental to public discourse. Last year I got into an online debate with a relative about the legacy of Rachel Carson. He was claiming that she purposefully misrepresented the findings of two journal articles to overstate the danger posed by DDT. I wanted to see for myself, but it would cost me $45 each for these…

I generally reject any paper that I cannot get full access to. This is because too many times have I seen papers making claims that are not supported by their methodology, especially in more controversial or politically charged subjects. A common example is to study some socially unacceptable population, they will look to sample from known members which are often gathered due to court cases, and then they magically make generalizations to the general part of the population. Imagine if most studies of men in the US only sampled from the prison population, could those results be generalized to all men?

Given that this data tends to be locked in the methodology section, which is quick to check if I have access, I tend to outright reject the paper as I cannot trust any claims made in the abstract. Even worse are when there are papers you cannot trust at all because of overt biases of their authors (unless the findings are produced by others who do not share those biases, normally if you get people on both sides of some issue reaching the same finding you can be more confident in the results).

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#136

Post by dr_zoidberg »

notalaser wrote: post #92
_lpa_ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking for your money here refers both to a potential reader, and the the author of the article.

The latter is a point that's often forgotten, and is very true. I used to do research a long time ago, prior to deciding I'm not quite academia material. If I ever get nostalgic, I literally have to pay between 30 USD and 100 USD just to get PDFs of articles that I wrote. Of course, this is upsetting only on a personal level, but the entire process is extremely toxic to learning.

Disclaimers: I live in another country, and I research in digital forensics -- that has quite an open community.

In my situation, I've never reached anywhere near that point. All my works are available for donwload as PDFs, and even if they weren't, my research group keeps a repository where we can re-download/point/email anyone who asks for them.

We haven't published in IEEE journals (yet), but as of our countrys law, we are the authors, and we hold rights to our work (for example, distribution) as we see fit. As a matter of fact, per a "new" law (it's a few years old, but it's becoming effective now), we have to keep that institutional repository I mentioned earlier.

My question is: how is your situation, and how were you forced into this ridicule thing of having to pay for your own work?!

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#137

Post by fao_ »

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #136
notalaser wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter is a point that's often forgotten, and is very true. I used to do research a long time ago, prior to deciding I'm not quite academia material. If I ever get nostalgic, I literally have to pay between 30 USD and 100 USD just to get PDFs of articles that I wrote. Of course, this is upsetting only on a personal level, but the entire process is extremely toxic to learning.

Disclaimers: I live in another country, and I research in digital forensics -- that has quite an open community. In my situation, I've never reached anywhere near that point. All my works are available for donwload as PDFs, and even if they weren't, my research group keeps a repository where we can re-download/point/email anyone who asks for them. We haven't published in IEEE journals (yet), but as of our countrys la…

As far as I can tell, it comes down to two things:

a) Authors need to be published in certain journals to have their work read by their peers, and gain credibility.

b) Academic journals (Elsevier, etc.) require you to hand over the rights to the paper to them.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#138

Post by devishard »

logicrook wrote: post #87

Although everyone seems to celebrate it, I feel a little uneasy about this. The whole publishing scam is not about giving (or restricting) access from research to peons, it is to justify sucking the money of public institutions. When the situation sucks for people, they get motivated to try to change the system. It is already hard enough for people to try to change things, because research is hard enough, and then if…

> He was then asked "but what if hollywood disappeared with the change?".

What if they did?

It's the lie of all middle-men that they are necessary to the process. Composers didn't stop writing music when the concept of a noble benefactor died: the business model changed. Architects didn't stop building beautiful buildings because religions couldn't afford giant churches and kings stopped building palaces. Movies will continue to be made if Hollywood dies, and if history is any indicator, the art form will develop more rapidly once it's no longer hampered by outdated business models.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#139

Post by DarkLinkXXXX »

acomjean wrote: post #88
DarkLinkXXXX wrote: post #2

I'm surprised there aren't more comments here. Maybe it's because most agree, and there really isn't much more to be said? Anyways, thank you very much for sharing.

Authors/Scientist have little problem with getting their work into out there to as many people as possible. People want the knowledge. So the only ones really objecting to this are the publishers. As someone who works at the edge of biology, I have noted that the publishing business reviews the papers get knowledgeable peer-reviewers(pressed for time) and then ask difficult questions of the authors. Some papers aren'…

Great to hear.

I've found another way to get access is to simply email the author of a paper. Of course, this mostly only works for those still enrolled at the academic institution where the research took place, but I've had good luck with it.

Re: Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience

#140

Post by justifier »

as i understand it the argument for pay walling is the costs of peer review?

so how about a service where you publish the paper, but pay for the peer review that grants your paper an accreditation of significance or legitimacy

this current system of peer review to enter our journal to determine legitimacy is prone to too many errors: corporate buy outs, poor standards, peer review is only done once prepublication; and needs a revisit

i'd love an arxiv`like to have for hire peer reviewers with associated reputation, question the significance of a paper that is peer reviewed? Hire your favourite reviewer to take a second look

that said, i think all papers should be open for reading regardless of peer review, the indicator of research should be on review stead access

Post reply on HN