Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone • Hacker News Board

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#151

Post by sklogic » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 9:47 AM UTC

nailer wrote: post #89

leot wrote: post #18

Elsevier and others can go something themselves. Their behavior over the last two decades has been little more than reprehensible rent-seeking. Whatever goodwill they had disappeared as they sapped with increasing ruthlessness the dollars of students and non-profits. See, e.g., one of many such figures: http://www.lib.washington.edu/scholpub/images/economics_grap... It is absurd and dishonest to call Sci-Hub "piracy"…

I don't understand academia (genuinely): Couldn't the researchers simply publish their own papers? Make torrents etc? Or are they prevented from doing that somehow?

Actually, quite a few of them do publish at least preprints outside of the peer review journals. For about 80% of the papers I needed recently that were behind a paywall, I managed to find PDFs published by the authors somewhere else.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#152

Post by cschwarm » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 9:50 AM UTC

zbjornson wrote: post #19

taneq wrote: post #4

> “I’m all for universal access, but not theft!” tweeted Elsevier’s director of universal access, Alicia Wise You want everybody to have access, but you don't want them to get it for free. Wow, so you want the entire world to all pay for the material you were given for free. Hmmmm.

The publishers are either given the material for free and readers have to pay, or the researchers pay the publishers on the order of $2k per page to have their research published as open access. Not great in either case. http://openwetware.org/wiki/Publication_fees

Surely, there's a middle way. Since we are talking about a club good [1], a club would be the appropriate alternative. Assuming a fee of 20$/month for people in developed countries and 100.000 members, this would cover about 1.000 papers per month.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_good

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#153

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 9:52 AM UTC

nailer wrote: post #144

dalke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journals are used as a proxy for quality. A publication in "Science" or "Nature" is generally regarded as being better than a publication in, say, the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science". Bibliographic metrics, like the number of publications and where they are published, are use as a proxy for the quality of someone's research. It can affect grant funding and career advancement. Researchers can publish…

> A publication in "Science" or "Nature" What excludes the academic from also publishing elsewhere?

[deleted]

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#154

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 9:52 AM UTC

Vespasian wrote: post #137

chris_wot wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How... generous?

I did not imply that I'm happy with the situation, but sadly it is a fact scientists have to deal with right now.

Well... They sort of don't any more. People just go to sci-hub!

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#155

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 9:54 AM UTC

kowdermeister wrote: post #136

chris_wot wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were to work out what makes a journal so prestigious, what are the objective measures that should be considered?

100 years of track record publishing the least amount of junk.

Worst metric evar.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#156

Post by SXX » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 9:58 AM UTC

musha68k wrote: post #91

Wow http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/alexandra-elbakyan-fo...

This doesn't really affect the project, but keep in mind she is very controversion person. For instance she support government censorship of political opposition and generally don't support freedom of speech. And likely half of people commented there would be banned on any sci-hub related resource since she usually ban anyone who don't fully agree with what project doing.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#157

Post by parenthephobia » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 10:03 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #120

dalke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journals are used as a proxy for quality. A publication in "Science" or "Nature" is generally regarded as being better than a publication in, say, the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science". Bibliographic metrics, like the number of publications and where they are published, are use as a proxy for the quality of someone's research. It can affect grant funding and career advancement. Researchers can publish…

If we were to work out what makes a journal so prestigious, what are the objective measures that should be considered?

Mainly it's a chicken and egg situation.

A journal is prestigious because the papers it publishes have an allusion of quality, because they are published by a prestigious journal.

A prestigious journal publishes high-quality papers because it can attract high-quality authors and reviewers, because it is a prestigious journal.

A journal is prestigious because researchers choose to (try to) be published in it, because their articles will be widely read by other researchers, because it is a prestigious journal.

If you were trying to bootstrap a new journal, you'd have a tough time; unless you didn't care about its quality.

The bare minimum would be a staff who have the time and skill to sift through obviously junk papers and then know which reviewers to use for the legitimate papers. Your best bet would probably be to assemble a staff of well-regarded researchers in whatever field(s) you wanted the journal to cover.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#158

Post by lrem » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 10:05 AM UTC

nailer wrote: post #144

dalke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journals are used as a proxy for quality. A publication in "Science" or "Nature" is generally regarded as being better than a publication in, say, the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science". Bibliographic metrics, like the number of publications and where they are published, are use as a proxy for the quality of someone's research. It can affect grant funding and career advancement. Researchers can publish…

> A publication in "Science" or "Nature" What excludes the academic from also publishing elsewhere?

There is an expectation that each publication is a new piece of research and having the same work published in more than one journal and one conference is considered to be somewhat fraudulent. Just think of it: if researchers started to double publish, what would happen with the administrative "objective" process of giving the money to the guy with most bullet points on his list?

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#159

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 10:05 AM UTC

nailer wrote: post #144

dalke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journals are used as a proxy for quality. A publication in "Science" or "Nature" is generally regarded as being better than a publication in, say, the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science". Bibliographic metrics, like the number of publications and where they are published, are use as a proxy for the quality of someone's research. It can affect grant funding and career advancement. Researchers can publish…

> A publication in "Science" or "Nature" What excludes the academic from also publishing elsewhere?

[deleted]

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#160

Post by parenthephobia » Fri, Apr 29, 2016, 10:07 AM UTC

nailer wrote: post #144

dalke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journals are used as a proxy for quality. A publication in "Science" or "Nature" is generally regarded as being better than a publication in, say, the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science". Bibliographic metrics, like the number of publications and where they are published, are use as a proxy for the quality of someone's research. It can affect grant funding and career advancement. Researchers can publish…

> A publication in "Science" or "Nature" What excludes the academic from also publishing elsewhere?

The terms of the agreement with the journal.

Nature, for example, permits private redistribution of accepted papers - I could send you a copy if you asked me for one - but requires exclusive publishing rights - I couldn't just put it on my website for anyone to take.