191–200 of 398 posts
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No, that's complete bullshit. Had Aaron pleaded guilty, he'd be out by now as both of the plea agreements he was offered would have meant 6 months or less . And trial? Why would he have gone to trial? There was no question of his guilt.
Going to jail at all would have been an injustice. What would it have achieved?
I don't personally believe it would've achieved anything, but that's how the world works.
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Where a scientist publishes papers can make or break their career. Historically for area A, journals B, C, D have the highest impact. If you want your work to be recognized as high quality you will publish in those journals and whether they are "open" or "controlled by a publisher" is irrelevant. It just so happens that for most scientific areas, the high impact journals are all owned by publishers.
Thanks, got it - so it's the equivalent of signing to a major label instead of releasing your album on Bandcamp. However, and I may be very naive and idealistic here, shouldn't academics be able to rate and value a paper purely on quality rather than the medium it was published in?
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> He might have been in prison now For hypothetical crimes he could've committed had he lived? Because he certainly wouldn't be in prison for things he actually did.
For whatever reason lots of people here seem to disagree. Could any of the 4 downvoters clarify in what conceivable scenario would Aaron still be in prison if he was alive? Had he pled guilty, he would undoubtedly be out by now. And going to trial obviously wasn't a realistic option considering the plea deals he was offered (BTW If someone here disagrees about that, I'd really like to know why.). Read: http://volokh.…
http://www.jonaseinarsson.se/2016/only-open-access-peer-revi...
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Hmmm...it seems like the space is ready to be disrupted. How might that look? I mean purely publishing isnt just ideal as it lacks the so-called quality control and prestige of established publications. What might be a middle ground for disrupting this crappy monopoly on the world's knowledge?
Need to figure out how to align the incentives and fix the prestige problem of academia in order for this to work. Open Access exists, but you don't get the status you need from it (and weirdly it often costs a couple hundred dollars for the graduate student to publish their paper open access in addition to the Journal). It'd be nice if there was a way to make the community more like open source software where you ge…
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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?
The problem is nobody is going to read them. That's because the people who these scientists are targeting (other established academics, funding sources) choose to ignore the rest of the internet and only read the well known journals. This is almost exclusive to life sciences though. In CS, physics and other disciplines people just upload their preprints on arxiv and don't really bother about impact factors and such.
I work in CS and I know that if I want my paper to be read by the community I have to publish in a conference and/or arXiv, as almost no one read journals in CS. But then comes one of the almost infinite assessments the bureaucratic system in my university and country makes me jump through, and what do they look at? Impact factors, and conference publications are worth next to nothing. So I constantly have to juggle between what is good for being relevant and known in the community, and what is good to keep my job, which are often incompatible.
This depends on country, though. In the US, I think the funding agencies have left behind the impact factor fetishism in CS and authors can (and often do) just publish in conferences. But in Spain if you don't publish in journals you just don't get a position in academia, in fact some universities are starting to require > X ISI JCR-indexed publications to be able to become a PhD. And I have heard that in e.g. China it's the same thing.
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That reminds me of the whole talk around "open standards" that you have to pay for to legally acquire (ANSI, ISO, IEEE, etc.), although in that case the situation is slightly different. Also, the "free software" vs "open source" distinction.
Ugh, yes. I recently wrote a parser for an ISO standard file format. I had to base it on the draft submission because they wanted me to pay them a bunch of money for the actual end standard. I really hope the final standard didn't have any substantive changes, so that my implementation is correct. But all I can really do is cross my fingers since it at least seems to work with available data. Charging for standards h…
Then, once you've found a source, always remember to bookmark it and save a copy. They disappear from search indices quickly, despite the site still being around. It also helps to repeat your search periodically as sometimes the "shifting sands can uncover treasure momentarily" ;-)
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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.
She's the one who's putting herself at risk. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. And every time you slander someone you really should link to independent sources so others can at least verify and judge for themselves.
If you want source there is her comments on Russian website:
https://geektimes.ru/users/sci-hub/comments/ (most importantly latest one)
She's heavily downvoted there since most of IT-related audience in Russsia don't support autocratic regimes. She call that community downvoted her is "fifth column" (which in CIS is term for political opposition used by dictators fans) and censorship of internet resources that support political opposition is good thing.
There was other case when sci-hub community made some poll on their social network page about supporing what they doing and then banned everyone who voted against. Sadly it's harder to find source on this one since everything related to incedent is deleted and everyone posted about that is removed from their group.
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Elsevier own some really high profile journals, including The Lancet and Cell. Refusing to publish in these journals, or similar ones in terms of impact factor, is simply not an option for junior faculty in most departments. I have friends for whom "publishing in Nature, Science and/or Cell" is literally a precondition for getting tenure.
Why does academia put up with this stupid system? Academics are already the ones doing all the peer review on their own, free of payment, right? So why not say "Hey, we'll set up our own servers, host papers free for all to access, and then note which ones pass the same levels of scrutiny we'd apply as reviewers were we reviewing them for Nature, Science, Cell, The Lancet, whatever"? Doesn't seem like the journals ac…
Established faculty largely don't care because they are established (there are exceptions of course). Some new faculty would like to change it but if they do set up their own system it won't be taken seriously by the administration or senior faculty in charge of tenure review. There are also new faculty who don't know or care about these things so they just do what they know which is traditional publishing.
I was at a faculty development session a couple months ago. There were 20 faculty members there from various departments and the topic turned to open access journals. Some people were arguing that they weren't worth publishing in because tenure review boards haven't heard of them so they don't take them seriously. Then one guy - remember, this is a college professor - asked "where are these papers stored?" He wanted to know where the actual servers were physically located. And then he said, "This whole online thing seems like Big Brother."
That being said, things are changing and in some fields open access journals are seen as reputable and accepted but they are still new and in some fields (non-stem mostly) they are seen much more skeptically. So if you are in those fields and you want tenure you are going to try to get published in the old journals first.
Thirdly, this time the bullies can't touch those who are distributing the work. One of the consequences of the pervasive reach of the Internet is that if pirated material falls outside of the jurisdiction of a nation that strictly endorses its copyright law then there is virtually nothing that nation can do about it.
When Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann prosecuted Aaron Swartz they thought they had struck a blow for copyright holders everywhere. And they did for a few years. Under three years later, however, the rules of the game changed and this time there is no one they could easily prosecute, because they are outside of their grasp and there is no way to persecute them, or make an example of them.
The established order has changed. Those who should have known better, who should have put conditions on publicly financed research to be open to all instead allowed greedy and amoral companies like Elsevier to take the hard work of others and sell it for a profit, giving almost nothing back to the system they are pillaging. Too late they choose to open the door slightly ajar to make those on the outside think they will be granted access, only to slam that door shut before they can get inside. Too late do they realise that a gentleman thief has broken in and distributed their ill-gotten gains to the ones they stole from.
Those who ruthlessly pursued the Aaron Swartz's of the world have finally been undone. Their arrogance and rapacity blinded them to the reality that they cannot deny information to the world. They did not heed the words of those who enabled the digital revolution. This struggle was predicted by Stewart Brand in 1984, who said to Steve Wozniak at the first Hackers Conference in Marin County, San Francisco:
"On the one hand, information wants to be expensive because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is lower and lower all the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other." [1]
That tension continues, but the old guard is now fighting a rear guard action. They will fight back, but they will remain in retreat until one day they give up, or are forced to and information becomes free. On that day be thankful, because the bindings of the ones who wish to shackle your mind and creativity will have lost the power to do so, to the incalculable good of humanity.