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Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

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Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#201

Post by return0 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #196
return0 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't think most scientists bother much about impact factors. Institutions and funding agencies are the ones who bother about impact factors. 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 m…

> I work in CS

You 're fortunate. I bet sci-hub is mostly used by life scientists.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#202

Post by return0 »

Hondor wrote: post #173

If the business model of Elsevier/etc somehow collapses, I wonder how universities will make hiring decisions? They high fees of their journals are effectively a recruitment or candidate selection service paid by university libraries and serving departments when they hire faculty. Perhaps they'll have to revert to assessing applicants on their merits instead of such arbitrary metrics as the impact factor of a journal…

How do they do it in CS? People there communicate with arxiv links, not dois.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#203

Post by chris_wot »

ryanlol wrote: post #191
chris_wot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to jail at all would have been an injustice. What would it have achieved?

Did I imply otherwise? I don't personally believe it would've achieved anything, but that's how the world works.

Yes. You said "He'd be out by now". To get out means you must have been in, and jailtime is what you were responding to.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#204

Post by jnsaff2 »

"The numbers for Ashburn, Virginia, the top U.S. city with nearly 100,000 Sci-Hub requests, are harder to interpret."

Am I the only one who thinks this is just the location of AWS us-east-1? People might be using proxies located there or have bulk download jobs.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#205

Post by chris_wot »

dalke wrote: post #186
parenthephobia wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do I do that? I can interpret a paper and apply it to my problems, but I'm not qualified to tell if it's a good paper[1]. In my field -- computing -- research papers are often written in a language that only just makes sense to me. I'm sure it'd be easier if I was a computer scientist that regularly published, but that's why I suggest you'd need a team of actual scientists who are used to reading, writing, an…

I believe tomp's suggestion is that you can bootstrap as an overlay journal (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlay_journal ) to build up that expertise. You don't need to have experienced people from the start, because they can learn while doing. At the start, no one is going to pay attention to the journal. Then as it gets known for being a good curator, people will start requesting to be reviewed for inclusion.…

Distancing yourself from early failures is never a good strategy. Too often we flee from our past failures. For me, I don't shy from them but admit they occurred, and that I have learned from them since.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#206

Post by tomp »

parenthephobia wrote: post #169
tomp wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you were trying to bootstrap a new journal, you'd have a tough time; unless you didn't care about its quality. You could (should?) start by going through freely published (open access) papers, collecting the most quality ones, then publishing them in your journal. That's most of the value of journals, as well - informing the subscribers of noteworthy research.

But how do I do that? I can interpret a paper and apply it to my problems, but I'm not qualified to tell if it's a good paper[1]. In my field -- computing -- research papers are often written in a language that only just makes sense to me. I'm sure it'd be easier if I was a computer scientist that regularly published, but that's why I suggest you'd need a team of actual scientists who are used to reading, writing, an…

Right, you probably can't do it yourself. Even established journals often have a group of peer reviewers etc. Probably the best idea is for a group of academics to get together and start "sharing" the papers they found useful, acting as a "peer review" group of sorts.

I was just commenting about how to get around the "the journal isn't prestigious so no important research is published in it so it's not prestigious" problem.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#207

Post by NoGravitas »

majewsky wrote: post #132
kqr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I haven't set a foot in my university for 3 years (planning to return soon!) but since I still send them the occasional email asking to be registered for a course I'm considered active there and get access to a lot of publications as long as I'm logged in to their systems.

Do any universities offer something like "passive studentship"? i.e. you pay only a small fraction of the tuition, it does not include any courses, but you may attend the facilities and specifically the library and get access to the university network. If that existed, hobby researchers and the like could get access to all these journals for a probably smaller amount of money.

The state university library here has a [membership program][0] that gives you access to the library and its various subscriptions -- so effectively library donors get access. Individual membership is under $50/year, so it's definitely an affordable option. Not sure if it gives remote access to their network (they used to have a web proxy server for off campus students, don't know if they still do); you may have to go to the library and use the computers there.

[0]: http://library.sc.edu/p/Develop/Society/ThomasCooperSociety

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#208

Post by i336_ »

throwaway7767 wrote: post #189
userbinator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Since you're posting from a throwaway, what ISO standard was it?

Also put some form of anonymous contact info in your profile. Low chances, but who knows...

EDIT: Looks like your account has a bit of history to it. If there isn't anything particularly identifying in there, the above idea should be good.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#209

Post by maxerickson »

ryanlol wrote: post #193
ryanlol wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

This blanket downvoting is somewhat odd, what is it I'm saying that's so disagreeable? For afaik I've only presented facts about the time Swartz would probably have spent incarcerated.

Your first comment is open to interpretation (it doesn't say would not still or in and out of or something like that) so people are reacting pretty much entirely based on their existing emotions. They don't care about analyzing the likely outcome of the case had he lived, it's brought up to share anger and outrage over the injustice.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#210

Post by avani »

majewsky wrote: post #132
kqr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I haven't set a foot in my university for 3 years (planning to return soon!) but since I still send them the occasional email asking to be registered for a course I'm considered active there and get access to a lot of publications as long as I'm logged in to their systems.

Do any universities offer something like "passive studentship"? i.e. you pay only a small fraction of the tuition, it does not include any courses, but you may attend the facilities and specifically the library and get access to the university network. If that existed, hobby researchers and the like could get access to all these journals for a probably smaller amount of money.

Many universities actually do have a program to give townfolk library cards, including journal access.

That said, the best way to get a research paper in CS is to check the author or lab's website and, if it's not there, e-mail the first author directly.

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