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

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#341

Post by comicjk » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 2:54 AM UTC

DaveWalk wrote: post #326

comicjk wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to point out that a journal is not purely a proxy or even an aggregator - I've gotten more detailed peer review with the bigger journals, because the reviewers are more critical and the editors more selective. I didn't start out as a fan of peer review, but now I say the more the better; it has markedly increased the quality of all of my papers which have undergone it.

I really like your counter argument, focusing on the process instead of the output. However I have to ask: isn't the end goal of submitting a manuscript to get recognition for it? Do you genuinely hope every time that your submission will be mercilessly torn apart and possibly rejected instead of getting the recognition for the work you've done? Truly I have seen article reviews ruin a budding research scientist's ca…

If there is something worth tearing apart, I would much rather it be torn apart than published. Recognition for my work is not what scientific articles are for, right? When I read a paper that has unaddressed problems, it's a waste of time - possibly years of my time if I base my own work on that weak foundation. I don't want to inflict that on anyone.

I would think that if peer review ruins a scientist's career, it would only be through a lack of support from the advisor. If the review is accurate the advisor should support the revisions, and if the review is totally mistaken the advisor should support resubmitting elsewhere.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#342

Post by throwawaybookst » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:03 AM UTC

return0 wrote: post #181

secfirstmd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You would need a shift away from publishing i think. The rationale behind publishing in long-form journal articles is not really valid in our century. There is an immense amount of noise in each paper, and findings are typically summarized in their 3-4 figures anyway. There are proposals for new approaches (e.g. http://www.silvalab.com/silvapapers/QAAlcinoSilva.pdf ). I believe we need a directory of scientific findi…

Out of curiosity, have you spent time in academia?

> The rationale behind publishing in long-form journal articles is not really valid in our century.

No, it's perfectly valid. Some ideas can't be expressed in short form. A 5-page long proof requires a 10-20 page article to properly motivate and provide context/explanation. An evolutionary or piece-by-piece doesn't make any sense; you'll end up with fragmented dead ends. Waste of everyone's time.

> and findings are typically summarized in their 3-4 figures anyway

I'm not really sure which fields you're referring to, but I assure you that you're over-generalizing. This isn't even remotely true even for very empirical sciences.

> There are proposals for new approaches

Usually these are appropriate only for a single subdomain or methodology and only provide one particular and extremely opinionated view on the results. Such as the proposal in the article you posted.

The overhead isn't worth it and there's a huge risk the relevant field(s) move quickly enough that the presentation method becomes obsolete before it becomes useful.

> It should be possible for each finding to cite other findings it relied on

...I don't know what to say to this...

> thus creating a graph of influence/significance

Yeah, we have this. It's called bibliometrics. UNIVERSALLY HATED by anyone who's not a bean counter. Good people ignore them. Bad people optimize for the metrics and it becomes a stupid game that has nothing to do with the thing you're trying to measure.

> The current situation with citations often involves friends citing friends , so i don't consider it reliable

This is just one reason among many that bibliometrics (a.k.a. any necessarily poor attempt at "a graph of influence/significance") are a poor mechanism by which to judge science...

> It should also include open questions , thus giving research directions.

In many fields literally every paper includes this. In most it's rather obvious to anyone who comprehends the paper what the next steps are.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#343

Post by mattkrause » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

HelloNurse wrote: post #237

pron wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation. The publishers aren't just printing presses. They own journals that have gained reputation over decades and serve as a measure of a paper's strength. There are so many papers being published that researchers can't possibly read them all (even in their own field), so they rely on a "caste system" of journals to rate them. For this system to be trustworthy, journals need to undergo the slow, often self-rein…

Reputation? If you publish in an Elsevier journal you are an asshole by association, and it's a safe assumption that you don't care about your article being read: a clear indicator of its real value.

Seriously? Among other things, they publish Cell, The Lancet, the various Trends in XYZ, and some of the Current Opinion journals. These are all widely read and well-respected journals.

There are tons problems with the current publication system, but as I wrote up-thread, I think it's unfair to put tons of blame on individual scientists, many of whom are trapped between "playing the game" and making a somewhat ineffective individual stand.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#344

Post by canndrew2016 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:06 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #70

s4chin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even http://sci-hub.bz/ and http://sci-hub.cc/

Eventually they'll just setup their own DNS system, or replace it with something else entirely. something like a BitTorrent for nameservers.

https://gnunet.org/gns

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#345

Post by nkurz » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:50 AM UTC

nkurz wrote: post #335

ChuckMcM wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might ask your client to consider whether or not the contract the author signed was under duress when the contract was signed. It is well known that publishing in "impactful" journals is a pre-requisite for academic advancement and success, failing to sign that contract would do grave economic and reputational harm to the author. The journal, taking advantage of the pressure being applied by the author's employer…

Duress? You might do better concentrating on the "freshness of a fine morning when you're young and the taste of food when you're hungry."[1] Duress is a tricky defense, as I think it typically requires that the threat of harm be illegal, and not just the workings of capitalism as it's designed.[2] Next you'll want to tell me that just because the free market price of an essential medicine is prohibitive, one governm…

Oops. s/flaunt/flout/. And if not yet clear, my position is devil's advocate. I do think it's worth pointing out, though, that in a world where it is legal to assign copyright in return for compensation, it's difficult to simultaneously assert than a creator permanently retains the right to give away copies of the work for free.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#346

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:59 AM UTC

kefka wrote: post #310

chris_wot wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you mean by "that shouldn't be in any academic paper until my recommendation of measuring it is done"? I think that might be the sticking point.

I was using google speaking keyboard. I was at a stoplight and spoke it and submitted. I'm all for scientific method, be it showing positive, negative, or no results. I also know what isn't currently scientific, although I do have curiosity if some of those 'things' can indeed be proved.

Happens to the best of us. My editing issues is Apple's autocorrect, I get some truly strange results sometimes.

That makes sense - though I hope you don't mind me asking but when you say "I also know what isn't currently scientific", do you mean untested hypotheses?

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#347

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:03 AM UTC

ghettoimp wrote: post #320

gautamdivgi wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - that's a good point. In fact Elsevier has caught on to this as well. I remember when I published with them they gave me an option of making my paper open access if I paid somewhere around $1000 (or maybe it was $3000). I ignored that option. I agree there are costs - typesetting (well - I did send a LaTeX manuscript), etc. but not $1000 worth. If they'd said $100 - now I would have definitely considered the…

Their re-typesetting your articles can just be pure grief, too. For the last journal article I published, in a journal run by Springer, we submitted a nicely typeset LaTeX article using the template they provided. Our best theory is that they then copy/pasted the result into Word. It came back to us as a "pre-print" PDF with tons of errors, font changes, etc. We had no good way to compare it to the original other tha…

I'm sure nobody would ever blame you if the original typeset paper were to suddenly land on Sci-Hub.

But seriously, what you're basically saying here is that in fact it would have been better to have published it yourself - except you may not have had the same audience who would have known about the paper?

Or did they also go through rounds of peer review and ask for clarification or find errors?

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#348

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:03 AM UTC

maaku wrote: post #317

aab0 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more practical advice: 'use Libgen'.

I somehow misread that as 'use Lojban' and was momentarily both confused and delighted :\

It's unfortunate that you are now clear-headed and disappointed.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#349

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:15 AM UTC

dalke wrote: post #229

DarkContinent wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which raises the question of why we the taxpayers should be funding this research if it's not easily available for the public good.

Copyright, according to the US Constitution, exists for the public good: > To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. You may disagree with that conclusion, but there's 200+ years of belief that it's possible to be "for the public good" and be covered under copyright which restricts redist…

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, and even the Act before it (the Copyright Act of 1976) seems to rather violate the constitution then:

1. It doesn't promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts

2. 120 years since creation or 95 years since publication for corporations, or the life of the author plus 70 years is not what I would call particularly "limited Times".

There may be 200+ years of belief in copyright, but things have significantly changed in the last several thirty years. Copyright doesn't make as much sense as it used to, and though openness and transparency has always been supported in theory (and in practice by a minority) movements that support Open Source over a range of disciplines far greater than just software are now quite significant. Whilst it predates the Internet in it's current form, the current web and other global distribution mechanisms powered by the Internet have radically changed a lot of people's views about freedom of expression and ideas.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#350

Post by darawk » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:16 AM UTC

These journals contribute precisely nothing to the world. They don't pay the authors, and they pay the reviewers a trivial amount (if at all). They provide exactly nothing, and they extract tremendous amounts of capital from what would have been some of its most productive uses.

There are only a few things that I can truly say I will watch wither and die with unconditional, unreserved glee, and the academic publishing industry is one of them.