I feel a little tingle of excitement seeing my own papers on Sci-Hub. I mean I get that they're trying to index all publications so it's not a "stamp or approval" or anything... but it does mean that people can actually access the knowledge I tried to throw into the world, which was kind of the whole point in doing it. I'd update my academic website to link my papers to their sci-hub URLs if I didn't think I'd catch…
I felt that tingle too! I saw a book I co-edited on SciHub on the same day the publishers sent me a royalty statement reminding me that absolutely zero people want to pay 120GBP to read what I (my co-editors and contributors) put together through a whole lot of unpaid effort.
Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
181–190 of 237 posts
Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#182"We wish to set back society, because we want to make more money". I use Sci-Hub all the time. I can access all papers via my library subscriptions so I actually DO have paid access to everything, but searching with and authenticating against my university library's services is slow and tedious and not feasible if I want to download many papers quickly.
Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hashes are easy to run forwards and hard to run backwards.
Crypto noob here. Why is that? are the hashes generated from an input randomly?
Edit: I'm wrong. It's based on the hash of the public key. But it's rather confusing. After you create an onion service, you get a private key and an onion address. You don't actually get a public key, just the hostname based on it. I suspect that the public key could be found somehow. But it's not used for anything, that I know of.
Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incidentally, is there any fundamental reason why onion addresses are always so cryptic?
They are a hash generated from the service's public key.
Edit: I'm wrong. It's based on the hash of the public key.
Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#185Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sibling posts are accurate about hard coding /etc/hosts, although Sci Hub needs to move to IPFS [1]. [1] https://ipfs.io/
I'd like to point out that Sci-Hub not only stores scientific papers, but it will retrieve official pdf's through an institutions proxy if it can and if necessary. It could perhaps store stuff there, but it could not provide that service there (yet). Until then, torrents of all the files that sci-hub has retrieved (and all files uploaded into libgens scimag section) can be downloaded here. http://libgen.io/scimag/rep…
Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In STM you can make the legit argument that all published research should be open access and the cost of that should come out of the same funding that funded the research. There is no cost of publishing your/my papers as open access. Just follow these easy steps: 1. Write paper, send to journal 2. Do the peer review hokey pokey until paper is accepted 3. Upload preprint version to preprint server (arXiv etc.), with…
That hokey pokey you refer to does cost money. So yes, you can use a system that has costs associated with it, then attempt to ensure those costs can't be recouped. But if that's successful the system will collapse. I assume you'd think that would be good in this case. But I find it funny reasoning to say you should opt-in to publisher-facilitated peer review while trying to tear it down. Wouldn't avoiding publishers…
Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are a hash generated from the service's public key.
No, from its private key! The same key that's used to sign outgoing content, authenticating to the Tor network. Edit: I'm wrong. It's based on the hash of the public key.
Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answers are correct, but a less cryptographically-related answer: When you go to a website on the regular internet, the name you type into your URL bar doesn't contain any location information. Instead, you go to a Dynamic Name Server (DNS) server (often run by your ISP) and and get the IP address, which tells your browser where to go. With Tor, the hashes you see are analogous to the IP in regular internet: they…
So would a sort of decentralized DNS be possible?
Re: Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Sci-Hub Domain Name
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exact work these publishers are doing? Typesetting, third party review, offering visibility in a high quality journal? The point is nothing is stopping scientists from publishing in other, open source journals. But they don't. That means these journals offer something of value to them.
My experience in publishing (in CS) is that the publisher does not offer assistance in typesetting. Additionally reviewers are not paid for their effort, and are not affiliated with the publisher--they do it out of a sense of duty / professional advancement. The journals offer something of value because they provide high-quality taxpayer-funded research. The publisher is nothing more than a middleman, who should be c…
Journals do publish a lot of work by academicians, many of them funded, in the US, by NSF grants (taxpayer money).