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Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

bjoern.brembs.net

101–110 of 144 posts

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#101
post #47
post #38

She is a [redacted] Putin supporter. Supports Russian invasion of Ukraine as well. Hell, the whole thing is probably financed by Russian government. "Folk hero", my ass.

Any support for Russia and Putin are orthogonal to her work with Sci-Hub. But given that you brought it up, I gotta say that broad support for Putin is entirely understandable. Russia has been through hell. Millions killed during WWII. Bankrupted by the Cold War. Humiliated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. To many Russians, he is a hero.

> To many Russians, he is a hero.

Those are Russians who essentially crave authoritarian dictatorship and don't mind few victims here and there. Your analysis or Russian hell somehow managed to ignore hell caused by Russian own dictators.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#102

So long as we're looking at intellectual property, and arguments against it: An online book by UCLA economics professors Michele Boldrin and Mark Levine, making the case against intellectual property -- patents, and copyright most especially. The opening chapter leads off with the patent battles of James Watt, which are credited by some authors with setting back the start date of the Industrial Revolution from 1769,…

Thanks! But the typesetting in the second link is off, with glyphs overlapping slightly.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#103

Worth noting: Many authors will be happy to email you a copy of their paper. People understand that not everyone's library can pay the hundreds of thousands needed for subscription fees. Research Gate has this functionality built in. Also, everyone likes to be cited :) Being easy to circumvent is a big reason why these for profit journals still exist.

As a professional without access to academic libraries, this is my go-to method for obtaining papers, so I'm glad you brought it up. But it's not without limitations. Last year I was researching some crypto proving methodologies, and discovered the author was dead. I guess he's probably not going to get back to me...

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#104
post #59
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ceterum censeo Elsevier esse delendum.

Beside Reed-Elsevier also Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis and Sage.

They're not great, but Elsevier deserves special opprobrium as far as I can tell; just see the longest section in their wikipedia article. They're just so antithetical to what science is about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controv...

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#106
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ceterum censeo Elsevier esse delendum.

Wouldn't it be Elsevierum ? You need an accusative, and –er nouns tend to be second declension iirc.

Yes, accusative, but I'm not sure how to decline it :-) (apparently it's a Dutch name of Arab/Moorish origin, also spelt Elzevir).

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#107
Playing devil's advocate: Sci-Hub is good thing for the publishers. Instead of revolting, those who can't afford (or don't want) to pay the high subscription fees for journals will just quietly use Sci-Hub. People can still continue publishing their papers via the same high profile journals and achieve a wide distribution without moving to open access scheme. Publishers may loose some money, but high profile institutions probably don't see Sci-hub as real alternative and continue paying.

In a similar fashion software piracy can actually help large, established players. Take for example Photoshop, which back in the days was quite pirated piece of software. Adobe certainly lost some money, but I think the main losers were cheaper alternatives. Young and poor pirated Photoshop, learned to use it and when they got employed wanted to continue using Photoshop since that was the only package they really knew. If piracy had not been an option, many would probably have gone for other, more affordable alternatives.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#108

Playing devil's advocate: Sci-Hub is good thing for the publishers. Instead of revolting, those who can't afford (or don't want) to pay the high subscription fees for journals will just quietly use Sci-Hub. People can still continue publishing their papers via the same high profile journals and achieve a wide distribution without moving to open access scheme. Publishers may loose some money, but high profile institut…

Economists would label it basic price discrimination, albeit with a floor of 0, and as a way to suppress competition rather than capture value on the low end.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#109

Worth noting: Many authors will be happy to email you a copy of their paper. People understand that not everyone's library can pay the hundreds of thousands needed for subscription fees. Research Gate has this functionality built in. Also, everyone likes to be cited :) Being easy to circumvent is a big reason why these for profit journals still exist.

ResearchGate has the "emailing other researchers" feature built in so deeply, in fact, that it will email other researchers in your name automatically. Without you asking it to. Without your permission. Even after you die.

A site that makes LinkedIn's dark patterns look responsible is not the answer.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#110

I'm an academic and I have access to most journals through my college's library. I still use sci-hub all the time simply because it is much easier than the legal method where I have to go to my university's library page, log in, search for the article that I already found, struggle with the shitty search to find the article that I already found through google, then click the link to the database, then I get to downlo…

Does your college not offer integration with google scholar? Go into the settings and check 'Library Links.' Scholar then gives me a link directly through the library proxy if the University has access to the Journal. It is amazing, but I have always wondered how many people have access, or even know it exists.
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