Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

sci-hub.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 166 posts

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#21

Post by rvense »

roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

Researchers get paid salaries by their institution. They are not paid for their publications directly, nor for reviewing or editing. All the money from journal subscriptions, book sales and per-article download fees go to the publishers of the journals.

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#22

Post by yreg »

roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

Academic journals tend to require exclusivity. That means, if you want to publish in, say Nature, you will be asked to not publish the same article anywhere else.

However, the researchers (at least in STEM) often publish these "in-progress" drafts that are very close to the final articles on their website or wherever.

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#23

Post by fdej »

roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

We researchers don't get paid for our papers. We give the publishers our papers for free so that they can make money by putting them behind a paywall. We sometimes even need to pay the publishers to publish our papers. The paywall can sometimes be removed by paying the publisher even more to compensate for their loss of income.

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#24

Post by Mic92 »

unlikelymordant wrote: post #19
roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

The researchers will not lose anything, only the publishers. Researchers are paid by (usually) universities, and often post preprints i.e. the paper without the publishers formatting, since wider dissemination is usually better.

Luckily in computer science a lot people know how to host there files themselves or use https://arxiv.org/

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#25

Post by roystonvassey »

roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

Wow! This is ridiculous.

How, and why, is such a business model still working? The only scenario I can think of is when an independent researcher wants to publish his/her research to disseminate to a wider audience and invite critiques. Or, is that also possible without these publishers?

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#26

Post by rspeer »

roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

Researchers want you to pirate their paper as often as possible. You can only cite papers you've read, after all.

The only royalty check I've ever seen from research I did is for a chapter of a book, and it was less than a dollar. Royalties don't matter.

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#27

Post by crispinb »

roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

There can be some minuscule royalties, but by and large academic publishers are reviled for predatory practices. They get close to free content. They get free services from peer reviewers (the essential basis of what they're selling). They charge vast sums to educational libraries for access. They charge ludicrous per-article fees for any member of the public who has the temerity to wish to read about any of the research their taxes fund.

Its in just about everyone's interests for for-profit academic publishers to collapse. If Sci-Hub can help bring this about, it will be a historic victory for the open internet.

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#28

Post by beloch »

roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

1. You produce novel research.

2. You submit novel research to the best journal you think will publish it.

3. The editor (the only person involved actually paid by the journal) invites other researchers to volunteer their time to peer review your research.

4. Assuming your research bears up under scrutiny and the peer reviewers are not actually competitors who decide to filibuster (this happens), your paper passes peer review.

5. Congratulations! The journal agrees to publish your novel research. For this, you must pay the journal. They do not pay you. You pay them. Color figures in the paper version nobody reads cost thousands extra.

6. Having been paid by you to publish your work, the journal sells your paper at exorbitant prices to university libraries (unless you paid them lots extra to just make it available for free).

Taxes pay researchers to pay journals and taxes pay for university libraries to pay journals. Why on Earth do intelligent researchers (or taxpayers) put up with this crap? Being published in a good journal bumps up your impact factor and helps you win more grant money. If high impact factor journals go out of business because of piracy, others will just take their place.

In short, pirates screwing over journals doesn't hurt researchers in the least. Shaking up the parasitic journal biz is actually long overdue. Journals put in only a tiny percentage of the labor involved in putting a paper through peer-review, but they soak everyone involved for massive amounts of time and money. It's time they died.

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#29

Post by Mic92 »

yreg wrote: post #22
roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

Academic journals tend to require exclusivity. That means, if you want to publish in, say Nature, you will be asked to not publish the same article anywhere else. However, the researchers (at least in STEM) often publish these "in-progress" drafts that are very close to the final articles on their website or wherever.

In computer science we have more conference paper than journals. This is a good thing since you do not have to pay a shit load of money to get your article in. Also I have not experienced a license yet, where I was forbid to publish it on my own.

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#30

Post by dnautics »

roystonvassey wrote: post #18

ELI5: I'm not from academia so please help me understand. Are researchers who publish these [firewalled/copyrighted] papers likely to lose out on their earnings if this is 'open-sourced'? I'm honestly asking as I try to think through the whole 'open-source' paradigm and how it fits in a (mostly) capitalist, libertarian world. Thanks!

Arguably open source has a strong tradition of support withing procapitalist libertarians (and an equally strong tradition of opposition), starting from the 19th century debates between Benjamin Tucker and Lysander spooner, through CATB author Eric Raymond, and beyond.
Post reply on HN