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Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

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Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#41

Post by Vinnl »

roystonvassey wrote: post #25
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?

But researchers always want to disseminate their work to a wide audience (of other scientists that will cite their work and thus help them get a long-term job).

I've been researching the industry for quite a while, and have written up the vicious cycle that keeps this in place in some more detail here: https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarl...

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#42

Post by StreakyCobra »

isatty wrote: post #35
eatplayrove wrote: post #20

For those who use Telegram, there is a Telegram bot, where you send it the DOI or the URL and it sends you the PDF -- so much easier than legally accessing the file.

What's the name of the bot?

https://twitter.com/sci_hub/status/731467465973174273?lang=e...

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#43

Post by sleepychu »

isatty wrote: post #35
eatplayrove wrote: post #20

For those who use Telegram, there is a Telegram bot, where you send it the DOI or the URL and it sends you the PDF -- so much easier than legally accessing the file.

What's the name of the bot?

@scihubot [0]

[0] - https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/731467465973174273?ref_sr...

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#45

Post by Vinnl »

Sci-Hub's an important player in the transition to Open Access. Note, however, that many papers are already available elsewhere (e.g. ArXiv), legally. You can use the OAButton [1] or Unpaywall [2] extensions if you hit a paywall to find a free version. They're not perfect, and solve a problem that shouldn't exist, but it's nice that they're there.

[1] https://openaccessbutton.org/ [2] http://unpaywall.org/

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#48

Post by mosselman »

paulhilbert wrote: post #17

For heavy users (like me) I suggest using one of many "implementations" of a auto-scihub bookmark here: https://github.com/nfahlgren/scihub_bookmark It is a great addition to an otherwise clean tor-browser... This is not mine - but looking at the code you should notice fairly quickly that it is somehow trivial. Note also that it may be necessary to change the URL if necessary. Lastly it should be said that sci-hub do…

I pasted the source code on Bookmarkify so that installation is a breeze:

https://bookmarkify.it/7318

Disclaimer: I made Bookmarkify

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

roystonvassey wrote: post #25
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?

It's a coordination problems.

Each individual researcher wants their work published in as high-impact paper as possible. Individually fighting against the very publisher you want to publish your work with is harmful to your career and will accomplish exactly nothing.

It takes a critical mass of researchers, acting in coordinated way, for the attempt to change things not be suicidal.

Re: Sci-Hub: Public access to research papers

#50

Post by Vinnl »

beloch wrote: post #28
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 pe…

Some plugs since I've spent quite some time learning about this issue and writing that up, and like seeing the number of reads go up:

More about the Impact Factor: https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-ca...

More about why intelligent people "put up" with this: https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarl...

An overview of some hopeful initiatives by people who aren't putting up with this: https://medium.com/flockademic/these-trailblazers-are-paving...

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