What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier • Hacker News Board

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#21

Post by dtech » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:06 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #18

jcampbell1 wrote: post #6

"The UC Libraries do not endorse the use of Sci-Hub for article access.”30 As the UC Berkeley university librarian said in a published interview, “we are unequivocal: it is our understanding (though we are not attorneys!) that Sci-Hub is in violation of U.S. copyright law. We will not advise nor help anyone to use it" That is probably the best endorsing non-endorcement I have read. It never says they discourage SciHu…

At one point, that's a coward's stance. Alexandra Elbakyan's contribution to scientific research at this stage is probably higher than any university's library. Recognize that everyone uses it because none of the legal options are acceptable. Say it and urge a long overdue change in copyright laws. It is abnormal that Elbakyan is the outlaw and Elsevier the respectable institution here.

Endorsing a US-law breaking site like SciHub could place them on the hook for legal repercussions.

This non-endorsement endorsement achieves the same goals without the above liability.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#22

Post by bb101 » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:08 AM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #4

Man, I hate Elsevier with a passion. As well as being shady, dishonest, shifty, moneygrubbing toerags, they also provide the world's crappiest service. I have to use their web interface every time I submit a paper to an Elsevier journal. It's like sticking needles into my eyes. It's this bad: in 2019, they still use an image map for their main menu. A particular pleasure is when they force me to compile my TeX into a…

The rot starts at the top: https://www.elsevier.com/about/management

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#23

Post by Iv » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

dtech wrote: post #21

Iv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point, that's a coward's stance. Alexandra Elbakyan's contribution to scientific research at this stage is probably higher than any university's library. Recognize that everyone uses it because none of the legal options are acceptable. Say it and urge a long overdue change in copyright laws. It is abnormal that Elbakyan is the outlaw and Elsevier the respectable institution here.

Endorsing a US-law breaking site like SciHub could place them on the hook for legal repercussions. This non-endorsement endorsement achieves the same goals without the above liability.

Meanwhile, a courageous girl broke some laws with no gain for her, because she thought research was important.

If the 10 biggest university libraries endorsed sci-hub, yeah, there could be legal repercussions but that could also move the lines much more than this timid non-endorsement endorsement.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#24

Post by fastball » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:17 AM UTC

Irony is that the CEO of Elsevier is a UC Berkeley alum.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#25

Post by vihren » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

raister wrote: post #20

dash2 wrote: post #4

Man, I hate Elsevier with a passion. As well as being shady, dishonest, shifty, moneygrubbing toerags, they also provide the world's crappiest service. I have to use their web interface every time I submit a paper to an Elsevier journal. It's like sticking needles into my eyes. It's this bad: in 2019, they still use an image map for their main menu. A particular pleasure is when they force me to compile my TeX into a…

It is hard to say this, but Russia is helping the world fight against Elsevier and all those money funneling institutions... (with scihub, for anyone not knowing that it is a russian 'service')

The creator of Sci-Hub is Alexandra Elbakyan and she is from Kazakhstan. According to Wikipedia [0] she spend 1 year working for a Moscow company, but that's it. I wouldn't classify it as a Russian service. There is a nice russian service for paywalled ebooks and articles called LibGen [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#26

Post by mcv » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #4

Man, I hate Elsevier with a passion. As well as being shady, dishonest, shifty, moneygrubbing toerags, they also provide the world's crappiest service. I have to use their web interface every time I submit a paper to an Elsevier journal. It's like sticking needles into my eyes. It's this bad: in 2019, they still use an image map for their main menu. A particular pleasure is when they force me to compile my TeX into a…

If Elsevier is so terrible, and everybody hates them, how is it possible that it's so hard to move away from them? Their entire business depends on the people who hate them: the scientists who submit their articles to them and the universities who subscribe to the journals.

If everybody agrees Elsevier is terrible, you'd think it should be easy to set up a competitor that does it better, but someone everybody still wants to get published in Elsevier's journals, and everybody still wants to read what's in them. If everybody were to just stop, Elsevier would be out of business within a month.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#27

Post by reallydontask » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:35 AM UTC

mcv wrote: post #26

dash2 wrote: post #4

Man, I hate Elsevier with a passion. As well as being shady, dishonest, shifty, moneygrubbing toerags, they also provide the world's crappiest service. I have to use their web interface every time I submit a paper to an Elsevier journal. It's like sticking needles into my eyes. It's this bad: in 2019, they still use an image map for their main menu. A particular pleasure is when they force me to compile my TeX into a…

If Elsevier is so terrible, and everybody hates them, how is it possible that it's so hard to move away from them? Their entire business depends on the people who hate them: the scientists who submit their articles to them and the universities who subscribe to the journals. If everybody agrees Elsevier is terrible, you'd think it should be easy to set up a competitor that does it better, but someone everybody still w…

If scientific careers didn't depend on publishing papers in high impact journals, this could happen within a month.

As it is, until Open Access journals become high impact journals, we're kind of between a rock and hard place

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#28

Post by buboard » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:36 AM UTC

vihren wrote: post #25

raister wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to say this, but Russia is helping the world fight against Elsevier and all those money funneling institutions... (with scihub, for anyone not knowing that it is a russian 'service')

The creator of Sci-Hub is Alexandra Elbakyan and she is from Kazakhstan. According to Wikipedia [0] she spend 1 year working for a Moscow company, but that's it. I wouldn't classify it as a Russian service. There is a nice russian service for paywalled ebooks and articles called LibGen [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis

i would still use it if it was a russian service

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#29

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

mcv wrote: post #26

dash2 wrote: post #4

Man, I hate Elsevier with a passion. As well as being shady, dishonest, shifty, moneygrubbing toerags, they also provide the world's crappiest service. I have to use their web interface every time I submit a paper to an Elsevier journal. It's like sticking needles into my eyes. It's this bad: in 2019, they still use an image map for their main menu. A particular pleasure is when they force me to compile my TeX into a…

If Elsevier is so terrible, and everybody hates them, how is it possible that it's so hard to move away from them? Their entire business depends on the people who hate them: the scientists who submit their articles to them and the universities who subscribe to the journals. If everybody agrees Elsevier is terrible, you'd think it should be easy to set up a competitor that does it better, but someone everybody still w…

Welcome to coordination problems. Nobody loves them, but short-term, publishing with them is still the optimal move for scientist's career.

> If everybody were to just stop,

That's the root of all human-created hard problems on this planet; it's not exclusive to scientific publishing. People don't spontaneously coordinate. As long as it's in the short-term interest of any individual to not be the first one to stop, or to not stop when others are stopping, almost no one is going to stop.

Re: What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier

#30

Post by Jerry2 » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 9:38 AM UTC

This paragraph made me smile:

>Elsevier alleges that “one senior library official has repeatedly pointed to illegal sources of articles, including a Russia-based piracy site.”

>We are unaware of any library employee who has been directing users to illegal sources of articles. On the contrary, UC explicitly published a statement on its website, in response to questions asked by users, that states: “The UC Libraries do not endorse the use of Sci-Hub for article access.”30 As the UC Berkeley university librarian said in a published interview, “we are unequivocal: it is our understanding (though we are not attorneys!) that Sci-Hub is in violation of U.S. copyright law. We will not advise nor help anyone to use it.”

By naming Sci-hub.tw, they're basically educating people that there's a way to get articles they want but it might be less than legal than some other methods.