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The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

blogs.lse.ac.uk

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Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#141

Post by afiori »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #122
einpoklum wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are these intermediaries still around? Because publishing a decent journal - even online but certainly in the real world - involves a whole lot of work: Administrative, some technical, some networking, some advertizing, maintaining relations within the relevant fields etc. That's all when we ignore the peer review itself which requires domain expertise.

> Administrative, some technical, some networking, some advertizing, maintaining relations within the relevant fields etc. Taking into account that they don't really do peer-review and don't pay for it either, and that their editing is close to nonexistent (and as likely to introduce errors as to improve anything), all the other costs seem to be a self-perpetuating loop - the work is being done just to support itself…

My understanding is that the real job of a publisher in academia is brand recognition.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#142

Post by refurb »

Calloutman wrote: post #13

I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. My publishers paid me nothing, and also paid the academics who peer reviewed my paper nothing. If I had stayed in academia (I didn't partially because of the toxic nature of publishing) I would also have been expected to peer review other journals for free. Information should be free access information general, but publ…

Are you planning to publish all of your own papers in open access journals? That would be putting your money where your mouth is.

I’ve seen plenty of researchers say “information should be free” and then later publish everything in closed journals because the open access ones have low impact factor.

Seems hypocritical to me.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#143

Post by prepend »

gewa wrote: post #46
azangru wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a PhD in physics. I have zero problem with anyone downloading any of my papers from scihub. Out of curiosity: why don't you just host your papers on your website then - or, if you do, why don't you think it's enough?

Im not sure if it's legally flawless to upload the published journal article to your Website and open it up to the public. As far as i know, you're only allowed to pass it on a personal, per-request basis. This explicitly refers to the final peer reviewed article and not to the manuscript, which can make a great difference.

It’s granted individually on a personal, per http request.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#144

Post by prepend »

chdlr wrote: post #87
mschuster91 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reviewers are getting paid from the university, as are the paper authors. The problem is that the journals exploit the taxpayers and grant providers.

I would disagree for the first part: Review usually does not happen during paid hours or is even somehow formally accredited by universities.

My experience is that reviewers do this as part of their duties and takes place during work hours.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#145

Post by Someone »

rlayton2 wrote: post #40
entee wrote: post #7

Sci-hub has been critical to me as I developed the idea for my current startup. If it didn't exist, I could have gotten most of the papers from friends in academia, but it would have been dramatically harder and slower. I use it, I support the concept. I'll make a slight counterpoint however. It costs between $1-$5k (very rough numbers) to publish in open access journals usually. That's not nothing, but it defrays th…

Academics write the paper for free, academics review the paper for free. I've published quite a bit and never had worthwhile input from a non-academic editor. A journal's only real cost would be in hosting costs, which I'm sure would be minimal for static content. While the big-ticket journals have a value from being so picky, often this is at the expense of some things. For instance, it is hard to get replication st…

”where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like”

That would be gamed, just as there are “citation rings” (I cite you if you cite me) and “peer review rings” now.

So, you’ll need an authority to decide on what votes are unbiased.

That’s the role publishers have now. Are they doing it perfectly? No. Could others do it better or cheaper? Who knows?

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#146

Post by elcritch »

fbn79 wrote: post #134
jononor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ability to pay a monthly fee, as an individual, to sponsor research would be great. But if you allow the publishers to continue to be the middleman, they will continue to be in power and will take most of the cut. I would not buy such a product, on principle. The authors and reviewers are the ones that provide the vast majority of the value. So the monetary (and social) reward structure should be centered…

I think publishers are important in the review system giving authorities to publications. Without publishers (with the platform being the only publisher) we loose the "authority system". Without publishers we will be in a system more like wikipedia. We can base it on peer reviewer authority, but the platform and scientific comunity will need to fix rules to when recognize a pubblication as "reviewed and accepted". Th…

“Publishers” really should be “journal”. In the past many journals were run and published by professional societies. They had to deal with printing costs. The reviewing and editing is largely volunteer work still. Nowadays a professional society could easily handle the costs of a couple of staff editors and provide only digital copies. But it seems many/most professional societies sold out their journals to Elsevier. The idea of a traceable blockchain scoring and journal would be great. Journals and professional societies are largely about informal relationships in a research community for better or worse. Being able to track this in a blockchain could be helpful in bringing scrutiny and transparency in cases like the “Alzheimer’s Plaque Cabal” which is currently hidden from scrutiny.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#147

Post by [deleted] »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #84
maeln wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a student in engineer school in France, I had access to a lot of paper through our school subscription. I was still using Sci-Hub all the time because just copy-pasting a DOI or a paper title and getting the PDF was so much better than all the other website which had all clunky and broken login procedure, and god awful UI/UX (understanding how to download the PDF was sometimes more of a challenge than unde…

That's a well-known issue: legal channels usually are ess convenient to use. That's why it often makes sense to download and use a pirated copy of a game/movie/ebook/whatever after you buy it: you both fulfill your duty and enjoy nice UX then. In case of movies, games and software sticking with a legal channel often also means you can't get it in a language you want because a particular company has an exclusive licen…

[deleted]

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#148

Post by xzcat »

speeder wrote: post #130
qwerty456127 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a well-known issue: legal channels usually are ess convenient to use. That's why it often makes sense to download and use a pirated copy of a game/movie/ebook/whatever after you buy it: you both fulfill your duty and enjoy nice UX then. In case of movies, games and software sticking with a legal channel often also means you can't get it in a language you want because a particular company has an exclusive licen…

I am brazillian. Here people BUY pirated stuff, sometimes more expensive than the original. The reason is convenience and good service. When you buy pirated software and games from the street dealer, you get: often, better support than the publisher (specially for popular software, you ask him what is bothering you, he probably memorized the solution and tells you, while publisher support often is completely null, Go…

Just for the record, for the most part, it should be legal to sell CD's of most Linux distributions, assuming you honor the GPL and any other licenses for any software that's physically on the disk.

Re: The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)

#150

Post by sct202 »

Alexandra Elbakyan is very brave especially considering all the US based lawsuits that are thrown at her. Aaron Swartz was trying to do something similar at around the same time, and he got the book thrown at him and he didn't even launch anything.
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