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How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

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Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#31

Post by austhrow743 »

lovasoa wrote: post #15

The original article presents her in a very bright light, as a smart and brave woman who is engaged in a legal battle against large greedy corporations. And I find the photo quite cool. I think she is just overly susceptible, and maybe a little bit paranoid (which is understandable for a person with enemies as powerful as hers). This reminds me of the time when a russian entomologist named a new wasp species he disco…

I was surprised reading the Chronicle article after her own post. If it hadn't been from the archive.org link I would have been certain they went back and added "Elbakyan, who is originally from Kazakhstan, has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and coded Sci-Hub herself." after she complained but nope, there all the time.

Also "Pirate Queen"? "beloved outlaw"? They couldn't have made her sound cooler if they tried.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#32

Post by azernik »

jannes wrote: post #3
mnd999 wrote: post #2

As a native English speaker, I take “one-woman show” to mean it’s just her.

Probably she didn't say "show" in russian though. Some things are getting lost in translation here. She laments that The Chronicle doesn't credit her as doing actual work by describing what she does as a "show" instead. (implying that a male is doing the actual devops work behind the scenes)

Translators move things into idiom all the time; "one-man show" (gender is easily swappable) is an idiom that comes from stage, refers to single-actor plays where one person plays multiple roles, and comes with connotations of skill versatility and industriousness.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#33

Post by indigochill »

j-pb wrote: post #16
kwyjibo12345 wrote: post #7

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia and the industry, I can only support Sci-Hub. Publishing as it works currently is an incredibly time consuming and expensive process funneling tremendous amounts of tax money into the pocḱets of publishers. To some extent the whole situation reminds me of the video and music content piracy era in the early 2000s. I hope there will be an equivalent of Apple Music/S…

I hope that there will never be a "legal-streaming" equivalent. These papers have been paid for already, through the salary of the people that wrote and peer reviewed them. There is a theft happening, but it's not the way commonly portrayed. It's the publishers stealing from the scientific community, universities and tax payers, and the politicians and bureaucrats are complicit. The only reason why people publish wit…

I'm of a separatist mindset in situations like these where the entire ecosystem has turned corrupt. It can't be legislated because legislators are part of the problem as you say.

So you need an independent organization that can fund and provide the resources needed by researchers, and which disregards publication in the corrupt publications. You also need a publication that can support free access.

Something like a hackerspace on steroids, perhaps.

In theory, if you can get enough momentum behind this sort of project, then libraries can turn that license money towards this project and accelerate the research that can be done, where rather than padding publisher's pockets the fees are going directly towards supporting research.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#34

Post by swiley »

Tenoke wrote: post #26
lovasoa wrote: post #15

The original article presents her in a very bright light, as a smart and brave woman who is engaged in a legal battle against large greedy corporations. And I find the photo quite cool. I think she is just overly susceptible, and maybe a little bit paranoid (which is understandable for a person with enemies as powerful as hers). This reminds me of the time when a russian entomologist named a new wasp species he disco…

Yeah, she's doing God's work and sci-hub is amazing but Elbakyan is an odd person who gets extremely paranoid and defensive, holds weird beliefs and often does things that are over the top.

It might not be possible to run a site like sci hub without being extremely paranoid all the time.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#35

Post by j-pb »

petercooper wrote: post #22
kwyjibo12345 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common life cycle of a paper is as follows: 1. Academics write and submit papers -> university/tax money pays 2. Academics review papers -> university/tax money pays 3. Academics organize and attend conferences -> university/tax money pays 4. University buys published paper from publishers -> university/tax money pays So university/tax money pays for writing the paper, quality assurance via reviews, conferences,…

Somewhere between step 3 and 4, I assume the publisher gets hold of the paper and acquires a license to resell it? How does that part work and why do universities/academics support it if they could just distribute it for free or via an open journal? Is it solely to get the "kudos" of being in particular publications?

Funding is dostributed based on citation counts and the most "prestigious" journals.

"Prestigious" is completely arbitrary and heavily lobbied for by the publishers.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#36

Post by rjmunro »

Tepix wrote: post #19
kwyjibo12345 wrote: post #7

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia and the industry, I can only support Sci-Hub. Publishing as it works currently is an incredibly time consuming and expensive process funneling tremendous amounts of tax money into the pocḱets of publishers. To some extent the whole situation reminds me of the video and music content piracy era in the early 2000s. I hope there will be an equivalent of Apple Music/S…

These papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally.

I hear they generally are "freely" available, just email the authors and ask.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#37

Post by uniqueid »

Tenoke wrote: post #28
uniqueid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sci-Hub is probably the best thing on the internet, but the fact that some rando had to create it doesn't speak well for the state of our world. If humanity weren't dysfunctional, academic institutions would have beaten Elbakyan to the punch back in the 1990s.

Sci-Hub is not especially legal so an actual institution isn't really able to create it instead.

I expressed myself poorly. The fact that aspects of Sci-Hub are illegal is the reason I wrote the comment. In a perfect world, academic institutions would have combined their efforts to provide a viable equivalent to Sci-Hub legally. Whether that means buying out publishers, or making do with a small selection of existing papers and focusing on future publications, I don't know.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#38

Post by rrmm »

petercooper wrote: post #22
kwyjibo12345 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common life cycle of a paper is as follows: 1. Academics write and submit papers -> university/tax money pays 2. Academics review papers -> university/tax money pays 3. Academics organize and attend conferences -> university/tax money pays 4. University buys published paper from publishers -> university/tax money pays So university/tax money pays for writing the paper, quality assurance via reviews, conferences,…

Somewhere between step 3 and 4, I assume the publisher gets hold of the paper and acquires a license to resell it? How does that part work and why do universities/academics support it if they could just distribute it for free or via an open journal? Is it solely to get the "kudos" of being in particular publications?

The authors give the rights over to journal when they submit the paper. The authors depend on publishing in high impact-factor journals for tenure and continued funding.

Not all academics support it and several groups have opted out, publishing in open access only or organizing their own journals and conferences.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#39

Post by brazzy »

petercooper wrote: post #22
kwyjibo12345 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common life cycle of a paper is as follows: 1. Academics write and submit papers -> university/tax money pays 2. Academics review papers -> university/tax money pays 3. Academics organize and attend conferences -> university/tax money pays 4. University buys published paper from publishers -> university/tax money pays So university/tax money pays for writing the paper, quality assurance via reviews, conferences,…

Somewhere between step 3 and 4, I assume the publisher gets hold of the paper and acquires a license to resell it? How does that part work and why do universities/academics support it if they could just distribute it for free or via an open journal? Is it solely to get the "kudos" of being in particular publications?

It's 100% due to the traditional model of measuring academic performance through the number of published papers weighted (very, very strongly) by the "reputation" of the journal they're published in, justified by the importance of curation and peer review to provide quality control.

Historically, this model grew because the journal publishers provided the necessary infrastructure to print and distribute copies of the articles.

Re: How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub

#40

Post by bsenftner »

Tenoke wrote: post #28
uniqueid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sci-Hub is probably the best thing on the internet, but the fact that some rando had to create it doesn't speak well for the state of our world. If humanity weren't dysfunctional, academic institutions would have beaten Elbakyan to the punch back in the 1990s.

Sci-Hub is not especially legal so an actual institution isn't really able to create it instead.

That "not being legal" is a corruption, a continued acceptance of lobby dollar bribes to maintain the situation. Or the lawmakers are so capitalistically corrupted they do not see the problem and think paying multiple times for publicly funded research's information is acceptable.
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