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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

#61
post #36
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of my small sample of three, one author sent me a journal, one ignored the request and another told me to pay him for it.

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

#62
post #42

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…

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia (but not in the industry), I can not support Sci-Hub. I know it's an unpopular opinion but I think it's the wrong approach. As scientists, I think we should be held to especially high moral standards. And there are two questions one should be allowed to ask: 1. Is is right to publish research results funded by tax money behind a paywall? 2. Is it right to circumve…

There is a very large gap between fair compensation and greed driven profits, we are currently at the far end of that spectrum on the 'profits' side of the scale.

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

#63
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My impression is that it is a offshoot of the metrics mania of the 1990s

I am one person watching the world go by but I think that there was, is, far too much emphasis on things that can be counted.

People became afraid to make subjective judgements of quality. They demanded data. So whatever was the thing they counted, it got maximised. Quality is a slippery concept and it is harder than counting.

Judge scientists by the number of papers they publish, and they will publish a lot. A manifestation of the quantifying fetish.

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

#64
post #42

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…

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia (but not in the industry), I can not support Sci-Hub. I know it's an unpopular opinion but I think it's the wrong approach. As scientists, I think we should be held to especially high moral standards. And there are two questions one should be allowed to ask: 1. Is is right to publish research results funded by tax money behind a paywall? 2. Is it right to circumve…

> I can think of more customer-friendly ways than to make me pay for every single download of a paper. On the other hand

If you're thinking of the scientists and students in your society as "customers" and not as scientists and students...

You are optimizing for the wrong thing (i e. You are optimizing for the benefit to capital, not for the benefit to society)

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

#65

I have a superstition: I don't see a robust future for Sci-Hub, Internet Archive or Wikipedia. The internet relentlessly turns everything into worthless trash, so Sci-Hub will die, Internet Archive will wind up with Doritos ads and a paywall, and Wikipedia will focus on sponsored articles and deprecate, in one way or another, articles that aren't commercial.

What is your time frame for this?

Internet Archive has been around since 1996 and Wikipedia 2001 (ish)

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

#66

I would consider her as one of my heroes. Having said that, probably she has not faced a genuinely strong attempt at malignment yet, like some people tried to pull off on Stallman (“he is a defender of Epstein and child rapists”) few months ago. I hope she has a support system to fall back on when that happens.

That's what happened a few years ago; the kerfuffle a few months ago was much more justified. And I don't really see how that's relevant here, anyway.

I was just trying to point out that if she considers this as trying to "malign her", then she will have to prepare for much worse attacks later for doing the right thing.

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

#67
post #51
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia (but not in the industry), I can not support Sci-Hub. I know it's an unpopular opinion but I think it's the wrong approach. As scientists, I think we should be held to especially high moral standards. And there are two questions one should be allowed to ask: 1. Is is right to publish research results funded by tax money behind a paywall? 2. Is it right to circumve…

There is also quite a split between "should be compensated for their work" and "asking 30-50€ for a single paper download is a reasonable compensation".

That may be true. But I don't think a price that's higher than what one is willing to pay then justifies circumventing a paywall.

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

#68
post #23
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…

>and she took offense because the wasp was a parasite species, and blocked sci-hub in Russia for several months in retaliation Sounds like shes the wrong person in charge of sci-hub. Blocking access to ~free knowledge because one is offended is probably even worse...that's the mindset of dictators no? And Russia is probably her only protection not being assange'd already.

She’s not a native English speaker, fine. That doesn’t seem like a disqualifier to me.

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

#69
post #67
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also quite a split between "should be compensated for their work" and "asking 30-50€ for a single paper download is a reasonable compensation".

That may be true. But I don't think a price that's higher than what one is willing to pay then justifies circumventing a paywall.

For me personally that is way past that into "unethical" territory, and that justifies it. I'm very much in favor of solving the issue through different ways long-term, but until then, meh. But YMMV of course.

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

#70
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to wait for an author to email you a copy isn't a viable solution. Even getting authors to post a free copy, which is NIH mandate is often overlooked... https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm

That’s not something you can blame the publishers for.

Not saying it is.
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