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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

#81

Post by joshuaissac »

kleiba wrote: post #42
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…

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…

> publishers provide discoverability because they are a well-defined source known to the community

Could this not be said about Sci-Hub itself?

The purpose of copyright is to enrich public access to creative works. So bypassing of paywalls, regardless of whether it was publicly or privately funded, should be judged against that measure. It does not seem that researchers will stop writing papers just because of a drop in publisher revenue, regardless of the source of funding.

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

#82

Post by pessimizer »

tokai wrote: post #25
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…

It is getting a bit embarrassing. Wished she disregarded things about her person. All kind of stuff is going to be said and written about you when your a globally known person. Better, and healthier, to focus on defending the cause and not yourself.

> All kind of stuff is going to be said and written about you when your a globally known person.

There are powerful people who would be happy to imprison or kill her. It's weird to call a revolutionary who is in the spotlight paranoid. A couple of administration changes and a sex or bribery scandal in some place she's never even visited could set off a series of events where she ends up like Assange or worse.

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

#84

Post by pessimizer »

nix23 wrote: post #73
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to run your own Sci-Hub, then. It's not like this is a massively collaborative project that she's the executive decision-maker of; it's largely just her.

Don't you see a problem here? >>Blocking access to ~free knowledge because one is offended >it's largely just her Yeah and that's the problem, with all dictatorships. >It's not like this is a massively collaborative project Who then uploads the content? Her alone?

She's the one delivering that access. And if you want to define sole decisionmaking power as dictatorship, I'm the dictator of the cookies I baked yesterday, too. You're free to provide access to the papers yourself.

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

#85

Post by azalemeth »

blagie wrote: post #79
Tenoke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being attacked leads to paranoid-like behavior. Your Bayesian filters go all wonky when you know they're actually out to get you. It pollutes everything in your life; you need to be suspicious of everyone and everything. The other thing about a constant series of attacks -- without support to field them -- is that you DO misidentify things, and sometimes respond imperfectly. There are 24 hours in a day. Sometimes you…

Honestly, I'm very close to sending her a few btc. Although my employer would hate me for using it, sci hub is just an absolutely brilliant, internationally known godsend.

One of the things that publishers have started doing of late is just linking the "pdf" button to things that are not pdfs. I have legal access to basically every journal article I could ever want, but sci-hub provides a much better product: you actually just get the pdf with one button, and no telemetry crap either.

There's even an awesome grease/tampermonkey script to provide (small, inobtrusive) inline links to sci-hub here: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/370246-sci-hub-button.

She really is a saint. I hope we realise that....

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

#86

Post by oefrha »

inciampati wrote: post #59
rauhallinen wrote: post #56

So no new articles have been uploaded this year. While I have relatively good access options through my university, roughly half of the publications appearing in my Google Scholar alerts are unaccessible. As they are also in fields were use of preprint services isn't common, it really interferes with me being up to date with ongoing research. As the use of sci-hub is so common, I wonder about the wider implications o…

This is purportedly related to a lawsuit in India. The thought is that Alexandra is intentionally being as cooperative as possible because there is a possibility of a legal victory in that jurisdiction. The court had asked her to cease adding new material. She has shown us the way. We can always recreate sci-hub, should the current system cease to function. We even know what kind of budget it takes to set up and oper…

> We can always recreate sci-hub, should the current system cease to function.

The problem is she has also shown us that recreating it may require great personal sacrifice of someone. Would you be that someone? I certainly wouldn’t.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

worik wrote: post #65
uniqueid wrote: post #20

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)

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by wizzwizz4 »

nix23 wrote: post #73
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to run your own Sci-Hub, then. It's not like this is a massively collaborative project that she's the executive decision-maker of; it's largely just her.

Don't you see a problem here? >>Blocking access to ~free knowledge because one is offended >it's largely just her Yeah and that's the problem, with all dictatorships. >It's not like this is a massively collaborative project Who then uploads the content? Her alone?

> Who then uploads the content? Her alone?

Not lately, but usually she does a fair share of it. And she's the sole curator.

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

#89

Post by pmyteh »

worik wrote: post #57
ebiester wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, an averagely successful paper in most disciplines will get 200-250 readers. It’s only when there is outsized media attention that there is any issue. And luckily, for those cases today, sci-hub is available.

A lot more readers than that, surely? In most disciplines there are a lot of, er, disciples. What is the definition of "moderately successful?" Perhaps you mean citations?

The modal number of citations for an academic paper is ~0. 200 citations is a very successful paper in any discipline.

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

#90

Post by kleiba »

detaro wrote: post #69
kleiba wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think that unethical behavior can simply be justified by some other unethical behavior, especially when personal opinions are involved.

Analogies are often not very useful but consider this: there's this traffic light close to my house and even though there's usually not much traffic, the red phase is much, much longer than any other light I've ever waited at. I don't know what they were thinking but it's crazy long. I go there multiple times each day and I don't want to know how much of my life I already wasted just waiting at that light. For me personally that is into "unethical" territory, so I started just running that red light now. I make sure, though, that I only do it when there's no chance for an accident. I'm very much in favor of solving the issue through different ways long-term, but until then, meh. But YMMV of course.

Maybe here's a better one: there's this really good bakery close to my house. They make everything fresh from scratch, and the smell alone when you walk by is absolutely amazing. Their croissants especially are to die for and there's usually long lines in the morning. I love them too, because they're really heavenly but they come at a price point. I mean, it's always been a bit more than I could/should afford but they're so good! But last month, they even raised the price by another pound. It's actually quite ridiculous now - I mean, do they make their croissants out of gold? There should be a law against such prices! And I know that each day, they have to throw out a handful of croissants at the end of the day that they couldn't sell, probably because of the high price?! For me personally that is into "unethical" territory, so now I just started quickly running into the bakery, grabbing one of the croissants and booking it. That saves me a lot of money, and I can enjoy those beautiful goods again, hmm! I'm very much in favor of solving the issue through different ways long-term, but until then, meh. But YMMV of course.

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