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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

#101

Post by selimthegrim »

pwinnski wrote: post #95
worik wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there is the sexist assumption that there must be a bloke some place doing the actual work.

There is not, though. No native speaker of English, which the newspaper of record in Houston, Texas, might be forgiven for assuming make up its primary readership, would ever assume that anything described as a "one-man show" must have a woman hidden away doing all of the behind-the-scenes work. The idiom means "the work of a single person," and that's it. Nothing else.

This is the Chronicle of Higher Education, not the Houston Chronicle

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

#102

Post by nix23 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #88
nix23 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah...when Fan's overlook the downsides.

Why do you block access (for a whole country) when someone gave your name to a wasp?

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

#103

Post by kleiba »

berdario wrote: post #64
kleiba wrote: 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…

> 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)

That is a very abstract thought, one that could possibly lead to a very interesting philosophical discussion about society.

In the mean time, however, we live in a market economy where publishers exist, and they are a business. Of course they are interested in customers, and yes, they would be scientists and students.

Am I saying that that's the best way to organize academic publishing? No. What I'm saying is that I don't see any justification for circumventing paywalls within a society that adheres to certain laws and regulations.

I believe in a system where the people can critically assess and evaluate all laws and regulations and has the power to get them changed. I don't believe in a system where people can just pick the laws and regulations that suit them and choose to ignore the other ones.

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

#104

Post by Jolter »

Phenomenit wrote: post #77
inciampati wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wasn't it $100k in total from the beginning of the project in 2011? That's how I perceived it anyways.

Yes. Which is more or less a decade.

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

#105

Post by detaro »

kleiba wrote: post #90
detaro wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cra…

Okay, at this point I'm starting to regret that I upvoted your comments as bringing a good perspective into the discussion if you are just trying to bring ridiculous strawman to anyone engaging with arguments. plonk

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

#106

Post by kleiba »

jacquesm wrote: post #62
kleiba wrote: 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 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.

That may be true. But I don't think that the perceived greed of one actor should serve as a justification of circumventing a paywall.

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

#107

Post by radmuzom »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #76
radmuzom wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why? Richard Stallman wasn't attacked for doing the right thing. The first time you're thinking of, he was attacked over a misunderstanding when he wrote about a controversial topic, and people's general resentment of him bubbled over and made it a big thing. The second (more recent) one, he was attacked over unresigning , and because he pushed a lot of people away from Free Software. Alexandra Elbakyan has, to my kn…

> "Richard Stallman wasn't attacked for doing the right thing."

He absolutely was. For defending a dead person who was being accused of sexual assault. Most people won't even take the risk of tarnishing their own reputation given that the accused is dead.

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

#108

Post by Rels »

Phenomenit wrote: post #77
inciampati wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wasn't it $100k in total from the beginning of the project in 2011? That's how I perceived it anyways.

You both seem to be saying the same thing to me? I'm not a English native, but I'm pretty sure a decade refers to a period of 10 years.

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

#109

Post by kleiba »

joshuaissac wrote: post #81
kleiba wrote: 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…

> 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…

Of course, I'm not claiming that Sci-Hub has no inherent value. But the same could be say for, say, the black market for hard drugs.

Bypassing of paywalls could be judged against many measures.

I don't understand why the publishers get all the blame while no-one talks about the scientists who choose to publish their works behind a paywall.

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

#110

Post by 08-15 »

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…

> It's the publishers stealing from the scientific community, universities and tax payers, and the politicians and bureaucrats are complicit.

Not really. The publishers provide hardly any value, definitely not commensurate with their prices. So why don't the scientists simply walk away? Why not publish on the internet, why not simply upload to arxiv.org?

It's because funding through quasi government agencies (NSF, NIH, etc.) is tied to your publication record, which is evaluated in "impact points", and those are actually tied not to your own publications, but to the journals they appear in. So your funding as a scientist depends on you publishing in these expensive journals.

It's actually the politicians and bureaucrats stealing from the tax payers, funneling the money to the publishers, all the while claiming they are funding science.

As a scientist, you have little leverage in this fouled up system, but it is your civic duty to use it: Please refuse to review papers for commercial journals without appropriate payment. You owe it to your fellow scientists to not subsidize predatory business models.

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