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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

#131

Post by vimacs2 »

nix23 wrote: post #75
aj3 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wrote that: >Blocking access to ~free knowledge because one is offended is probably even worse...that's the mindset of dictators no? What has that todo with language? Is Wikipedia blocking you (or your country) from access because you called an insect after Jimmy Wales?

I agree that it was petty of her but unless if anybody else steps up in her place in a substantial way and fight the major publishers, I think we should be a little lenient on her idiosyncracities. I don't know what the real story behind the block is but something tells me there was a lot of other baggage on her mind prior to hearing about the wasp.

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

#132

Post by ineedasername »

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 there will be an equivalent of Apple Music/Spotify/Netflix for scientific papers in the near future.

There is: You can pay Elsevier for an unlimited access subscription to ScienceDirect journals. The only problem is that it costs about $1700 and you have to buy for a minimum of 3 people. [0]

[0] https://www.ncbiotech.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/2...

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

#133

Post by SuoDuanDao »

phone8675309 wrote: post #96
pessimizer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> There are powerful people who would be happy to imprison or kill her. Imprison? Sure. I’ll even grant you "financially ruined" from lawsuits, but who wants her dead?

It may be my personal bias, but I'd imagine anyone whose role makes her their enemy would lack the moral fibre to care about the distinction.

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

#134

Post by zentiggr »

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?

Not in academia, but have watched the debates over the past decade or so...

It really seems like it's the inertia of existing administrators that haven't shifted away from judging papers based on the prestige of the journals they get published by.

Once the prestige factor goes away, and authors are judged primarily on the quality of their work, the publishers will lose their stranglehold.

Of course, that means a lot of entrenched interests losing revenue streams, so it's going to be a long struggle of grassroots change vs regulatory capture combined with reactionary pushback.

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

#135

Post by zentiggr »

rrmm wrote: post #38
petercooper wrote: post #22

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?

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.

I can see a possible future where only a few holdouts rely on 'prestige' as a decision criteria, while a majority of academic fields/groups have switched to open access... and the former get only more and more vocal about the decline of science, or some screeching point.

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

#136

Post by nix23 »

vimacs2 wrote: post #131
nix23 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote that: >Blocking access to ~free knowledge because one is offended is probably even worse...that's the mindset of dictators no? What has that todo with language? Is Wikipedia blocking you (or your country) from access because you called an insect after Jimmy Wales?

I agree that it was petty of her but unless if anybody else steps up in her place in a substantial way and fight the major publishers, I think we should be a little lenient on her idiosyncracities. I don't know what the real story behind the block is but something tells me there was a lot of other baggage on her mind prior to hearing about the wasp.

Look, i think she makes a great job. But i hate it when those fanboys cannot see the irony of what she did...i would be proud like hell if a scientist would name a slug after me.

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

#137

Post by FabHK »

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…

Of course everyone that does honest and useful work ought to be compensated for that work. But note that there is extensive research that publishers earn excess returns, beyond what is justified by their work and risk taking. In other words, they're rent seeking (ie, not creating value, but appropriating value).

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

#138

Post by FabHK »

Jolter wrote: post #119
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't the peer-review process the filter?

Nope. Peer review is a kind of quality filter (in theory but seldom in practice), but that does nothing to solve the question of “is this a paper worthy of publishing”. That question gets resolved by the publisher/editor of the journal long before the paper makes it to peer review.

And the editors are (like the reviewers) a bunch of scientists paid by their respective institutions, aren't they? So, what does the publisher do?

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

#139

Post by teddyh »

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…

“Paranoia strikes deep:

Into your life it will creep.

It starts when you’re always afraid.

You step out of line, the man come and take you away. ”

For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1967

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