How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by mcguire » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

zentiggr wrote: post #134

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?

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…

Judging papers based on the prestige of the publishing journal is not necessarily a bad thing. Everybody does it, consciously or unconsciously.

Having those journals owned by publishers that engage in rent-seeking behavior is.

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

#162

Post by ineedasername » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

08-15 wrote: post #155

ineedasername wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The publishers provide hardly any value Here's an insider's view from having worked the tech side at a small scientific publisher. Prices are too high and the model is flawed [-1] but your opinion is not accurate, the publisher did a tremendous amount of work: First a distinction, two types of editors: The publisher's editors, each of which handled a batch of journals. The journal editor, who did not actually work fo…

Clearly, publishers do a lot of work. But what is the value they provide?

I'm not sure I understand the question: is there not value in managing every single logistic detail of a complex process?

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

#163

Post by salawat » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #125

austhrow743 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tr…

> "Pirate Queen"? "beloved outlaw"? Cool titles, but I can see why she might not want to be lumped in with the general file sharing community. I don't think open access science should be in the same category as pirating Hollywood movies and cracking videogames.

I don't think pirating video games and Hollywood movies deserve a separate category from "replicating information" to be fair, but facilitated information asymmetry is the quintessemce of most businesses... So ... Yeah. To each their own.

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

#164

Post by andyxor » Fri, Jul 09, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

ElDji wrote: post #92

The question the HN community should ask itself is: What can be done to improve the sustainability of the scihub project, for example to make it more decentralised?

There is a rescue mission to save Scihub, you can help by seeding the torrents or contributing to related open source efforts https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_...

there are some discussions on using IPFS for decentralized storage and indexing of existing 85M Scihub papers http://freeread.org/ipfs/

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

#165

Post by DangitBobby » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 3:39 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #162

08-15 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly, publishers do a lot of work. But what is the value they provide?

I'm not sure I understand the question: is there not value in managing every single logistic detail of a complex process?

They are arguing that the complexity is artificial and provides little value.

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

#166

Post by wolverine876 » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #82

tokai wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There are powerful people who would be happy to imprison or kill her.

Kill her? What evidence is there of that?

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

#167

Post by wolverine876 » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 5:34 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #162

08-15 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly, publishers do a lot of work. But what is the value they provide?

I'm not sure I understand the question: is there not value in managing every single logistic detail of a complex process?

One way to look at the question: What marginal value do they provide over arXiv or Sci-hub?

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

#168

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #167

ineedasername wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand the question: is there not value in managing every single logistic detail of a complex process?

One way to look at the question: What marginal value do they provide over arXiv or Sci-hub?

Sci-Hub and arXiv are merely distributors. Like a movie theatre for a movie. Elsevier is like the movie studio that actually produces the movie after authors write it. The question of marginal value is missing that point. It's looking at the fact that, under this analogy, Elsevier is the movie theatre and is blind to the fact that it is also the movie studio.

One way or another the work has to get done. Shifting it from one pile or person to another doesn't change that. You can live without some of the steps I outlined, but quality can suffer then. Not in all cases, but some. I've seen plenty of HN links to arXiv posts where it's clear the authors had little sense of the best way of presenting their material and therefore have a harder time communicating their work.

What marginal value do you place on having new scientific knowledge more clearly and consistently communicated to other researchers? That's what publishers do.

Subscription prices are certainly way too high compared to the cost, but saying the add little or no value just tells me that a person probably doesn't understand what publishers do, or that "researcher" skill sets don't always overlap with the skill sets to perform the work I outlined above.

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

#169

Post by 08-15 » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #162

08-15 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly, publishers do a lot of work. But what is the value they provide?

I'm not sure I understand the question: is there not value in managing every single logistic detail of a complex process?

Only if that complex process provides any value.

So what is the value of a paper journal over a website? That the pictures look better?

I love how you compare a scientific journal to a cinema. It really brings your point home. But you're wrong: Science isn't entertainment. (I have experienced both NPG and AAAS treat it as if it was, though.)

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

#170

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

DangitBobby wrote: post #165

ineedasername wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand the question: is there not value in managing every single logistic detail of a complex process?

They are arguing that the complexity is artificial and provides little value.

Then they did not articulate that viewpoint very well. They also completely neglected to provide any justification. I stated a claim and provided extensive detail to support it. Replying with a comment that boils down to "nope" doesn't add anything to a conversation.