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A World Without Sci-Hub

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Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#111

Post by balsam »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #75
balsam wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I guess, your area is experimental science/engineering? I notice that in the more theoretical fields (theoretical physics,math,CS,stats) the open access channels are on par with the paywalled ones. Curious as to why. Perhaps its more expensive to replicate results, perhaps the fees are nothing compared to what you pay for the labour and equipment..

No, it's philosophy. I believe theoretical physics and math are special, as you recognize, because they need a lot of additional vetting. My work is mostly in formal philosophy, which does involve a bit of math, and I'm constantly worried the reviewers might not spot a mistake and send it to colleagues for additional checking. This must be a hundred times more pressing in math and physics, so they developed open arch…

Ah yes! Would you say that in the field of philosophy, practices around publication and exposition are in general more aligned with the humanities than the sciences? Hadn’t even thought in that direction yet, thank you for the heads up!

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#112

Post by temp8964 »

ghoul2 wrote: post #104

Everytime scihub is mentioned on HN, multiple comments go on about how it should go "distrubuted" - ipfs, torrents, etc. While the current database of scihub is hugely valuable and must be protected in whatever way we can, the true value of scihub is in the "invisible" network of sources for the papers - how quickly papers find their way into the scihub db once they are published. A non-updating scihub will start to…

If what you said is true, then it seems unreasonable to make the whole thing depends on her. Isn't it? So not only we need distributed storage of the database / files, we also need distributed method to update the database / files.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#113

Post by Bayart »

Before Sci-Hub, I had to find those among my friends with the right access credentials to the right publishers and ask them to get the articles on my behalf, often in batches to not make too much an annoyance of myself.

Needless to say Sci-Hub has been a massive improvement to my quality of life, insofar as satiating my intellectual curiosity is needed. And I'm not even a researcher.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#114

Post by nlitened »

temp8964 wrote: post #112
ghoul2 wrote: post #104

Everytime scihub is mentioned on HN, multiple comments go on about how it should go "distrubuted" - ipfs, torrents, etc. While the current database of scihub is hugely valuable and must be protected in whatever way we can, the true value of scihub is in the "invisible" network of sources for the papers - how quickly papers find their way into the scihub db once they are published. A non-updating scihub will start to…

If what you said is true, then it seems unreasonable to make the whole thing depends on her. Isn't it? So not only we need distributed storage of the database / files, we also need distributed method to update the database / files.

Yes. Unfortunately, not that many free countries are left on earth, where one can download and distribute scientific papers without getting into jail.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#115

Post by wongarsu »

temp8964 wrote: post #112
ghoul2 wrote: post #104

Everytime scihub is mentioned on HN, multiple comments go on about how it should go "distrubuted" - ipfs, torrents, etc. While the current database of scihub is hugely valuable and must be protected in whatever way we can, the true value of scihub is in the "invisible" network of sources for the papers - how quickly papers find their way into the scihub db once they are published. A non-updating scihub will start to…

If what you said is true, then it seems unreasonable to make the whole thing depends on her. Isn't it? So not only we need distributed storage of the database / files, we also need distributed method to update the database / files.

Sure, but that's hard to do in the face of bad actors (Elsevier etc) who have the law on their side. Making sure that sci-hub changes academic publishing before academic publishing changes sci-hub seems more achievable.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#116

Post by seg_lol »

ghoul2 wrote: post #104

Everytime scihub is mentioned on HN, multiple comments go on about how it should go "distrubuted" - ipfs, torrents, etc. While the current database of scihub is hugely valuable and must be protected in whatever way we can, the true value of scihub is in the "invisible" network of sources for the papers - how quickly papers find their way into the scihub db once they are published. A non-updating scihub will start to…

So really we need to make as many Alexandra Elbakyans as possible. Cloning is probably our only option.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#117

Post by IndPhysiker »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #75
balsam wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I guess, your area is experimental science/engineering? I notice that in the more theoretical fields (theoretical physics,math,CS,stats) the open access channels are on par with the paywalled ones. Curious as to why. Perhaps its more expensive to replicate results, perhaps the fees are nothing compared to what you pay for the labour and equipment..

No, it's philosophy. I believe theoretical physics and math are special, as you recognize, because they need a lot of additional vetting. My work is mostly in formal philosophy, which does involve a bit of math, and I'm constantly worried the reviewers might not spot a mistake and send it to colleagues for additional checking. This must be a hundred times more pressing in math and physics, so they developed open arch…

Physics PhD here, I would extend your comment that 90% of CS papers are garbage to include engineering and physics as well. The vast majority of those are what people refer to as "status updates" where long term projects provide minor updates that don't really contribute anything to the general knowledge but exist solely to advertise their work and provide a bullet point in their quarterly report to the funding agency. This is also added to the fact that most PhD programs require a candidate to publish at least 3 articles in peer-reviewed journals, where some programs even discriminate based on the impact factor, further entrenching the paid-for journals as open access are not ranked as highly. I personally really like the IEEE journals as they are cheap ("free" with IEEE membership to a given society) and reasonable high quality (exceptions as always of course). Years ago I looked at trying to get my department a subscription to the major Elsevier journal in our industry and was quoted almost $6,000/yr, mostly for historic papers published back in the 50's, 60's and 70's where authors were long since dead and the utility mostly on filling in gaps in modern theory. While neither bandwidth nor website design infrastructure are free, high access costs are unnecessary and just equate to greed IMHO.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#118

Post by mach1ne »

advael wrote: post #66
mach1ne wrote: post #48

The core issue is that journals offer standard. People don't like to bother with checking every paper's reputability with a magnifying glass, and the reputation of the journal gives a shortcut around that. It's editorial work which gives the competitive edge. Now, of course scientists could run a reputable journal for free or on donations. However, once you have achieved a reputable status with your journal, it becom…

I think this does more harm than good. If there's anything we should have learned from the replication crisis of 2014, a decent amount of "generated" or "satirical" papers scandals, and an essentially constant stream of retractions, merely being published in a prestigious journal is not a great heuristic for whether a result holds up or the methodology was sound. People who want to seriously assess a paper need to re…

To be clear, I'm not arguing that this is a good system. I'm simply stating that it is the way it is right now. And while these counterforces are indeed gaining traction, they are still far away from toppling the status quo.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#119

Post by jonathanstrange »

Vinnl wrote: post #89
jonathanstrange wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is looks like a horrible idea. The system violates anonymous peer reviewing standards. These are sometimes even mandated by law, e.g. our funding institution would not allow us to count such a publication as "peer reviewed." There are many good reasons why peer review needs to be anonymous on both ends (the reviewer is anonymous and the manuscript is anonymized). Many reputable journals have even switched to tri…

In practice (as you partly allude to), the problems you speak to already often occur for traditional peer review, except they're less traceable there. Sure, collusion rings and nepotism is (still!) possible, but the data is out there for everyone to see and to call you out on. Now winking through a paper risks your reputation (the very thing that makes your endorsement relevant!), rather than only being potentially n…

I don't think it's a good idea to explain away valid criticisms as inertia. I also don't buy the implicit claim that giving up the anonymity of the peer reviewers could improve peer reviewing. It seems obvious that giving up anonymous peer review would make things worse and that putting the reviewer's reputation on the line would not improve things. It creates all kinds of conflicts of interests and biases. You also need to understand that the people who game the system have a low reputation anyway. They find a niche, build up their collusion ring with people they meet at conferences, and get a tenure-track position or full tenure because of their high, though low quality publication track record. Moreover, if the peer review is properly anonymous, then reviewers are way more critical than if it's not anonymous. Hence, acceptance rates in top journals in my area are below 5%. If the reviewer is not anonymous, they would be way more permissive, since they don't want to completely shatter their relations with their colleagues. Higher acceptance rates means lower value publications, not higher standards.

There are many things that needs to be addressed to improve science, not just peer review. Hiring policies need to change and indicator counts need to be used more adequately, empirical studies need to be pre-registered and the p-value needs to be 1% or lower. Peer review is just one factor and mostly a monetary issue. If all research institutions would spend enough money to make all commercial journals available for everyone, there would be no particular problem with peer review. The problem of many researchers in poorer countries is that they don't. The problem is not that peer review does not work.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#120

Post by wrycoder »

Terretta wrote: post #108

Every time this comes up, I ask if the “academic publishing industry” provides any service where I, as an individual, can subscribe for one reasonable subscription fee, to one single site, with all the research. It seems no. - No one service or site or subscription or pass - No reasonable fee - No aggregation of all the research They’ve externalized the useful work back onto the user. Sci-hub does that work for me. I…

What about Deepdyve?
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