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A World Without Sci-Hub

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131–140 of 206 posts

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#131

Post by ncmncm »

mandmandam wrote: post #71
nefitty wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your agenda is, but you're clearly ignoring the uniquely fashy things China and Russia are doing.

You can question my agenda all you like, though I think it's against the 'guidelines' here. But the fact is that the world agrees with me. More people on this planet think that America is more dangerous to democracy, peace and stability than Russia or China, or Iran, or Pakistan. Thank you for the vivid illustration of my point though. I had nearly added a line about how deflection kicks in like an automatic reflex t…

Russia and China might like to be greater threats to democracy, peace, or stability than the US, but they simply don't have enough influence or control enough foreign money (although China is ramping up). Iran and Pakistan are completely out of the running.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#132

Post by sitkack »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #119
Vinnl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anonymity removes the difficult aspects of human social interaction and allows everyone to focus on the science.

Peer review itself is wonderful and is what enables science itself to work as well as it does.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#133

Post by ncmncm »

pdm55 wrote: post #98

I hold conflicted views on this issue. I don't want to inhibit authors from publishing, as I love books. But often they are too expensive. So, about 50% of the time I pay for them, and 50% of the time I get them from sci-hub. And certainly paying for scientific articles is a big rip off. It effectively means that once you are no longer enrolled or working at a university, your access to this paywalled information is…

How do you get books from Sci-hub?

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#134

Post by jjoonathan »

nlitened wrote: post #114
temp8964 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Non-cooperation with US authorities is a very different thing from general freedom. I wouldn't conflate the two unless I was intentionally trying to shill for RU or CN. In the case of scientific publishing, the US authorities are in the wrong and I'm glad their reach does not extend everywhere.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#135

Post by ncmncm »

ur-whale wrote: post #96
jf wrote: post #2

What are pragmatic things that we can do to push for open access for academic papers?

When you quote a paper in your own work, explicitly mention that the resource is captive in a walled garden.

And, in your online PDF, link the citation to the Sci-hub copy.

This can be automated.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#136

Post by ncmncm »

conz wrote: post #39
quantum_magpie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't want to because publishing in open access costs us $2000.

We don't want to because publishing in open access costs us $2000. Out of curiosity, what does publishing in closed-access journals cost?

Closed-access journals charge the paper author thousands of dollars per page.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#137

Post by m3nu »

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…

Everyone can help preserve Sci-Hub by seeding some of their torrents. See this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_...

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#138

Post by MichaelZuo »

sitkack wrote: post #126
Bayart wrote: post #113

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.

Two great uses of sci-hub are for historic papers when walking the reference chain backwards in time and anything IEEE. I really wish IEEE and ACM would open their entire catalog of knowledge over a certain age, I don't really care what year they pick.

IEEE journals, and especially their standards, do actually provide a value added service that government funding doesn’t cover and they obviously run as part of a non profit so it seems very morally ambiguous. I imagine likewise for ACM.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#139

Post by neffy »

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…

It's worse I think than is generally realised. Back about 8 years ago I looked into getting some kind of university level library access for independent research - was quite happy to pay a fairly significant amount. I tracked down one of the London Universities who offered this if you paid to join their library (it was a couple of hundred pounds then), turned up in person to do so, and was politely told this had just been shut down due to problems with the publishers. Looking back, because that had been the last of several options that had been recently shutdown, I have to think this was deliberate policy by the publishers.

Write to the author as a last alternative, they're usually more than happy to send you a copy, I've had a couple of instances where a paper copy of the requested work turned up in the mail.

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