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FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
141–150 of 272 posts
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s my belief that most people just want their research to be seen and engaged with by their peers (it is, of course, the fundamental purpose of producing a paper). Universities however want prestige, and enforce the policy “publish or perish”. The two are one and the same. What you call "Universities" is simply "professors at the universities". Department policies for tenure are set by a bunch of professors. The…
Sure there is. Developers have very different goals and responsibilities than their managers (regardless of whether they were once developers themselves). The dean serves a different master than the researching/teaching professor. It would be absurd to assume their incentives and goals are always the same, or even aligned.
The difference is that managers ultimately have to answer to a different type of crowd (consumers, shareholders, whatever). External pressures play a role. At universities, it is professors all the way. The people who are on NSF grant committees are professors. Journal editors are research professors.
There is no external pressure on these people. NSF grantors don't value Nature publications because they have to answer to the public. They value it because they value it.
If a professor becomes a dean or head of NSF, and they decide to make changes to what is considered prestigious, the only opposition they'll get is from their peers.
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are completely right that the current system is nonsense. It only exists, because back in the day there was no internet. Scientists needed publishers that would print and distribute scientific results. But publishers might deny publication in their journals if they thought the science is not good enough. Thereby the publishers established a reputation system. For example, it is really hard to get a scientific pap…
But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales? Also, as you mention, newcomers need the reputation given to them by journal, but I don't understand how this is a stable system. In theory, well established scientists, who give the journals i…
No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution. Often, they'll even have to pay to publish ("page charges", charges for illustrations, etc.), and also to make it openly accessible (although to be fair, at that point their works aren't sold anymore; the author's payment is the source of profit).
Even established, tenured scientists will often need to obtain grants and will still be judged by where they publish. Though there's also, of course, quite some institutional inertia and people just not caring, since it doesn't affect them personally. And of course, there are also a lot of (established) academics who do care.
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brings up a memory of a recent event of an American DUI murder in the UK and leaving before their untrustworthy legal system kicked in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn
Well you just need to marry a via operative and you can get away with it too.
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are completely right that the current system is nonsense. It only exists, because back in the day there was no internet. Scientists needed publishers that would print and distribute scientific results. But publishers might deny publication in their journals if they thought the science is not good enough. Thereby the publishers established a reputation system. For example, it is really hard to get a scientific pap…
But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales? Also, as you mention, newcomers need the reputation given to them by journal, but I don't understand how this is a stable system. In theory, well established scientists, who give the journals i…
> Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales?
No. And most of the time, if you want a paper that's behind a paywall, email the corresponding author and they'd be delighted to know that someone on the planet actually cares, and then email you a pdf, copyright be damned.
Honestly, sci-hub is the best website of the last decade; I use it every day. It works better than the publishers' websites (that I have legitimate access to). It's just excellent. It's founder should be made a saint.
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#146What I find the most fascinating is that a single person, possibly with the help of a few select others, is able to curate, index, host, and serve 85% of scholarly literature[0] which otherwise would be inaccessible to many.
80 million papers are available on Sci-Hub to its half a million daily users.[1] That is around 80 TB of data, and 2 TB of daily outbound traffic.[2]
Given the fact that Sci-Hub has achieved all those whilst being forced to operate under the radar, I have massive respect for Elbakyan first and then all the others that have helped it survive. Not only Sci-Hub is an undeniable disruption, but also an amazing technical feat that many startups would envy.
[0]: https://greenelab.github.io/scihub-manuscript/
[1]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
[2]: 3 articles × each 2 MB × per 400k users ~ 2.4 TB.
P.S. Seed its torrents!
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd think its because peer review costs money, but they are largely unpaid for that work. So, there's no real answer beyond "capitalism."
What's exactly capitalistic about this? They charge for something they have no property or own. In my experience (and every researcher I know does this) researchers have their own websites where they publish a free pdf version of the research (without the format of the published paper, just a simpler pdf version) or even email it to you if you ask them to (those without a website, for example). I am not sure what exa…
> What's exactly capitalistic about this?
The designation that combinations of words are a form of property that can be owned, which then become assets naturally funneled towards those interested in playing the capital meta game and away from those doing the actual work.
To a scientist, the ability to copyright their paper is a vulnerability. Get rid of the concept of imaginary property and there is a lot less for Elsevier to demand from them.
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
The universities aren't the ones collecting the money. In fact, they the main targets of the extortion. Most professors care mostly about prestige (reputation for being smart, wise or innovative) and would prefer to ignore or disdain the economic and legal aspects of life. OK, that is a little unfair: most profs want to focus on their specialty and sometimes don't pay enough attention to how their actions interact wi…
I think prestige is a very unfair characterization. It’s my belief that most people just want their research to be seen and engaged with by their peers (it is, of course, the fundamental purpose of producing a paper). Universities however want prestige, and enforce the policy “publish or perish”. The problem is still as you say — the only way to do so reliably is to give up your ownership to a prestigious journal (be…
I am an academic researcher (math). Unfortunately, prestige hits the mark.
Whenever I am being compared with my peers -- for raises, for possible grant funding, if I apply for a job at another university -- people will look at publication lists and see who has published in "good" journals.
And when you say that "prestigious journals are widely read" -- honestly, journals aren't really ever read as such. Researchers will look for individual papers they're interested in. The choice of journal is a signaling mechanism and little else.
It is true that universities want prestige... but, honestly, tenured faculty don't often care too much about what their employers want. What a panel at a granting agency thinks of my record, is more important than what my department chair and dean think.
Your idea that e.g. Stanford should order their faculty to publish on SciHub is an interesting one. For better or worse, university administrators don't tend to have or exercise much authority, and any attempt to order faculty to do anything is likely to be met with fierce resistance.
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales? Also, as you mention, newcomers need the reputation given to them by journal, but I don't understand how this is a stable system. In theory, well established scientists, who give the journals i…
No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution. Often, they'll even have to pay to publish ("page charges", charges for illustrations, etc.), and also to make it openly accessible (although to be fair, at that point their works aren't sold anymore; the author's payment is the source of profit). Even established, tenured scientists will often need to obtain grants and will still be judged by where they publish…
> No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution
I didn't say they get paid, I'm talking specifically amount the money flow to these journals. Does the funding from the research/scientists come from the profit the journals make, or from outside funding?
Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a way, you are lucky if the journal has outsourced typesetting to some low-quality shop. Some for-profit publishers demand that the unpaid editors do all the copyediting, proofreading, and typesetting, and just provide the publisher with a camera-ready PDF. The for-profit publisher no longer provides any of the added value it once did. (Only distribution is left, and that isn’t a big deal, because even old-school…
I know, I have myself provided camera-ready copies set in LaTeX to for-profit publishers - all of this for free, done in my spare time. I was referring to the end-control of the typsetting, which they still provide, and if it's only in the form of outdated LaTeX templates. Sometimes it's crazy how incompetent reputable publishers are in academic publishing. The for-profit publisher of my forthcoming book has agreed t…
FWIW, I wasn’t talking about providing a manuscript in LaTeX and the publisher providing "end-control of the typesetting". (LaTeX is generally used for journal publications only in certain STEM fields, and not in my own field.) Rather, I was referring to cases where the for-profit publisher expects e.g. a Word document already fully typeset, and then the publisher does not contribute anything at all to typesetting except its own copyright page.