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FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

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Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#171

Post by baron_harkonnen »

vaylian wrote: post #42
xNeil wrote: post #32

I'm not sure I understand the concept of paid access to scientific research, so I'd be grateful if someone with more knowledge of the topic could explain it to me. Governments fund universities, people donate large amounts of money to universities, and a large portion of the population has student debt because of how expensive tuition is. Why are they charging for access to research at these institutions then?

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…

> If you say: My science is published in journal X, then the funding agency will think it is good science/bad science without actually trying to understand what your science is about.

Not only is this correct, but it is the origin of peer review as we know it today.

Despite what most academics assume, peer-review itself is a relatively new concept in science. Nearly all of the most incredible scientific discoveries were not subject to peer review as we know it today.

Peer review was in fact created in as a response to a decrease in scientific funding in the 1970s. It was a deliberate attempt to create credibility in order to bolster funding.

I find it somewhat absurd that the current state of peer review is considered a pillar of "good science", when not only has most of the greatest science done without it, but double-blind peer review and a culture of publish or perish has lead us to things such as the reproducibility crisis. And in general the vast majority of publish work being questionable garbage that only remains unquestioned because of a culture of fear around question the corner stone of artificial credibility created solely to increase funding.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#172

Post by adrusi »

arp242 wrote: post #157
vaylian wrote: post #42

Earlier 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…

> The current system doesn't provide much value in terms of printing and distribution (even though some journals still do printing). The thing that keeps these journals alive is their reputation as filters for bad science. But even that is questionable, as proven by a lot of bad science making it into top journals. Just because some bad science gets in doesn't mean it's 100% useless; perhaps the bad science we're see…

It's not common for researchers to find that no journal at all will accept their paper, so it's not like there's a bunch of bad science being done that we just never see.

The result of getting rid of the reputation system of prestige journals isn't obvious. It's possible that without the incentive to get into the most prestigious journal possible, many researches will lower the quality of their research. But I think it's more likely that without the hope of getting into a prestigious journal, researchers will try other tactics to coax others into reading and citing their work, and one such tactic is doing better research.

My main concern with abolishing journals is that the need for prestige in science wouldn't disappear overnight, and instead of trying to get into prestigious journals, to only way to get that prestige bonus will be to do the social climbing to associate yourself with prestigious researchers.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#173

Post by baron_harkonnen »

arp242 wrote: post #157
vaylian wrote: post #42

Earlier 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…

> The current system doesn't provide much value in terms of printing and distribution (even though some journals still do printing). The thing that keeps these journals alive is their reputation as filters for bad science. But even that is questionable, as proven by a lot of bad science making it into top journals. Just because some bad science gets in doesn't mean it's 100% useless; perhaps the bad science we're see…

I would argue that the publish or perish culture coupled with a creation of funding focused peer-review system in the 1970s has lead to much worse science.

There are plenty of cases where good researchers can't get published because peer reviewers either don't understand or misunderstand the work being done (even Geoffrey Hinton has complained about this).

Then on top of that we have vast amount of research that cannot be successfully reproduced, and this has been happening for decades. Largely because we have created a culture of 'rubber stamp' science.

The correct publishing paradigm has lead to blander and at the same time quite often garbage science.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#174

Post by xNeil »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #123
xNeil wrote: post #32

I'm not sure I understand the concept of paid access to scientific research, so I'd be grateful if someone with more knowledge of the topic could explain it to me. Governments fund universities, people donate large amounts of money to universities, and a large portion of the population has student debt because of how expensive tuition is. Why are they charging for access to research at these institutions then?

>and a large portion of the population has student debt because of how expensive tuition is. Student tuition does not fund research (at least in STEM in the US). DARPA, NSF, NIH etc. fund research. Professors at research institutions are to some extent evaluated based on the the size of their research grants.

I was trying to point out how high tuition for universities is. I'm not sure if this is a US-specific problem, so I won't comment on that, but my point was universities receive so much money to conduct research, and then put that very research behind extremely expensive paywalls.

If what you said is correct (which I'm sure it is), it's only reduced my understanding (in a good way - thank you for your explanation). So - the government pays professors for their research, and then this very research is put behind a paywall, from which....publishers (?) make money?. I apologize, but it simply does not make sense to me, it seems extremely counter intuitive.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#175

Post by glogla »

refurb wrote: post #126
xNeil wrote: post #32

I'm not sure I understand the concept of paid access to scientific research, so I'd be grateful if someone with more knowledge of the topic could explain it to me. Governments fund universities, people donate large amounts of money to universities, and a large portion of the population has student debt because of how expensive tuition is. Why are they charging for access to research at these institutions then?

A better question to ask is - when researchers can publish anywhere (including open source journals) they choose to publish in journals with paid access.

That's not really a question.

But if you ask why they choose to, they mostly don't have that much choice. Often, rules say "publish in magazine with impact factor at least X" and that's it. The publishers are the gatekeepers of that.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#176

Post by matthewdgreen »

michaf wrote: post #94
whatever1 wrote: post #67

Where can I file for my damages as a reviewer? I have lost more than 2000 hours reviewing papers for for-profit publishers and they never gave me a single penny. edit: Heck many of them they did not even give me free access to their journal to check references from the papers I was reviewing for them. I had to rely on SciHub to do so.

Your comment brings focus to the question of why reviewers agree to do these unpaid reviews in the first place. I assume your comment is in jest, and you were fully aware of the unpaid nature of the work. But what was your motivation to do it anyway and spend 2000 hours on it?

This is like asking an open source maintainer what their motive was to contribute to an important piece of software, since it’s going to be hosted on a for-profit entity like GitHub. The motive is that reviewing is necessary to make science work (and secondarily it’s required for promotions etc.) The problem in this setting is that Elsevier is part of the equation and demands copyright ownership, which makes it much worse than hosting on something GitHub. Unfortunately “just stop contributing” isn’t a good answer, because that would throw out the baby with the bath water, and scientists care very deeply about the baby.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#177

Post by Shorel »

azalemeth wrote: post #145
ehsankia wrote: post #133

Earlier 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…

> 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 legi…

> copyright be damned

What? Do the journals get copyright over the authors too???

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#178

Post by xNeil »

adamnemecek wrote: post #74
xNeil wrote: post #32

I'm not sure I understand the concept of paid access to scientific research, so I'd be grateful if someone with more knowledge of the topic could explain it to me. Governments fund universities, people donate large amounts of money to universities, and a large portion of the population has student debt because of how expensive tuition is. Why are they charging for access to research at these institutions then?

Fun fact, the current business model of science publishing is attributed to Robert Maxwell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell ), the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b... . Sounds like Ghislaine wasn’t the worst whoremonger in her family.

That's an interesting fact, thanks!

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#179

Post by jonas21 »

Vinnl wrote: post #143
ehsankia wrote: post #133

Earlier 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…

In addition, established scientists are rarely the first author on papers. It's usually a grad student or postdoc who does most of the work and gets first authorship. A publication in a top journal can literally make or break their career.

If someone decides that their group won't publish in top journals, they're hurting their own students, which probably discourages people from doing so.

Re: FBI subpoenaed Apple for data of Sci-Hub founder

#180

Post by tomkat0789 »

arp242 wrote: post #157
vaylian wrote: post #42

Earlier 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…

> The current system doesn't provide much value in terms of printing and distribution (even though some journals still do printing). The thing that keeps these journals alive is their reputation as filters for bad science. But even that is questionable, as proven by a lot of bad science making it into top journals. Just because some bad science gets in doesn't mean it's 100% useless; perhaps the bad science we're see…

You're not wrong. There was a legendary librarian named Jeffrey Beall who cataloged a whole little industry of predatory scientific publishing. Here's a quick article that mentions his work: https://publons.com/blog/bealls-list-gone-but-not-lost/

It'll be a long time before the traditional journals lose influence, but lots of the newer journals that arose were scams or ways for professors to publish what they wanted. It's a mess.

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