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A World Without Sci-Hub

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Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#191

Post by mandmandam »

dang wrote: post #186
mandmandam wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than an American might think maybe. The rest of the world sees America as the numero uno threat to democracy, peace, and stability. And when that fact is pointed out to Americans, with evidence and polls and sources, it makes no impression somehow (in my experience). It's simply incompatible with their programming, and the data is rejected. Try it.

Nationalistic flamewar is off topic here and personal attack, which this crosses into, will get you banned. Another thing we ban accounts for is when they use HN primarily for flamewar or political or ideological battle. Those things are against the guidelines/rules* because they destroy the site for its intended purpose. I mention this because your account is repeatedly posting flamewar comments and/or unsubstantive…

The topic OP raised was, "things like this that make me believe that the US isn't a truly free society. It simply pretends it is."

The comment above is a genuine addition to that line of thought; one which I'll maintain has substance and is worth reading.

I'll take your point on crossing into personal attack though. I definitely did call that guy ignorant of basic facts. However warranted I'll try harder to avoid that kind of talk.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#192

Post by dang »

mandmandam wrote: post #191
dang wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalistic flamewar is off topic here and personal attack, which this crosses into, will get you banned. Another thing we ban accounts for is when they use HN primarily for flamewar or political or ideological battle. Those things are against the guidelines/rules* because they destroy the site for its intended purpose. I mention this because your account is repeatedly posting flamewar comments and/or unsubstantive…

The topic OP raised was, "things like this that make me believe that the US isn't a truly free society. It simply pretends it is." The comment above is a genuine addition to that line of thought; one which I'll maintain has substance and is worth reading. I'll take your point on crossing into personal attack though. I definitely did call that guy ignorant of basic facts. However warranted I'll try harder to avoid tha…

The OP was about Sci-Hub.

Thanks re the latter point. I think the "however warranted" bit is significant (I usually put it this way: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), because human bias is always to overestimate how "warranted" things are in one direction and underestimate it in the other direction. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, etc.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#193

Post by dang »

NmAmDa wrote: post #188
dang wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents. This was a doozy. Such discussions are predictable, tedious, attract the same minority of commenters over and over and bore/drive away everybody else. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

I am sorry for that. I didn't intend that. Thank you for pointing to the guidelines and I will take this more to heart when commenting.

Appreciated!

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#195

Post by genewitch »

seg_lol wrote: post #116
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.

I know where to get all of the research!

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#196

Post by pdm55 »

ncmncm wrote: post #133
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?

https://z-lib.org/

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#197

Post by rramadass »

PSA: The article Title is somewhat confusing. It actually argues for the knowledge-sharing model that Sci-Hub (and its brethren) advocate.

At the end, the article says:

But it is still worth contemplating a world without Sci-Hub—that is to say, a world in which Sci-Hub would be unnecessary. The “effective nationalization” proposed by Wiley and by the academic publishers themselves might just pave the way there.

It is quite frustrating that the Scientific Community producing the Intellectual Property that the "Academic Publishing Industry" makes money out of, is not doing more to bring the "Cartel" down once and for all. Have they become so pusillanimous that they are no longer willing to stand-up against what is clearly unethical and wrong?

It is time to re-read The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Voluntary_Servitu...) and ACT on it.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#198

Post by sitkack »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #138
sitkack wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the work of the standards bodies needs to be disambiguated from Open Access journals. In no way am equating IEEE and ACM with Springer and Elsevier. For the longest time, I think they have recently relaxed a bit, but IEEE forbid authors from posting a copy of their paper on their academic web page.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#199

Post by jonathanstrange »

Vinnl wrote: post #153
jonathanstrange wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't mean so say that criticisms aren't valid; just that perfect is frustratingly often the enemy of better. For example, the status quo can be justified by "it seems obvious that" rather than being evidence-based. In practice, single or double blind is very often not actually blind [1], in which case it's hard to argue that it would be any different than transparency. Likewise, a new solution "creates all kinds o…

The point is that there is nothing inherently wrong with blind peer review, you're proposing the classical solution to a nonexistent problem. The problem is that too many reputable journals were lured over to big publishing houses and these want to use them as a perpetual money-printing machine. To fix the problem, you create free, voluntary-based reputable open access journals with triple blind peer review that will (slowly) replace the expensive ones. This is happening.

Maybe you should consider that you're the stubborn one who links to blog posts from open access journals with a strong bias to reform the peer review system as evidence. Plos journals have this agenda because they don't have good enough pools of reviewers, which is the problem of all new journals. However, it's not as if scientists all over the world and funding authorities haven't thought about the topic. People should not withold judgement about these issues, that's an odd request and would weaken the position of scientific staff towards political decision makers who certainly won't withold judgement.

To give you an example of what is being done by funding authorities, at our university we are required by law to publish every article in openly accessible format. Otherwise they do not count at all towards our salaries, they will be ignored completely. There are public open repositories for that. The only thing that bothers everyone is that big publishers like Elsevier only allow draft versions in those repositories and there is sometimes a 1 year mandatory delay until they can be put online. That needs to change and EU authorities are working on it.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#200

Post by jonathanstrange »

sam0x17 wrote: post #170
jonathanstrange wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a scientist, I am obliged to cite every paper that is relevant to my work and that I refer to in any way, be that by paraphrase, mentioning, or direct quotation. You can't just ignore previous work because you don't like the way it was published.

Annnd that's how we got where we are folks. I guess it depends how you view your obligations. If you don't want people to be able to read, vet, or reproduce your research because the citations are suspiciously tricky to follow up on, that is of course your prerogative. As a scientist free and fair access to accurate and easily verifiable information should, of course, be in the forefront of what you care about. It is…

I don't think it's a good idea to jeopardize scientific integrity in the fight against exorbitant subscription fees, that's going way too far. As convenient as Sci-Hub and Libgen are (everyone uses them because they are convenient), you seem to be blissfully unaware of the public library system and the fact that you can order any book or article from any research library in your country. Maybe it's a generational thing, I still remember going to large research library on a bike, ordering 30 articles and books and spending hours at the copying machine. It is possible to work that way, just less convenient. Anyway, the point is that it should be possible to fight expensive subscription fees and at the same time give credit to where it's due.
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