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Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

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Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#21

It's kind of whimsical to read the praise of sci-hub and fear about its future here. Tech people have access to pools of billions and billions of dollars that are casually being thrown on mindless minor addictions that offer nothing to humanity. Can't someone make an initiative or startup that disintermediates those very old publishers who are trolling science?

There is no profit in it. Of course someone like Gates or Bezos could support a SciHub hundreds of years into the future, but they will avoid the inevitable controversy that will come attached. Rich people will play it safe. The poor can't afford the pennies. So ultimately it falls on to a few middle-class activists and concerned people all over the world. Ethically SciHub (or the idea behind it) is on much firmer ground than say PirateBay, but investors want no controversy, unless it is religious or political.

I bet a "SciHub" devoted to political or religious articles will find backers despite being more controversial. People can be worked into passion for lots of things but not science and abstract philosophical ideas. That is largely why the FSF continues to barely cling to life.

Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#22

I just noticed something funny: The library of Alexandria was accidentally burned in 48 BC by Julius Ceasar. Here we are in 2021, we now have Alexandra's library, which rivals the first in size and scope, and there are at least as many forces trying to burn it. But fortunately this one is digital and you too can have a copy in your hallway closet for the price of some harddrives and bandwidth. Go make a backup, if yo…

I personally see it as an essential element of preserving democracy going forward. As science becomes a more influential component in public policy (it has arguably become the most influential component over the past 18 months), you end up with a governance style of “the law is whatever science says it should be”. If that science is not available for public scrutiny, then you have the added dynamic of “…and the science is whatever we say it is”.

Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#24
post #19

It's kind of whimsical to read the praise of sci-hub and fear about its future here. Tech people have access to pools of billions and billions of dollars that are casually being thrown on mindless minor addictions that offer nothing to humanity. Can't someone make an initiative or startup that disintermediates those very old publishers who are trolling science?

They have access to poils of billions of dollars because they are expected to aim to return multiples of those billions. How would a startup reach unicorn valuation based on publishing scientific papers? By making people pay. So we’re back to square one No, for some problems private enterprise is not necessarily the best solution

It would obviously not be for-profit. But it would benefit them indirectly. For investors who invest in biotech, they need to realize that open access is as important as open source is to software. Scientists have failed to overcome the collective action problem

Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#25

I just noticed something funny: The library of Alexandria was accidentally burned in 48 BC by Julius Ceasar. Here we are in 2021, we now have Alexandra's library, which rivals the first in size and scope, and there are at least as many forces trying to burn it. But fortunately this one is digital and you too can have a copy in your hallway closet for the price of some harddrives and bandwidth. Go make a backup, if yo…

Small footnote: despite its standing in popular culture, the burning of the library at Alexandria was not as important as they make it.

> We do not lose texts because of catastrophic events that wipe out all copies of them. We lose texts because they stop being copied.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t6op5/facts...

Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#26
Torrent seeding effort: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_...

All papers on sci-hub are available as torrents from library genesis. The full collection contains 85 million articles (before this announcement), and is about 80TB. If anything ever happens to sci-hub or library genesis, there's enough people out there with backups that a replacement can be set up fairly quickly, albeit without the proxy functionality to obtain new papers.

However, the more the merrier, so if you've got some spare hardware and bandwidth to share, I'd encourage you to contribute to the seeding effort if you're able. At current market prices of ~$30/TB, it costs ~$2400 to have a copy of the full collection sitting on your desk.

Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#27
post #5

I really hope sci-hub survives this. Sci-hub and libgen are like an entirely different internet, one allowing you to dive as deep as you wish into any technical subject. There’s really no comparison I have found anywhere for the depth of material available. People always point to Wikipedia, but all of that is surface level. If you to build something, research something, or just really delve into it, there’s no substi…

Yes, it’s a new and better world. On the other side of the $275 per-paper Elsevier paywall, there are researchers who wish more people would read their papers. In my experience digging into robotics kinematics, authors are happy to answer questions and can point me to the right person when I want to send a check to support investigating specific research questions. The paywall deceives; science is neither an institution nor a copyright. It’s people. You can talk to them. You can learn from them and they can learn from you. When you apply their research, they often want to know about it! They might even discuss your application, in future papers. You don’t have to be Siemens or Big University Labs. The situation with for-profit journal publishers is diseased. Who the hell do they think they are? Elsevier should be dead, and Aaron Swartz should be alive.

Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#28

I just noticed something funny: The library of Alexandria was accidentally burned in 48 BC by Julius Ceasar. Here we are in 2021, we now have Alexandra's library, which rivals the first in size and scope, and there are at least as many forces trying to burn it. But fortunately this one is digital and you too can have a copy in your hallway closet for the price of some harddrives and bandwidth. Go make a backup, if yo…

Copyright holders taking down these libraries should be considered a crime against humanity.

Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#29

Torrent seeding effort: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_... All papers on sci-hub are available as torrents from library genesis. The full collection contains 85 million articles (before this announcement), and is about 80TB. If anything ever happens to sci-hub or library genesis, there's enough people out there with backups that a replacement can be set up fairly quickly, albeit without t…

Is there any legal risk to users in North America that do this? Is this copyrighted material?

Re: Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate

#30
SciHub is the greatest achievement in academia, research or anything that is knowledge. The truest form of accessibility of knowledge.

In those 10 years, all the students you see or saw in your campus coming from second or third world countries, most of them have used scihub to research and publish papers that enabled them to pursuit higher studies.

Taking this right (not a privilege) away will mean the second burning of Alexandria. If anyone really cared about education or knowledge in general they will advocate scibub and libgen to survive.

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