How might we help her?
Is there some way to replicate sci-hub thousands of times in a distributed fashion, Hydra-style?
The https://reddit.com/r/datahoarder community is working on it
Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
291–300 of 391 posts
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people not do that? As far as I know, publishing in Arxiv is as simple as uploading the PDF, so I'm wondering why scientists don't do that themselves by default. Does anyone know?
Speaking as a biologist working in Australia: 1) Older collaborators with more power are being 'scared' of getting scooped when they post preprints. They're slowly coming around as the argument makes no real sense, preprint = published to the younger generation. 2) Funding bodies, i.e. the people who pay our bills and have all the power. The Australian Research Council, the biggest non-medical funding body here, does…
When you say journals don't allow preprint, do you mean they don't let you publish if you've published on Arxiv? Can you not post the preprint and submit to a journal for peer review? Isn't that the best of both worlds?
If there are changes to your paper due to peer review, can you post the changes to Arxiv too later?
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#293Anyone here know Indian law and how it operates in real life? Why is she bullish on potentially winning the case? Is there a law in India that she is counting on? Or as I suspect she is counting on a sympathetic judge who might rule in her favor by finding some precedent from around the world. If say she does win how would the appeals process work?
> Why is she bullish on potentially winning the case? Is there a law in India that she is counting on? Or as I suspect she is counting on a sympathetic judge who might rule in her favor by finding some precedent from around the world. Yes. Indian courts have ruled that photocopying books isn’t copyright violation, i assume we can expect a similar judgement for copying research papers. from https://www.indialegallive.…
> "Copyright, specially in literary works, is thus not an inevitable, divine, or natural right that confers on authors the absolute ownership of their creations. It is designed rather to stimulate activity and progress in the arts for the intellectual enrichment of the public. Copyright is intended to increase and not to impede the harvest of knowledge. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors in order to benefit the public."
Jesus, what a beautiful opinion from the Delhi High Court. Go India.
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#294Could someone with knowledge of the matter explain why scientists still publish to these journals, and still sign up for access? It seems like as long as every university in the world can just switch to a blog a do away with publications, they'd save a lot of money, improve science, and reduce complexity overnight. Why are paid journals still a thing?
Sadly, there's no credible alternative to peer review, and nobody has come up with a good system to do that free. Preprint repositories are a start, but you then go on to publish so you can get citations etc. Alternatives are being built ( https://science-octopus.org/ ) but nothing with credibility and scale yet
Given that the actual reviewers of scientific works aren't paid, I'd say that the publishers like Springer and Elsevier came up with a pretty good system (first and foremost good for themselves, though) to do just that. ;)
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not true for most universities around the world. Only wealthy ones in first-world countries. All of my father’s academic colleagues in Mexico use Sci-Hub daily, and rely on it for access to literature. But beyond that, there are paywalled journals which Harvard does not subscribe to. There are journals which the University of California does not subscribe to. (Or pick your favorite university, and there will…
It's obscene that scientific literature is walled away from the public.
Previously publishers did improve the papers and checked them. Those times are long gone and it is questionable what their purpose might be today.
IP law has long been abused to stifle development instead of protecting it. In this case it might stifle scientific research.
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#296> “I thought Sci-Hub would become legal in a couple of years,” she said. “When the laws are obviously in the way of scientific development, they should be canceled.” Pretty much this. Elbakyan: builds library of Alexandria. Elsevier et al.: tries to burn it down.
When you think about it the legality of Uber or AirBnB was not so obvious from the start and still isn't. Maybe she thought Sci-Hub would have the same path.
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
One problem is that open access journals get paid by the author. So all so called predatory journals (not doing peer review, just taking the money and publishing the paper) are open access. Recently there was some hysteria about this, even if you publish by accident in one of those journals your career takes a very big dent.
It seems reasonable to me to pay a small one-time publication fee for an open access journal, to cover clerical and typesetting work (professional typesetting is important and expensive). Predatory journals exist and would exist independently of what the best practices of good journals are. I have received plenty of emails inviting me to submit work to predatory journals, but their low quality and lack of peer review…
> reasonable to me to pay a small one-time publication fee for an open access journal, to cover clerical and typesetting work
In my experience, the author typesets themselves anyway - the journal doesn’t do this. And the clerical work is done by community volunteers - the journal doesn’t do that either.
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Publishing papers in journals isn't about scientific development, it's about publish-persish. The issue is the journals suck-in the papers and then walled-garden them like they were their original research when they are simply the publisher. Academia needs to throw away for-profit journal publishers and leave it with social co-ops and nonprofits.
No. This is an example of “have your cake and eat it too”. Scientists want to publicize in a prestigious journal. Elsevier is prestigious. Elsevier charges a subscription fee. Other scientists can’t access it. So what scientists want is to be able to publish in the most prestigious journals and have free access to them. It’s like if I said “i want to be able to attend the most prestigious school but I don’t want to p…
> It’s like if I said “i want to be able to attend the most prestigious school but I don’t want to pay for it”.
I think it's interesting to note that in many European countries the top schools are free to attend.
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#299What will happen to research outside wealthy institutions if Sci-Hub shuts down? Are there alternatives?
Almost all papers are legally available from the researchers’ websites anyway. I’m not sure it’s the big deal everyone makes it out to be in the first place. I very very rarely find a paper I want is paywalled in the first place.
Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pessimistic. Long before sci-hub, library genesis and Alexandra there was ebook-club / library.nu and Smiley (its creator). When it closed it was described as the burning of the library of Alexandria. There were a lot of non-technical books on that site and it was amazing. Still, it lost the battle. Ultimately, sci-hub will unfortunately get the same end. Until the Scientific society stops maintaining the leeches…
If sci-hub goes down it will significantly disrupt nearly every scientific researcher, in every field, all over the world. After getting used to a world where every paper is obtainable, it would be very difficult for people to go back. I’m not really a scholar or academic per se, but the independent research I do (which involves skimming thousands of papers per year, 99% of which are irrelevant or useless) would be a…
If your peers thing that you need to cite the paper X because is relevant for the theme, you need to obtain it and pay for it. To decide to ignore parts of knowledge because you don't like its distribution mode is not an option.
The result will be less science, slower science and independent scientists being pushed out of the road. They would try to recruit them later under the ridiculous 'citizen scientists' category ('missionary scientists' would be an even better term), but this is what we have. Every single people trying to break monopolies or introduce changes for the benefit of the entire humanity in the past two decades has been laminated as a public warning for newcomers.