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Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

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Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#371

Post by IlliOnato »

jacobolus wrote: post #261
wtmt wrote: post #252

No, she’s not in real trouble this time. What seems to be in trouble is getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time. The courts here in India are notoriously slow on many cases. Depending on luck, the hearings don’t even start for a long time after an initial notice is sent to defendants. If the publishers are able to push the court for an earlier hearing, we’ll know how soon…

> getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time Sci-Hub is just as relevant as ever. What has happened is that paywalled papers published in 2021 are losing a substantial proportion of their readers and potential citations, and their future impact will be depressed compared to papers from previous years. Even when Sci-Hub starts adding papers again, there may be a significant p…

I am curious about this. Isn't it the case that most interesting new articles are available on ArXiv or one of the newer preprint repositories that seem now to pop up every day (often with funny names such as engrXiv or Frenxiv)?

Did people really stopped reading arXiv, like they stopped reading journals, and moved on to Sci-Hub completely?

Or the final published versions are substantially different from preprint versions often enough to make Sci-Hub is so important?

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#372

Post by a_bonobo »

stavros wrote: post #292
a_bonobo wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, some journals will desk-reject your submission if it's on arxiv/biorxiv.

If you not post the preprint and submit, you're defeating the purpose of preprints, isn't it? We're back to square one!

Normally yeah, people submit an updated preprint based on peer reviewers' comments. Biorxiv has a nice 'see the newest version of this paper' button for that.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#373

Post by detaro »

IlliOnato wrote: post #371
jacobolus wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> getting new papers on to Sci-Hub and it becoming a little bit less relevant over time Sci-Hub is just as relevant as ever. What has happened is that paywalled papers published in 2021 are losing a substantial proportion of their readers and potential citations, and their future impact will be depressed compared to papers from previous years. Even when Sci-Hub starts adding papers again, there may be a significant p…

I am curious about this. Isn't it the case that most interesting new articles are available on ArXiv or one of the newer preprint repositories that seem now to pop up every day (often with funny names such as engrXiv or Frenxiv)? Did people really stopped reading arXiv, like they stopped reading journals, and moved on to Sci-Hub completely? Or the final published versions are substantially different from preprint ver…

> Isn't it the case that most interesting new articles are available on ArXiv

No, that's not the case outside a few subfields.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#374

Post by acomar »

revscat wrote: post #232
acomar wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's one industry while others stand to reduce costs if she succeeds. the relatively warm welcome she receives here should indicate how willing other bourgeois segments are to support her platform. free access to information is not by itself anticapitalist, though it sure does make it easier. but recuperation is ever a threat (free software vs open source for a topical example).

When she fails — and she will — ask yourself why she failed. The answer will be couched in legal tenets, but the underlying fact remains that the intent of the law is to protect existing capital, at all costs. This is true from Washington to Beijing, from London to Johannesburg.

this is a poor analysis. different factions of capital frequently go to war with each other - always over the question of who gets to profit. (in fact, in the final analysis, these irreconcileable schisms within the bourgeoisie are a necessary, though insufficient, precursor to revolution.)

I agree with you that she will probably fail but I think that's more about this project moreso than whether this project hurts capital. remember, the true point of vulnerability of the system is the point at which wages are paid and profits are earned. labor must strike to starve capital because anything else can be recuperated and commidified.

lastly, yes, the intent of the law is to preserve existing capital, but as this board can attest, "existing capital" is a term constantly in flux, and laws change quickly to support the changing makeup of capital. otherwise, what has happened with uber would be impossible as governments fought to protect taxi companies - this happened but now uber no longer resides in a gray area. you'll note that what actually happened here was that finance capital extended it's reach and no new capital was actually created - it merely changed forms. that should also tell you how scihub might go from blacksheep of the bourgeois family to darling, especially once it's purchased and brought under the aegis of existing capital entities. however, for this to happen, Alexandra must play ball with investors, the legal system, etc., and as she has thus far resisted doing so, she will likely fail. projects like hers must either have secret and undiscoverable provenance, or be so distributed that legal force can only be brought to bear on a multitude of actors of no significance to the operation of the project - the hydra with many heads.

so it's not legal tenets I look to but rather an analysis of capital itself.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#375

Post by refurb »

krastanov wrote: post #345
refurb wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open access is not fairly standard. In my area (chemistry) there is no requirement and people stick to the paid journals. Why? Because of the prestige, which was my point all along. Despite all the complaints of being "predatory", people still submit to those journals and volunteer their time. Why? Stockholm Syndrome? No. "Inertia"? No. It's because they get something they can't get out of open source journals - a pu…

OK, so you are both negatively affected by the bad status quo and at the same time rant against the people that try to change it. What is the point of that behavior? Why are you yourself not trying to help these people change the status quo?

No, my point is: 1) the journals aren't the problem, the requirement to publish in them is and 2) until the incentives change, scientists won't move away from those journals.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#376

Post by candiodari »

markus92 wrote: post #367
netizen-936824 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a researcher, I'm not sure why you didn't have a preprint copies as all other authors I have met did.

Wasn’t at home, don’t have them in my Dropbox.

I think they meant, why not upload then on arXiv.org

See https://arxiv.org/help/submit. That will make your paper easily accessible to all. And, of course, to yourself, wherever you are.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#377

Post by dredmorbius »

danohuiginn wrote: post #282
ajb wrote: post #30

Given how beneficial sci-hub is, there ought to be some way that the scientific community can formally recognise this, as a way of legitimizing her cause. Some ways I can think of: * Get her elected as rector of a university. Contraversial figures are sometimes elected as Rector, at least in the UK, because students are the electorate. However for the same reason this isn't considered especially prestigious by people…

From the article: [Publishers claim sites like Sci-Hub] “have no incentive to ensure the accuracy of scientific articles, no incentive to ensure published papers meet ethical standards, and no incentive to retract or correct articles if issues arise.” The correct response to this should be to always note in citations when a paper was accessed through sci-hub. Then the reader is warned, and can compare against the can…

Sci-Hub is a library, a repository, not a publisher. The original article publisher has editorial responsibility for article selection, not Sci-Hub, just as with any repository.

The accuracy of articles themselves and the integrity of them is trivial to establish as SciHub, LibGen, and ZLibrary all index principally on checksums of files. If there's a modification, the checksums will reveal which items are affected.

Note the MD5 hash provided for Stephen Breyer's seminal article "The Uneasy Case for Copyright" (1970): 8F8B57972236B04621795C49A15E8C2E

http://libgen.rs/scimag/10.2307%2F1339714

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#378

Post by caleb-allen »

pieter_mj wrote: post #330
kzrdude wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honorary doctorate, maybe?

Elbakyan's contribution to humanity is way bigger than that and cannot be overstated. An honorary doctorate from many major international universities, maybe. Her effort deserves to be rewarded with the nobel peace prize, imsvho.

I attempted an undergraduate degree in the US and dropped out after 2 years because I struggled in the context and hadn't learned the discipline I needed to get through each semester.

Since then, I've become so enthusiastic about academia in large part because of sci-hub. For all my interests I can find papers and access them with no institutional affiliation. I've learned how I learn, gained valuable research skills, and am planning on re-applying to finish a bachelor's degree!

Although I come from a place of privilege I owe a great debt to sci hub. I can't imagine how critical it is for those outside my bubble, where institutions might not have great access in the first place.

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#379

Post by meej »

markus92 wrote: post #355
IshKebab wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For researchers in most universities almost every paper is obtainable without scihub.

I’m a researcher at a first world university. I used sci-hub to pirate my own papers cus we did not have a subscription to the journal anymore. I’m not paying $39 to read my own work!

Does your institution's library not offer interlibrary loan?

Re: Is Alexandra Elbakyan in real trouble this time?

#380

Post by kirillzubovsky »

pvaldes wrote: post #354
kirillzubovsky wrote: post #238

Could 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?

Because a high Impact Index value is required to obtain grants later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor Therefore is a captive customer case. And captive here has the same meaning as slave. If you don't work for free for some journals, basically you can't have a scientist career. In higher levels articles are not enough and you need to consider seriously to write a book for Elsevier or somebody else. And th…

This is so sad. You'd think that IF would be calculated by how much value the paper created, but instead it seems like a popularity contest. Maybe made sense in 1975 when it was started, given the low volume and high friction of distribution at the time, but in the age of the internet, it makes no sense.
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