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Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

bjoern.brembs.net

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Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#41

Post by mirimir »

onikolas wrote: post #40

Worth noting: Many authors will be happy to email you a copy of their paper. People understand that not everyone's library can pay the hundreds of thousands needed for subscription fees. Research Gate has this functionality built in. Also, everyone likes to be cited :) Being easy to circumvent is a big reason why these for profit journals still exist.

True, but I doubt that would scale, for popular papers that got press coverage. Authors could automate, of course. But do for-profit journals limit reprint distribution?

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#42

Post by mirimir »

_lm_ wrote: post #34

I wonder if closed-access publishing is part of why academia seems so insluated from the "real world". People write for their audience, and if the general public can't read academic papers, then academics are going to write as if only other academics are reading. Likewise, if research output is difficult to access, the feedback loop between ideas and implementation is broken; folks outside academia can't easily comme…

Well, it's arguable that most non-expert commentary will be meaningless.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#43

Post by mirimir »

Bakary wrote: post #35
_lm_ wrote: post #34

I wonder if closed-access publishing is part of why academia seems so insluated from the "real world". People write for their audience, and if the general public can't read academic papers, then academics are going to write as if only other academics are reading. Likewise, if research output is difficult to access, the feedback loop between ideas and implementation is broken; folks outside academia can't easily comme…

Scientific output is often misrepresented by the media and misinterpreted by large portions of the public. This contributes a lot to the issue you've outlined. Another problem is that even if all the research in the world were freely available, only a small portion of the population would still seek it out.

> Scientific output is often misrepresented by the media ...

Indeed, it's often misrepresented by science writers.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#44

Post by aaron-lebo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #33
aaron-lebo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perhaps biased belief is they aren't any real constraint. Closed journals do have more power than they should, but they are also an effective signaling mechanism: if something is in X you know it's worth paying attention to over the hundreds of thousands of other papers that will get pushed out every year. My personal academic experience has been that as the lowliest student at a uni you get access to everything a…

I'm not asking how students (and in particular undergrads), or the public are to get access to materials published in journals, but how academics or professionals gain access to publication venues. These are two entirely different matters. You'll also find that the question of who controls the mafia itself is of utmost significance to those who control the mafia. Your comment is rather wide the point.

What's the problem? Academics and professionals get published by submitting their papers to publication venues. It's really not that difficult to get published as long as you've got something interesting to say.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#45

Post by [deleted] »

crispinb wrote: post #24
aaron-lebo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perhaps biased belief is they aren't any real constraint. Closed journals do have more power than they should, but they are also an effective signaling mechanism: if something is in X you know it's worth paying attention to over the hundreds of thousands of other papers that will get pushed out every year. My personal academic experience has been that as the lowliest student at a uni you get access to everything a…

I don't know what country you're in, but here in Australia I have known people have to travel hundreds of kilometres to get access to the latest research. If a wide range of papers are needed this can be cheaper than paying per-article, but is still an extremely expensive method of access to research which (a) we are forced through taxation to partly pay for, and (b) is surprisingly often required (eg. environmental…

[deleted]

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#46

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

Grue3 wrote: post #38

She is a [redacted] Putin supporter. Supports Russian invasion of Ukraine as well. Hell, the whole thing is probably financed by Russian government. "Folk hero", my ass.

Can this be sourced? Googling this takes me to, well, other Hacker News comments.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#47

Post by mirimir »

Grue3 wrote: post #38

She is a [redacted] Putin supporter. Supports Russian invasion of Ukraine as well. Hell, the whole thing is probably financed by Russian government. "Folk hero", my ass.

Any support for Russia and Putin are orthogonal to her work with Sci-Hub.

But given that you brought it up, I gotta say that broad support for Putin is entirely understandable. Russia has been through hell. Millions killed during WWII. Bankrupted by the Cold War. Humiliated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. To many Russians, he is a hero.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#48

Post by mirimir »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #46
Grue3 wrote: post #38

She is a [redacted] Putin supporter. Supports Russian invasion of Ukraine as well. Hell, the whole thing is probably financed by Russian government. "Folk hero", my ass.

Can this be sourced? Googling this takes me to, well, other Hacker News comments.

There are cites in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11180762

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

Grue3 wrote: post #38

She is a [redacted] Putin supporter. Supports Russian invasion of Ukraine as well. Hell, the whole thing is probably financed by Russian government. "Folk hero", my ass.

[citation needed]

Also, even if it was, so what? SciHub is literally raining tasty science on the researchers worldwide, improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their work everywhere, including in the US. Political affiliations of the site are really not much relevant to anything.

Re: Sci-Hub as Necessary, Effective Civil Disobedience

#50

Post by zzo38computer »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #12
dredmorbius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is: where do you place control of that gate, and what consequences derive from that. Counterpoint: if closed-access journals are no longer the constraint, how does that change the overall academic landscape? For better or worse? Information filters will remain, and they will remain imperfect.

My perhaps biased belief is they aren't any real constraint. Closed journals do have more power than they should, but they are also an effective signaling mechanism: if something is in X you know it's worth paying attention to over the hundreds of thousands of other papers that will get pushed out every year. My personal academic experience has been that as the lowliest student at a uni you get access to everything a…

Not everyone who is doing such academic or is interested in such thing will be in any university anyways; anyone might, whether they are the scientist or mathematician or whatever or if not.

There are the people (including myself too) who will wish to read and to learn these thing even if not in any university and all of those "arbitrary restrictions and rituals". That way, you can learn more rather than being restricted.

The tenure should not be necessary either, to do. Anyone do.

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