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A World Without Sci-Hub

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Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#71

Post by mandmandam »

nefitty wrote: post #60
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.

Not sure what your agenda is, but you're clearly ignoring the uniquely fashy things China and Russia are doing.

You can question my agenda all you like, though I think it's against the 'guidelines' here.

But the fact is that the world agrees with me. More people on this planet think that America is more dangerous to democracy, peace and stability than Russia or China, or Iran, or Pakistan.

Thank you for the vivid illustration of my point though. I had nearly added a line about how deflection kicks in like an automatic reflex the second America's superiority is questioned, but kept it short and sweet.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#73

Post by advael »

hoseja wrote: post #72

>the cause of open access to information enjoys broad support in (...) the machine learning field Ah yes, as shown by the example of OpenAI.

A name that is ironic in the same way as the "academic publishing industry" (as mentioned in the article)

OpenAI's weird insistence that its "open" research only be accessible to entities it trusts not to do harm with it (like... Microsoft of course!) is indicative of a divide between academic research and corporate research that exists in all fields. While there are serious concerns about AI risk, when I hear it in a corporate context, it always seems to be a thin veneer of affected concern painted over an all-too-familiar drive to keep innovation under lock and key

When talking about ML's preference for open access, the article was probably referring to the fact that ML literature is overwhelmingly published on arXiv or similarly open-access places (even if it's also published elsewhere) compared to most fields. Personally, I think this is strictly because it's a relatively new field without as many entrenched norms

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#74

Post by jonathanstrange »

sam0x17 wrote: post #20

As scientists, we need to stop citing papers that are behind a paywall. That is the only way this will end without external intervention e.g. actual regulation outlawing certain aspects of the pay-walls.

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.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#75

Post by jonathanstrange »

balsam wrote: post #68
jonathanstrange wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are in an extreme minority, although this may vary from discipline to discipline. In my area you can count fully open access journals on one hand and they play no notable role yet. All top journals are closed access with expensive "open access" publication fees (ca. 3,000 USD per article). Most of them are Springer and Oxford Journals, others are Elsevier.

Can I guess, your area is experimental science/engineering? I notice that in the more theoretical fields (theoretical physics,math,CS,stats) the open access channels are on par with the paywalled ones. Curious as to why. Perhaps its more expensive to replicate results, perhaps the fees are nothing compared to what you pay for the labour and equipment..

No, it's philosophy. I believe theoretical physics and math are special, as you recognize, because they need a lot of additional vetting. My work is mostly in formal philosophy, which does involve a bit of math, and I'm constantly worried the reviewers might not spot a mistake and send it to colleagues for additional checking. This must be a hundred times more pressing in math and physics, so they developed open archives. As for CS, the reason for more open access archives may be a bit different. My personal impression from reading many CS papers is that 90% of publications are garbage whose only purpose is to satisfy some publication requirements. There is also a lot of repetition by authors. That's in my view understandable since many funding authorities also expect fancy prototype systems and concrete implementations, and computer scientists have only 7 days a week to achieve all this. So in CS hurdles for publication are kept low by having a lot of proceedings and open access journals and archives.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#76

Post by hoseja »

advael wrote: post #66
mach1ne wrote: post #48

The core issue is that journals offer standard. People don't like to bother with checking every paper's reputability with a magnifying glass, and the reputation of the journal gives a shortcut around that. It's editorial work which gives the competitive edge. Now, of course scientists could run a reputable journal for free or on donations. However, once you have achieved a reputable status with your journal, it becom…

I think this does more harm than good. If there's anything we should have learned from the replication crisis of 2014, a decent amount of "generated" or "satirical" papers scandals, and an essentially constant stream of retractions, merely being published in a prestigious journal is not a great heuristic for whether a result holds up or the methodology was sound. People who want to seriously assess a paper need to re…

It's a terrible heuristic, but it's one that is used for a LOT of funding decisions. "You want money? Show me how many papers in Nature you have."

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#77

Post by squiggleblaz »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #26

> it seems clear that in the absence of the academic publishing industry, scholarship would be more widely available, not less I am thinking of the newspaper industry. Their paywalls didn't work (most of them). Now, there is a lot more news of worse quality. It gives me pause. It almost seems like a near perfect state — a world where Sci-Hub exists and the academic publishing industry. It's like having a thriving rec…

A world without an academic publishing industry is not a world without academics who group together and agree to coordinate peer review of new research. The difference between that world and this world is basically you get PDFs that have the default LaTeX template instead of the default Elsevir template. But you still downloaded it from the website of a group who coordinates peer reviews.

The difference between academic publishing and news publishing is that academic funding is separate from academic publishing funding. This means it is quite natural that you should have a website hosing content without ads or personal data sinks, so that the reputable publishers are more attractive than the non-reputable ones. (Funding or promotions are often given to people who have respected publications, but it's a separate process involving peer judgement. Impact is measured not by views, but by references - useless pseudoscientific research that would do well in the advertising market is kept separate.)

Moreover, the audience is completely different. Because they're not selling ad space, it doesn't matter if they get ten readers or ten thousand. Ordinary scientific literature is difficult to read for someone who hasn't been doing it since they were 18. News media is completely different: they are fundamentally funded by advertising (both in the preonline days and now), which means they need to maximise their audience.

In any case, we have the same problem now - so the same risk exist. Right now, it's much cheaper to produce fake scientific research, and if there's any appetite for it, it's now, when there's paywalls and unreasonable fees. If you could make a profit from distributing fake research, you should be doing it right now (and arguing for strong protection of IP), instead of waiting for the day when real research is less hamstrung than fake research in terms of distribution.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#78

Post by hoseja »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #69
Vinnl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I volunteer for a project [1] where the idea of "cutting out the middle man" is taken even further: removing the journal from the reputation transfer. So rather than a reviewer lending their reputation to a journal, and that journal then conferring a stamp of trustworthiness onto an academic work, reviewers lend their reputation directly to the works they review. The works themselves can still be shared far and wide,…

This is looks like a horrible idea. The system violates anonymous peer reviewing standards. These are sometimes even mandated by law, e.g. our funding institution would not allow us to count such a publication as "peer reviewed." There are many good reasons why peer review needs to be anonymous on both ends (the reviewer is anonymous and the manuscript is anonymized). Many reputable journals have even switched to tri…

I'm sure if you applied blockchain and crypto enough times, this could be solved in some byzantine and massively inefficient way.

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#79

Post by advael »

hoseja wrote: post #76
advael wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this does more harm than good. If there's anything we should have learned from the replication crisis of 2014, a decent amount of "generated" or "satirical" papers scandals, and an essentially constant stream of retractions, merely being published in a prestigious journal is not a great heuristic for whether a result holds up or the methodology was sound. People who want to seriously assess a paper need to re…

It's a terrible heuristic, but it's one that is used for a LOT of funding decisions. "You want money? Show me how many papers in Nature you have."

And that's the rub, isn't it? Once a player like Nature or Elsevier can entrench itself in the process by which the other institutions function (Like being gatekeepers on the government's merit metrics for funding), they can route around the fact that nearly every working academic doesn't actually want to support their business model by effective fiat

Personally, I think it's always a mistake to build a business into government policy. It uses the government to protect the business from the free market, and the business to protect the government from public influence or public transparency

Re: A World Without Sci-Hub

#80

Post by squiggleblaz »

mdp2021 wrote: post #54
dr_dshiv wrote: post #26

> it seems clear that in the absence of the academic publishing industry, scholarship would be more widely available, not less I am thinking of the newspaper industry. Their paywalls didn't work (most of them). Now, there is a lot more news of worse quality. It gives me pause. It almost seems like a near perfect state — a world where Sci-Hub exists and the academic publishing industry. It's like having a thriving rec…

The declining quality of journalism comes from cultural tolerance of bad quality - otherwise, they could just have remained unpublished. In some Countries, newspapers receive public funding yet may not reach thresholds of quality for public use (in many top industrialized countries the press has disappointing international official raking). Similarly, the interest towards openly accessible research results is public.

> In some Countries, newspapers receive public funding yet may not reach thresholds of quality for public use (in many top industrialized countries the press has disappointing international official raking).

I assume "raking" is a typo for "ranking", but I'm still not sure I understand your point.

The only official rankings for newspapers I'm aware of is circulation. Are you saying that a newspaper from say Ireland or Lithuania is of does not reach thresholds of quality for public use because they have a smaller target market than Fox News or Bild? (I doubt that's what you mean, but I can't identify an alternative meaning.)

What actually is a threshold of quality for public use?

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