Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub • Hacker News Board

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#91

Post by theptip » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

balfirevic wrote: post #90

lsh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the system is bad and needs to be destroyed The system needs to be reformed, and that is currently happening, peacefully. Perhaps not everywhere at once and perhaps not as quickly as you might prefer, but open access publishing has made great strides in just a few short years. This doesn't liberate the millions (probably) of academic articles whose authors relinquished their copyright to big publishers, but it…

Did you read the slate star codex article? Please don't miss-characterize it, it doesn't talk at all about going Mad Max in any way. Just wanted to mention this for anyone who might read your comment and has not read the article.

I was just about to post words to this effect. The article is quite clearly making an argument for a small amount of violation of laws (but not too much). The claim is that 100% adherence to laws could be suboptimal, as that would prevent us from escaping from local maxima in the utility function.

> I would want the laws to carry some force beyond just the barrel of a gun – a high trust society with consistent institutions is really important, and the more people follow the law without being watched the less incentive there is to create a police state. But I also wouldn’t want to live [where every law is enforced 100% of the time]...

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#92

Post by crtasm » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

paulhilbert wrote: post #68

zaarn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short Elsevier. The movie industry has it's fair share of copyright protectionism (DRM is popular) and same goes for gaming. Elsevier is worse. They get paid by scientists so they publish their papers. They get paid massive amounts of money by universities (sometimes even the same that paid the scientist) to be granted access to research. Research largely funded by tax money. Research results that had already been…

I read this quite often and frankly do not understand it. How is Elsevier worse than ACM, IEEE or Springer? I found them to be equally intolerable but still Elsevier gets routinely picked as the prime example...

Elsevier are disliked for litigation against scihub+libgen, IIRC? Also might be noteworthy that they have a long controversies section on their wikipedia page (including lots of things I'd never read about until now) while Springer and IEEE have none listed.

I couldn't find ACM, what does it stand for?

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#93

Post by Fins » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #85

Fins wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her viewpoint contradicts pretty much everything that is good and decent in the world (and really, being a communist in XXI century is just as inspiring as being a neonazi). Sci-hub is there to "expropriate the expropriators" in Lenin's words. That there is some wider benefit to the community is completely secondary.

> Sci-hub is there to "expropriate the expropriators" in Lenin's words. That there is some wider benefit to the community is completely secondary. While you can see my opinion on her personality above I still think you going into extremes regarding the project itself. Keep in mind that she is just end up being face of the project, but there more people working on it, and maintaining Library Genesis too, and dealing w…

> but there more people working on it, and maintaining Library Genesis too, and dealing with risk of getting into prison for the service they provide to everyone.

So... one could go to prison for doing something that is explicitly illegal in most countries of the world, just so that the "face of the project" can preen about "standing up to the West", and fighting foreign enemies of the people, with the only risk to her being that Putin suddenly does a 180 and she's too slow on the uptake... Or one could, say, work on a viable long-term solution. Maybe setting up a wiki-like, peer-reviewed alternative publication scheme or something.

While the project does provide some benefit (which is not Elbakyan's goal), I just believe that the problem should be solved in an entirely different way -- you should start at the publishing side, not distribution side.

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#94

Post by Fins » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

Mononokay wrote: post #86

Fins wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "directly benefits a vast portion of the world's population" is a vast exaggeration. And when Russian scientists (real ones, not the ones who write fake dissertations for Putin's ministers) needed that benefit (science in Russia isn't exactly well funded) she yanked the access in the entire country because some of them dared to support someone Putin had targeted. Sorry, don't see the upside or even much ethic…

> I think "directly benefits a vast portion of the world's population" is a vast exaggeration. How exactly does it not? There are more college-aged people than ever, and a good portion of them wouldn't have access to a substantial amount of research without Sci-Hub. Similarly, there are more pre-collegiate students than ever who are interested in research. Both of these groups directly benefit from having it. Indirec…

THat's still not what I would call vast. Vast would be far more mundane stuff, like providing clean water and medicine. Not to say that access to research publications is not important, but there are great differences in magnitude.

Demonstrably? I would say that being a communist, in this century, when you can't even pretend that "you did not know" like fellow travelers in 1950's did is a pretty good indication. Her stated goal of "standing up to the West" (which is far from perfect, but really much better than any alternative) and supporting strongmen like Putin (apparently she's also quite fond of characters like Saddam or Qaddafi, too) who do so, to the point of directly and intentionally hurting the very scientists that her project allegedly supports points in that direction, too.

I just really don't get all the hero worship on someone who, at no risk to herself (she's no Edward Snowden or even Aaron Swartz), wants to stick it to the very people who support her. That effort would be far better spent on setting a real alternative publication system.

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#95

Post by SXX » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 7:34 PM UTC

Fins wrote: post #93

SXX wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sci-hub is there to "expropriate the expropriators" in Lenin's words. That there is some wider benefit to the community is completely secondary. While you can see my opinion on her personality above I still think you going into extremes regarding the project itself. Keep in mind that she is just end up being face of the project, but there more people working on it, and maintaining Library Genesis too, and dealing w…

> but there more people working on it, and maintaining Library Genesis too, and dealing with risk of getting into prison for the service they provide to everyone. So... one could go to prison for doing something that is explicitly illegal in most countries of the world, just so that the "face of the project" can preen about "standing up to the West", and fighting foreign enemies of the people, with the only risk to h…

Yes they doing illegal things, her goals might be horrible or or awful and you might have right ideas. Problem is that all around the globe scientist need this problem solved ASAP and they need access to papers today, right now.

It's enough that few companies like Disney absolutely abused copyright. Yet we can live with it as long as it's just entertainment. Ok, they also put some horrible broken crap like DRM and DMCA and bunch of other things in our lives. Still it's not very important and might be after 10 years it's will be fixed somehow.

This is not the case for science. I can't even explain how wrong it could be to delay progress for years until "proper solution" is there. It's simply not acceptable. Sci-Hub might be illegal crutch, but it's important to have it.

I think good analogy for Sci-Hub would be Uber. It's might be absolutely hateful company for many here on HN that break every rule imaginable. Yet it's significally improved quality of life for millions of people and pushed taxi companies all around the globe to improve service.

PS: Also if you live in the US you might truly don't understand problems Sci-Hub solve, but there are people in ex-USSR who doing science on salary of $300 / month and they have no budget whatsoever on any papers. It's that bad. Yet some of these people still contribute.

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#96

Post by Fins » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

SXX wrote: post #95

Fins wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but there more people working on it, and maintaining Library Genesis too, and dealing with risk of getting into prison for the service they provide to everyone. So... one could go to prison for doing something that is explicitly illegal in most countries of the world, just so that the "face of the project" can preen about "standing up to the West", and fighting foreign enemies of the people, with the only risk to h…

Yes they doing illegal things, her goals might be horrible or or awful and you might have right ideas. Problem is that all around the globe scientist need this problem solved ASAP and they need access to papers today, right now. It's enough that few companies like Disney absolutely abused copyright. Yet we can live with it as long as it's just entertainment. Ok, they also put some horrible broken crap like DRM and DM…

Being from exUSSR, and knowing quite a few people who are trying to do science there, I would say that the whole Dynasty incident perfectly demonstrates what Sci-Hub (or Elbakyan at least, but she's Sci-Hub's public face, so same difference...) is about. Progress of humankind it ain't.

I also don't think this is the case when ends justify the means. But stealing is much easier than trying to change copyright laws, let alone setting up a proper alternative publishing system, so there we have it.

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#97

Post by Myrmornis » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #60

Myrmornis wrote: post #31

I'm 100% in favour of sci-hub. However, note that they are very anarchic when it comes to commercial books, not just journal articles! E.g. from the Sci-Bay search results, this is $131 on amazon.com, and quite possibly the authors do want the royalties. [BOOK] Intelligent optimisation techniques: genetic algorithms, tabu search, simulated annealing and neural networks D Pham, D Karaboga - 2012 - books.google.com ...…

I believe people in academia are paid to write these books anyways, so they might as well not receive the royalties. As a prospective academic myself, I find it unethical.

Yeah, that's not really how it works. See dagw's sibling reply, and note that there's a continuum between academic monographs that would only ever be in university libraries, to popular science books, in between which is a large textbook market, and note that you can download all the above for free right now from libgen. And I am not moralizing. It's an amazing free resource! Transformative for people in nations at an economic disadvantage, and transformative for people in the first world too -- it would cost thousands of dollars or hours of inefficient library visits to be able to consult such a breadth of resources. I just don't know how exactly we/society should think of this.

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#98

Post by neurocline » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 10:42 PM UTC

crtasm wrote: post #92

paulhilbert wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this quite often and frankly do not understand it. How is Elsevier worse than ACM, IEEE or Springer? I found them to be equally intolerable but still Elsevier gets routinely picked as the prime example...

Elsevier are disliked for litigation against scihub+libgen, IIRC? Also might be noteworthy that they have a long controversies section on their wikipedia page (including lots of things I'd never read about until now) while Springer and IEEE have none listed. I couldn't find ACM, what does it stand for?

Association for Computing Machinery. Theoretically everyone in the computer science field is not just aware of them but is a member :)

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#99

Post by gkya » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 10:46 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #64

gkya wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe people in academia are paid to write these books anyways, so they might as well not receive the royalties. As a prospective academic myself, I find it unethical.

I believe people in academia are paid to write these books anyways While that does occasionally happen, it's definitely not true in general. The people I know who wrote academic books did so by taking a sabbatical from their university job and/or working evenings and weekends for the actual writing. Occasionally they can apply for a separate writing grant to cover their lost salary, but that's completely separate fro…

What I meant was their job is to author such books. Not that they should be paid separately for them. Depending on the country academicians might be underpaid, but that's an issue on its own.

Re: Sci-Bay: Google Scholar plus Sci-Hub

#100

Post by gkya » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

Myrmornis wrote: post #97

gkya wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe people in academia are paid to write these books anyways, so they might as well not receive the royalties. As a prospective academic myself, I find it unethical.

Yeah, that's not really how it works. See dagw's sibling reply, and note that there's a continuum between academic monographs that would only ever be in university libraries, to popular science books, in between which is a large textbook market, and note that you can download all the above for free right now from libgen. And I am not moralizing. It's an amazing free resource! Transformative for people in nations at a…

I believe we should fund most of it through the academicians wage. And if that resource is deemed too low for them at its current value in a certain country, increasing it is a better solution than trying to add extra rewards for things like books.