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Sci-Hub, a Site With Open and Pirated Scientific Papers
lpress writes: Sci-Hub is a Russian site that seeks to remove barriers to science by providing access to pirated copies of scientific papers. It was established in 2011 by Russian neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who could not afford papers she needed for her research and it now claims to have links to 48 million pirated and open papers. I tried it out and found some papers and not others, but it provides an alternative for researchers who cannot afford access to paid journals. After visiting this site, one cannot help thinking of the case of Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide as a result of prosecution for his attempt to free scientific literature.
At least the summary is realistic about this incident, and refers to it as a suicide.
I'm always astounded when this matter comes up at a place like Hacker News, and they twist it into "the state" or "the prosecutor" somehow being responsible for what Swartz voluntarily to himself, completely on his own. It's like his fanatics are trying to convert a suicide into some weird "murder" where the alleged "murderer" was not involved in any way. The delusion these people suffer from is just absurd.
this is the correct one http://www.sci-hub.io/
It's really just looting, right? Looters often find ways to justify what they do too, talking about greedy capitalists and store owners.
The problem with your straw-man is that MOST of the research referenced is often done on the public dime, then hidden away behind pay walls instead of given to the general public, who as stated, paid for it.
Now wait for someone to argue that open access to scientific papers does not advance the progress of science.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This is the kind of person/entity that has the balls to do what is right regardless of the penalty. A true hero. Maybe a stereotype has died today.
with books etc:
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
He didn't "commit suicide as a result of prosecution for his attempt to free scientific literature."
After a prior similar episode which earned him a visit from the FBI in which they told him they'd caught him doing something illegal, declined to prosecute him but warned him not to do it again......he trespassed repeatedly onto the MIT campus, into buildings, into network closets, where he installed unauthorized computers. He then worked to intentionally bypass the network registration system, and then further to avoid MIT's network engineering group as they tried to figure out where his equipment was installed.
His data-dumping efforts were so aggressive that they interfered with JSTOR services for thousands of researchers around the world; his 'free the research' stunt actually interfered with their ability to work. Despite bringing JSTOR's servers to its knees, he installed a second laptop because the first wasn't pulling data fast enough. JSTOR attempted to block his system, but he kept changing IP addresses to subvert the ban, and finally, JSTOR had no choice but to block the entire MIT network.
JSTOR is not some evil "take guvvmint-paid-for research and hide it behind a paywall." JSTOR is a service which archives journals and then provides storage and searching across them all, to institutions which could never afford the journal subscriptions themselves. They're not-for-profit. The fees they charge go directly to paying for the capital and operating expenses necessary for storing, cataloging, and making available for download, millions of papers - and the inherent overhead in doing so.
To what goal, I might add? He would have ended up with a directory of PDFs. Now what? They have to get indexed, a web UI needs to be made, someone has to pay for all that server hardware and bandwidth and electricity and the people to maintain it all. Maybe we could set up a non-profit organization to make that all happen?
Oh....wait...that's...JSTOR.
Does anyone now realize that his stunt was just that? A publicity stunt? A fucking tarball of PDFs doesn't help academic researchers. The whole point behind JSTOR was to collect research, store it, and make it available both at affordable rates and in an accessible way.
This was like going to the village cooperative farm chicken coop (where people pay a small fee to house, feed, and care for their chickens), blowing up the only bridge to the farm to stop the police from getting to you (but also keeping all the townspeople from getting to the eggs they need for food), throwing open the doors to let the chickens out, and then being proud of yourself for "freeing the chickens so everyone can have a chicken."
Let us be absolutely clear: there is extensive proof of all of his crimes, and nobody has argued he did not commit them. The argument from some has been that somehow these crimes were legitimate or honorable.
He was offered plea deals, and even if it had gone to trial - as a white-collar, white male criminal - he never would have received the maximum sentencing. People saying "he would have gone to jail for 40 years" clearly do not spend any time reading the news, because prosecutors almost always ask for maximum sentencing, and rarely do they get it, EVEN FOR MURDERERS. It's highly likely he would have been given little more than parole.
Lastly: Swartz had a history of mental illness and suicidal thoughts - some of it public and irrefutable. He did not commit suicide because he was prosecuted. He committed suicide because he had a history of suicidal thoughts.
Please help metamoderate.
I bet you also feel entitled to prevent others from reading books.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Still wrong, actually it's http://sci-hub.io/
Swartz was facing prosecution for his methods, not for his aims. He entered a wiring closet and impeded the ability of others in the library to do their work (while simultaneously creating a safety hazard in the hallway). Had he been intelligent about it and just used the connection in his office instead it would have taken marginally longer time but he wouldn't have been in anywhere near as much - if any - trouble.
He was either a fool, looking to bring attention to himself, or both.
For the rest of us, there is interlibrary loan - or going to the nearest public university library and using their resources responsibly.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Seems odd - we may agree that publications are very expensive (extremely might be better) to purchase, but pirating copyrighted material isn't something that should be condoned. And it definitely won't get the publishers to change their models as quickly as demanding further open access jourmals.
These shenigans of paywalls are bullshit.
It is ironic that for a system that is built on being "open" (Scientific) that the modern trend is for research to be "closed."
. /sarcasm Oh noes! We can't let anyone get the original data so that you can _replicate_ and _verify_ the results for yourself.
This is anti-Science by definition.
-- /Why does /. fuck up formatting when a new paragraph starts with "/" such as this one?
AAAAAAAND IT'S DOWN
Me. I read some.
It used to be easy: I was in academia and so was subscribed to basically everything. Now if I want to find out about something state of the art, it can be more difficult. Fortunately, many researchers also have a copy of their papers on a personal website.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This is the kind of person/entity that has the balls to do what is right regardless of the penalty. A true hero.
The woman and the site are Russian. So tell me what she has put at risk.
So why doesn't the public already own these papers? Why is copying and distributing these papers considered illegal?
The internet has been around for decades and publishing a pdf is damn easy. So why do these authors publish their papers through expensive journals instead of just uploading to slideshare.net or scribd?
Reputation. A publication in a highly respected journal is worth a great deal in terms of scientific career and grant funding. So if you can, you publish in a big journal so that you can get funding to continue your research and career.
> So why do these authors publish their papers through expensive journals instead of just uploading to slideshare.net or scribd?
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Because it affects their career track. Keeping your job, or getting promoted depends not just on publishing, but publishing in "high-impact" journals. Impact is the number of other papers that reference the ones in a given journal. The theory is that important and useful papers get referenced a lot. Prestigious journals like Science and Nature get to pick and choose what they publish, because everyone wants to get in them. Therefore they tend to maintain their "high impact" status. So an given author that gets published a lot in high impact journals is assumed to be doing better work than one that isn't. It's not a true measure of quality, but a statistical one that's easy to calculate, like a GPA. So long as their careers depend on it, they have a strong incentive to keep going to these journals.
That said, many authors make their papers available online *in addition* to publishing in a journal, and I have had good luck just emailing a paper's author and just asking for a copy. There is also a growing rebellion/boycott of the giant publishing houses that charge ridiculous prices for their journals.
And a web-based, cheap/free website providing peer-reviewing feature for papers is impossible? AFAIK, these journals have contributed little to deserve the high prices they demand -- the funding for the research comes from the public and research is performed by PhDs. The journals are just the middlemen between the authors and readers/other researchers.
'free ticket', 'free food', 'free movies' could not make some poor one become new Einstein but 'free book' does. Imagine every poor kids could have free education, attend the same school as you and perform much more excellent in studying than you (this system exists in .e.g, Scandinavian countries), then the world is much better place.
While some excellent scientists or students from 'third world' are 'pirated' by more wealthy countries, while these home countries paid the cost to train them. Yes, the world is benefited, because of by moving to better places these people could do better for their careers (and the world). You may have no problem with this, don't you?
Otherwise, in 'third world' (foreign) books, documents for studying either very expensive and/or are hard to reach. Not everyone could afford to go abroad to study, not mention rich kids, only the brightest *may* have a chance.
Free eduction, free books,... let people have equal opportunity not something like 'free travel' or 'free hotel' you mentioned.
The problem with your straw-man is that MOST of the research referenced is often done on the public dime, then hidden away behind pay walls instead of given to the general public, who as stated, paid for it.
That research is given to the general public. If it was funded by the NIH or NSF the manuscript has to posted online for free within 12 months of the original publication date.
While there is some merit to that argument, the reality is that not all of the stuff released was paid for by the government. I do not really hold much of an opinion on the subject other than this: Accept the consequences of your actions. If you are unwilling to accept the consequences, do not perform the action.
Accountability and responsibility are important things to me. It's one of the reasons that I try to avoid posting as an AC. I said it. I own it. I may be wrong. I will learn. I am accountable for my actions. Actions have consequences. If you are unwilling to accept the repercussions for your beliefs then they are not beliefs, they're suggestions.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Even for public research grants, the conditions everybody agrees on is that researchers and universities retain many rights; if the government wanted to retain all rights, it would have to pay more.
If they really believed in open documents, surely they would make the whole collection browseable or available in torrents? Instead from what I could see, it is a DOI search.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Besides the career advancement others have mentioned, another main reason is that peer review in mainstream journals performs a significant quality check on both the results and the clarity of communication. The system is not without its failures, and it does not work well every time, but by and large it works and it is better than any known alternative. Notice I have written mainstream journals. There are "peer-reviewed" journals out there that will publish anything. But, in any area of science it is generally known among scientists which journals follow good practices and which are junk.
Putting a manuscript online is easy nowadays. E.g., in many areas of natural sciences arXiv is a de-facto repository for nearly all papers published in the field. Papers often appear there many months before they appear in the journal. Yet it's rarely that a paper ends its life in arXiv. Most are submitted to journals, receive anonymous reviews, are revised (sometimes more than once), copyedited, and finally published. This can often be traced by several revisions of the manuscript in arXiv.
The problem we are dealing here is that running a journal and managing the editorial process (at the minimum, peer review and publication decisions) still costs money. These have to be recouped somehow. Hopefully it shakes down over the coming years and we'll have a better system than subscription-based journals that only universities can really afford.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
They probably would be the first to agree about this sorry state of affairs. Being "republican" by itself, of course naturally doesn't impoluy that they would be, but the narrowminded clique has swelled to gargantuan proportions within the republicans since these types always want to identify as "conservatives". They are of course aanything but, but you won't find as many of these close minded pinheads in the "opposing" parties. Really if you want to blame anything for the resurgence of Holocost denial, or the reurgence of.. you got it.. Flat earthers.. or climate change denial (a big one) then blame the internet.. a great big wacko delusion enabler...
Most Republicans are Holocaust Deniers.
It might have been more accurate to turn it around to say "Most holocost deniers are republicans"
Most research in the US and Western Europe is, in fact, privately financed.
Depends on your definition of research and the historical period. At its height (1960s), the US federal government grants accounted for 67% of science and engineering research, today it is closer to 31%. However, that 31% is critical: it makes possible the vast majority of long term research being done in basic science, government labs, and universities. This long term research is the foundation everybody else relies on: it's the most important research being done.
Further, there are often tax benefits to research, which means government grants are not the sole source of funding. The public also helps fund this research by the structure of patent law: by having consumers pay more for new and improved goods and services, the public is effectively paying for the research that led to the creation of the same. The "31%" thus hugely understates what the public is actually paying for research.
Even for public research grants, the conditions everybody agrees on is that researchers and universities retain many rights; if the government wanted to retain all rights, it would have to pay more.
The government is not paying for the research, it is giving out money. It is under no obligation to let the recipients do whatever they want on receipt of that money.
Further, you are suggesting that contract law should supersede the Bill of Rights, the highest law in the land. The right to access over the long term to public research is a consequence of the right to long term oversight over government, arising under and protected by the 9th Amendment.
In short, the US government does not have the legal authority to give away certain of those "many rights", especially over the long term.
As I understand it, while in the past people often forgot about this issue (the US legal profession has always had a sketchy relationship with the 9th Amendment), that loophole has been closed and now government funded studies must be freely available a year after initial publication.
Too bad Edward Snowden and Julian Assange don't have the balls to follow his fine example.
Why would they want to kill Aron Swarz?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.