Slashdot Mirror
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/
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.
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.
Still wrong, actually it's http://sci-hub.io/
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?
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.
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?
Flag as Inappropriate
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.
Still, when the scientists use journals to communicate with the rest of the world, the contract they agree to is that any reader of their paper may have to pay a hefty fee to access the journal containing their paper.
You are again completely mistaken. Even the paid-for journals have long ago bowed to the inevitable and have a contract clause which allows academics to give away copies of their papers for free, provided it's the preprint formatting.
So you're arguing that pirating and distributing scientific papers has no impact on the bottom line (profit) of the journals?
I'm now arguing that you are arguing dishonestly.
You made comments about hurting the manufacturers and people who generated the IP. I pointed out how completely wrong that was and instead of recanting, you moved the goalposts and accused me of making a completely different argument.
You should admit that your first bunch of claims were completely incorrect.
Hopefully, the journals don't have exclusive rights to the papers that scientists publish.
They don't generally and it's possible to to an end run around that even if they want exclusive rights with a little care before.
Therefore, the scientists are free to publish another copy on the web for free, or a small fee.
A small fee?? Are you off your rocker? It's incredible how you have such very strong opinions on something you clearly know absolutely nothing about!
Only because you weren't charging money for it in the first place.
Er... yes? But it still makes your equating of piracy and theft completely wrong because I've given you a situation where you are demonstrably completely wrong and yet you keep arguing from a position of utter ignorance. It's almost as if youve already decided that piracy==theft is correct and no amount of evidence of situations where piracy has demonstrably different properties from theft is going to dent your attitude in the slightest.
If you were, you'd be screaming bloody murder.
Ah so you've come up with the brilliant tautology that if things were different then they would be different! I like how also without the slightest shred of evidence, you accuse me of being a hypocrite. That's literally ad-hom: you're a hypocrite so your arguments are invalid.
I have noticed that your arguments are full of logical fallacies (I pointed out some of them to you). You might now wish to examine why you have an almost religious fanatic-like adherence to your beliefs in this matter to the point where you resort to logical fallacies to try to prove an unprovable point.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Hey, how about instead of just assuming what I wrote, how about you do the me the courtesy of actually reading it rather then angrily giving rebuttals to things I never read.
But the paper being copied here by the Russian are post-print
That's irrelevant to your point about UP creators because the journals are not IP creators. How about you make a different point if you want rather than pretending you whether talking about IP creators. I don't really appreciate you pretending that I'm addressing a point you've so far failed to make.
You're the dishonest one here, claiming the journal publisher has no rights to profit because you should be able to access the papers for free.
I made no such claim.
Are you pissed you have spend a dollar on something valuable?
Wow not only are you ignorant, you don't even understand the depths of your ignorance. The idea of a researcher (i.e. me and all the academics I know ) charging a fee for a copy of a paper is so hilariously off base, that I don't even know where to begin. Entertainingly not only are you not someone who publishes papers, you don't even listen to someone who does, believing your own incorrect worldview instead and adding insults too because it's so far away from your understanding that apparently you cannot accept it.
You're applying this rare situation (researchers not making a profit on papers) to apply to all IP related products, which seems quite dishonest.Â
Ok you're just an idiot. Apparently you can't read so you just make shit up. I never claimed anything like what you seem to believe. The only person making unilateral claims is you. I'm merely pointing out a counterexample which demonstrates your unilateral claim is not correct in all cases.
Whatever you seem to believe, the IP creators are not hurt but infinite copying of their papers. In fact, a quite the opposite. The more the merrier when it comes to my papers.
SJW n. One who posts facts.