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Who's Downloading Pirated Scientifc Papers? Everyone (sciencemag.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the mom-and-pop-one-stop-shop dept.

sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: In increasing numbers, researchers around the world are turning to Sci-Hub, the controversial website that hosts 50 million pirated papers and counting. Now, with server log data from Alexandra Elbakyan, the neuroscientist who created Sci-Hub in 2011 as a 22-year-old graduate student in Kazakhstan, Science addresses some basic questions: Who are Sci-Hub's users, where are they, and what are they reading? The Sci-Hub data provide the first detailed view of what is becoming the world's de facto open-access research library. Among the revelations that may surprise both fans and foes alike: Sci-Hub users are not limited to the developing world. Some critics of Sci-Hub have complained that many users can access the same papers through their libraries but turn to Sci-Hub instead -- for convenience rather than necessity. The data provide some support for that claim. Over the 6 months leading up to March, Sci-Hub served up 28 million documents, with Iran, China, India, Russia, and the United States the leading requestors.

89 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't the idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't the idea that you can pirate scientific papers sort of anti-knowledge?

    1. Re:Isn't the idea by VernonNemitz · · Score: 2

      I wonder how much of the user data was skewed by the Slashdot Effect, or some equivalent thereof.

    2. Re:Isn't the idea by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't the idea that you can pirate scientific papers sort of anti-knowledge?

      No, what's anti-knowledge is the idea that research papers can be locked up behind paywalls. As a scientist, the intellectual property you worked years to create is your research itself. The paper is just a formal description of it, and that paper should be free to the world so that your peers can review it and, by building on your work, appreciate and honor your efforts.

    3. Re:Isn't the idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think that's what they meant, that it's anti-knowledge to consider this 'piracy'. As a publishing academic, I agree, scientific papers are created to be shared so that they can be assessed, critiqued and improved by others, and to be available for contributing to the public good.

    4. Re: Isn't the idea by jenningsthecat · · Score: 1

      ... Also no, not anti-knowledge. Having access to knowledge is pro-knowledge. I don't know how you could make that mistake.

      Parent wasn't being sarcastic or ironic, yet I'm sure you must have heard a very loud 'whoosh!' as you wrote your post. You might want to try reading more carefully there, sport.

      --
      'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
    5. Re:Isn't the idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Isn't the idea that you can pirate scientific papers sort of anti-knowledge?

      No, what's anti-knowledge is the idea that research papers can be locked up behind paywalls. As a scientist, the intellectual property you worked years to create is your research itself. The paper is just a formal description of it, and that paper should be free to the world so that your peers can review it and, by building on your work, appreciate and honor your efforts.

      Don't confuse the scientific content of the paper and the paper itself. Those are not the same thing. Value of the scientific content is one thing, and I agree that it should be it free (arxiv already provides this at least for physics papers) and the paper itself. The paper (or journal) also has value. It has economic and scientific value to professional scientists although no value for laypersons. A scientist's carrier advancement is based on the importance of the journal he publishes in. So unless this part of the equation is solved, as in all other things being equal, scientists that publish in open journals have the same possibility of advancement as those tht publish in Nature, or IEEE etc... we'll end un circling endlessly around the problem.

    6. Re: Isn't the idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Scientists do not make money from publishing papers. They get no money from people accessing it. Currently getting published in high-impact journals affect one's career, but as citations matter individual scientists stand to gain from this "piracy".

    7. Re:Isn't the idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Please, somebody downvote this moron.

      "Why would someone invest time and money in doing the research?"
      Because the results of Research are in themselves valuable. The Papers are but one result. Patents are another, and shared collaboration is a third- no need to keep on reinventing the the Tinker Toys. No Scientist has _ever_ "Done it all by themselves", they stand on the shoulders of Giants.
      The next part is something you are absolutely incapable of understanding- Fun. The Joy of discovering something New, no matter how initially trivial. And part of that fun is telling others, whether it is about a new forbidden Bandgap in doped 13C Graphene, or a different recipe for Crepes Suzette. (Try Blood Oranges, with a smidgeon of Pomegranate juice in the reduction.)

      "You are better off letting someone else do it. Scientific papers are not created to be shared, they are created to make money."
      No. Most Scientists really dislike writing Papers; they, (Or their Institutions...), certainly _don't_ get paid for it. In most cases, they _pay_to have a Paper formatted, they _pay_ to have it published, and then they _pay_ for access to the Journals. The Publishers are those who control the means and profit of publication.
      The only People who make money are the _Publishers_, you twat.
      Note that all of my papers are available for the cost of copying from the UC Preprint Service, or available online for free with an account, because UC is large and powerful enough to actually tell the Publishers to screw off.

    8. Re:Isn't the idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      but if all scientific papers should be released for "public good" Why would someone invest time and money in doing the research?

      You argument would make sense if the researcher paid for the expenses of the research him/herself.

      Typically the research is funded by taxes or by different foundations like the cancer research foundations that in turn have been funded by donations.
      Anyone accepting handouts to do research while still locking the paper away is eating the cake and having it too.

      Now this is typically a flaw with these handouts. They should come with a clause that states that any result of the research is public property.
      Good scientists won't turn away that deal, they are using that money today because it is a safe income while the published paper is not.
      It's just that there is no downside to double dipping today.

      Scientists that get their money from private companies is another matter, that money wouldn't be there if the company couldn't lock away the knowledge later. I don't see a problem with those results not becoming publicly available. (As long as the company is told to GTFO when public research recreates the study and the company tries to shut down the publishing with bullshit copyright claims.)

    9. Re:Isn't the idea by jouassou · · Score: 2

      The publication process has to be paid for by either the readers (traditional publishing) or the scientists (open-access publishing). In the first case, the scientists don't make any money off the paper, as all the money the readers pay goes to the journal. In the second case, the readers won't have to pay anything, but the scientist may have to pay up to $3000 to get their work published. In both cases, the paper is reviewed by referees that also work for free. So the only people that make money off the system are actually the journals.

    10. Re:Isn't the idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >>but if all scientific papers should be released for "public good"
      >Why would someone invest time and money in doing the research? You are better off letting someone else do it.

      You seem to be of the impression that

      (1) someone else *can* do it
      (2) the only result of the research is the paper

      The first gets more true as more people are scientifically literate, but wasn't true at all 10 years ago. Depending on the niche, still that way.
      The second is worrying. The paper is a *report*. The main use of the research is the improvement in knowledge and understanding of nature by myself and my colleagues. I write the paper so it's archived, so others (strangers) can give me criticism and because I built it on top of other people's papers, so I like to give back.

      > Scientific papers are not created to be shared, they are created to make money.

      WTF? No, they aren't. I'm a scientist, take it from me, we don't create these to make money (and we don't get any money for publishing a paper). Reputation yes, peer review, ability to get criticism etc, yes. Money? No.

      (The state pays me a salary)

      > Burnie Sanders would disagree, since he is a socialist and socialists live in a dream world.

      Many countries are social democratic republics and work just fine. Those dream worlds?

    11. Re:Isn't the idea by ntipouan · · Score: 1

      Why should I pay €90 to read the latest ISO from IEEE on interval arithmetic computations? (http://www.techstreet.com/ieee/products/vendor_id/4431)
      Why should anyone pay to do his research?

      In my book paywalls are anti-knowledge and the Russians/former USSR citizens show us the way.

      --
      deltaS>=0 (c.s.)
    12. Re:Isn't the idea by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      The idea that you can is pro-knowledge.

      The idea that anyone should have to is anti-knowledge.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    13. Re:Isn't the idea by Coisiche · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't see a problem with those results not becoming publicly available.

      Suppressed is another word for that. And it has caused a few problems in the pharmaceutical field.

    14. Re:Isn't the idea by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "It has economic and scientific value to professional scientists although no value for laypersons."
      Who are these laypersons? Is there a certified scientist label that you can get? I have a bachelor in science as one of my degrees is that good enough?
      Do I need to stay in academia to be one of those scientists where such papers have values?
      Or can I be a person interested in a topic and would like to dig further to expand my own knowledge? Or am I forced to the depth of Wikipedia because I am not a real Scientist?

      Science should be more acceptable and it doesn't need to be dumbed down. Normal Scientific journalism confusing a hypothesis and a theory all the time, jumping to conclusions or oversimplifying statements. If a topic is interesting enough, it would be nice for me to dig past all the media hype and look at the real findings.

      But because I am not a real Scientist (Having to turn in my Science Card when i got a MBA) I should have to just be dumb to science and just trust those real guys at their words, without me having any understanding.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    15. Re:Isn't the idea by JoeMerchant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Scientific journals developed as ivory towers of knowledge. In the beginning, the fees they charged were somewhat justified by costs of publication and distribution, but even then it was mostly about the editorial work and peer review. If an article made it into a prestigious journal, it was assumed to have a high chance of being valid and of some importance.

      As costs of publication and distribution dropped to zero, the journals maintained their paywalls as some kind of "exclusive club" status - all their readers (who mattered to them) had access through institutional subscriptions, the subscription fees propped up the journals' (probably bloated) offices, staff, travel habits, etc. After all, there's still the editorial process to maintain, peer review to orchestrate, etc.

      It took hundreds of years for the journals to get to where they were in the late 1900s, it's not surprising that it is taking a few decades for them to come around to deal with the implications of instant free information sharing. It's just ironic that they were founded on principles of "free" exchange of information, but when the costs of exchanging information fell away it exposed how much tax they were placing on this exchange.

    16. Re:Isn't the idea by CRCulver · · Score: 2

      The publication process has to be paid for by either the readers (traditional publishing) or the scientists (open-access publishing).

      Open access is not always paid for by the scientists. I recently published a paper in a peer-reviewed open access journal and didn't have to provide anything more than the manuscript. The journal in question is issued by a country's academy of sciences, and all costs are evidently covered by the state and some rich men's endowments.

    17. Re:Isn't the idea by bitingduck · · Score: 1

      Page charges predate open access publishing by at least decades, so in some cases the publishers are getting paid by both the authors and the readers.

    18. Re:Isn't the idea by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      "every respectable totally open access journal... has fees about the same as all the well established journals in the same field."

      No they don't. What you mean is that most of the prestige journals have an option they call 'open access' which means articles not paywalled to the reader. They charge the same exorbitant page fees to the author, and have the same requirement that his IP be signed away for no compensation, as for the paywall-publication route. The fake 'open access' option is nothing but a fig leaf allowing the journal to claim it is part of the new world.

      A real open access journal costs nothing to run except the costs of maintaining a website and salaries for the small full-time staff. Just as with the prestige journals nobody else in the chain gets paid. The submission cost for a paper is thus minuscule.

  2. You do the world a favor.... by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For every scientific paper you pirate and share. It's bullshit to keep that stuff behind paywalls.
    I also applaud everyone that finds a way to pirate college textbooks and share them.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Do you give your work/time away for free? (I am assuming you work)

    2. Re:You do the world a favor.... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Do you give your work/time away for free?

      The person who did the work/put in the time isn't going to see anything from the money that goes to a scientific journal or textbook publisher. As someone who's written a textbook, I can tell you that very few authors are paid based upon the sales of that textbook.

      And scientific journals? The authors/researchers were paid before the paper was even submitted to the journal.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:You do the world a favor.... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      I'm curious. Whenever you read a book or some other piece of text, your credit card gets charged? If not, you've just taken someone's work for free.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, but as a tax payer, I paid for most of those papers. I expect to see the results for any public-funded work.

    5. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Potor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I actually write books. In my case, I earn much more from rank promotion than I do from royalties. When people pirate my books, I lose VERY little.

    6. Re: You do the world a favor.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually there is some interesting moves in the provision of course texts for free on Leanpub.com. The best example is probably Roger Peng https://leanpub.com/u/repen by all accounts he makes a reasonable return from donations

    7. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Scientists do the research, scientists do the peer review, scientists even do the fucking layout for some journals and they do it for less than free. You sign over copyright to the publisher and pay them a fee ($2000 is not unusual when I was an academic 10 years ago) for the privilege of publishing in thier journal. Excepting some of the journals run by scientific societies or entities like PLoS, all of the scientific publishers are parasites. They just happen to be parasites with ownership of important titles, and in science where you publish (more prestigious/selective journals) is at least as important as how much you publish.

    8. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Informative

      Do you give your work/time away for free? (I am assuming you work)

      When you publish in an Elsevier journal, you sign away any IP in the paper, and get no royalty from them. Worse still is that everyone who sees your paper has to do so through an institution that has to pay an expensive subscription for access.

    9. Re: You do the world a favor.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, the government paid researchers, then the journals stole the common good, which was paid for, and hid it behind a paywall with prices so high it never gets read. Imagine where we would be without the journals restricting access to the pinnacle of society's years of effort.

    10. Re:You do the world a favor.... by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Agree 100%.

      This shenanigans of modern science having a whitepaper behind a paywall with _no ability_ to reproduce the data, let alone look at it to verify the initial analysis was correct is total bullshit and the complete antithesis of what Science is all about.

      Science was the first open source philosophy; namely to share questions, data, and results for the benefit of everyone; not sell them off to the highest bidder all in the name of greed / capitalism. This modern behavior is a complete perversion of Science, Knowledge, and Truth.

      --
      Cult, noun; a myopic belief held by a group that their "way" is the only way. Examples include stupid justice whiners, fundamental theists, fundamental atheists, pseduoskeptics such as Randi, etc.

    11. Re:You do the world a favor.... by jenningsthecat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      First of all, those in industry are not your "Colleagues". If they are getting paid 3-4x more than a PhD working for a university, then they are almost certainly worth that 3-4x increase in pay. It is called "real-world" experience for a reason. They produce more for the company they work for or they disappear unlike some professor or assistant who doesn't have experience developing real products. Don't get me wrong, we need university research, but it really doesn't pay the bills for anyone, it only sucks resources from the tax base.

      I'd mod you Troll but I already posted, so Ill take the bait instead. You say that "real products" and "real world experience" are worth money, then go on to say that the university research upon which those products are often based, (and which you admit we need), "sucks resources". If you don't see the contradiction there then your opinion isn't worth much. If you DO see the contradiction, then why did you post it? Oh yeah, I temporarily forgot - you're trolling...

      --
      'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
    12. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And scientific journals? The authors/researchers were paid before the paper was even submitted to the journal.

      Authors are often not paid to write the paper, they are paid to do the work. They write the paper often on unpaid time because it is of benefit to their career. Also, some of the most interesting papers are on work that was never funded, just stuff done in someone's spare time.

    13. Re: You do the world a favor.... by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Let's say for the sake of argument that you're American. Let's say you're a "taxpayer" (which some take to mean those that earn enough they pay personal income tax, in which case you're an ass to the poor, but that's another thing). Do you then have a right to walk into a nuclear weapons facility to inspect it, or perhaps you paid for what the facility can do, not to access to all aspects of the result?

      Let's say you can make a relevant comparison, rather than an obnoxious red herring. Feel free to post it.

    14. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Sir+Holo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do you give your work/time away for free?

      The person who did the work/put in the time isn't going to see anything from the money that goes to a scientific journal or textbook publisher. As someone who's written a textbook, I can tell you that very few authors are paid based upon the sales of that textbook.

      And scientific journals? The authors/researchers were paid before the paper was even submitted to the journal.

      CORRECTION: We scientists (and he taxpayers that usually pay for our work) pay THREE TIMES for it. Plus, we exert effort FOR FREE to the publishers – BY LAW.

          1. Write a proposal for funding –US Federal law prohibits of using research funding for these efforts. It is on our own personal dime.
          2. Win a grant, which pays for you & your students to do the work (on the public dime)
          3. Write a manuscript to share the results with the world – US Federal Law prohibits the use of Federal funds for write-up. It is on our own personal dime.
          4. Submit it to a rapacious for-profit scientific journal – any owned by Elsevier – for review- / referee-ing.
          5. Referees are other scientists in your field, again legally required to perform the service unpaid.
          6. If accepted, Your second $$ outlay comes in the form of "page charges." Yes, you pay them to publish you work – once it's deemed important by the 'FREE' referees for the journals.
          7. The article might be printed, but is more likely to be in the form of a PDF, one that that the authors are these-days required to submit in electronic form, following stringent guidelines. The scientific authors essentially do the page-layout. Again for FREE.
          8. The publishers charge your institution tons of money for subscription to the journals, whether it is in-print, or simply a PDF

      Scientific publication charges are a huge, multi-level scam. At one time, it did cost them money to print and mail paper copies of journals. These days, they have outsourced almost every aspect of the labor required to produce a Scientific Journal Article, but somehow, mysteriously, their prices keep going up far faster than inflation.

      It is no wonder that sites like J-Stor, Research-Gate, Sci-Hub, and others are popping up all over the place.

      Personally, even though I have access to basically any journal known (at my large University), I go to Research-Gate simply because it takes 1/10th of the time to access the article I am seeking. My Uni has already paid for access, so I have a limited license to make a copy, but the big publishers make it an absolute, time-consuming pain in the ass to get a PDF of a given article. (Most of which I trash after glancing-through, as titles and abstracts are frequently inadequate.)

    15. Re:You do the world a favor.... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Do you give your work/time away for free? (I am assuming you work)

      Hi, published scientist here. And the answer is:

      YES!

      All my papers are available on my website for free.

      Where it could actually make a difference and where it applies, the source code is available on me website (and github) for free.

      Next question please!

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    16. Re:You do the world a favor.... by butzwonker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Of course I give away my papers for free. I'm a scientist. I get zero money for my publications, my review work, my editorial work and anything else related to publications. I've even edited typeset several books for free. All of this for commercial publishing companies who make an insane amount of money with it. The only thing that publishing companies like Springer do is to send the final version to India for the final typesetting in LaTeX and put out the printed versions about one and a half years later. That system is possible because as a scientist I'm paid by the government.

      The problem is that I'm not allowed to put the original, quotable paper on my web pages, only earlier drafts. The papers you need for quoting are behind expensive paywalls, and every time someone accesses one of those articles to do his work, somewhere some tax payers are paying for a very expensive subscription. Or, they can pay $39 for a single article themselves - their choice (hahaha). For the publishers, this is like an endless source of money with minimum amount of work. That's why Springer, DeGruyter and small number of other publishers have sucked up and monopolized nearly all of the previously independent journals. It doesn't matter which journal I choose, I always end up with one of the three or four companies - like with record labels.

      See the problem now?

    17. Re:You do the world a favor.... by jouassou · · Score: 1

      Authors are often not paid to write the paper, they are paid to do the work.

      If you work in academia and not industry, then publishing is an essential part of "doing the work".

    18. Re:You do the world a favor.... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      If much of the work is writing, formatting and reviewing these papers, how hard would it be for a group of scientists, a university, or an enterprising individual to set up an indie science journal? Doesn't have to be free, but charge a reasonable subscription or access fee and use that to pay for hosting, some staff, and perhaps even printing. If so many scientists are dissatisfied with Elsevier, perhaps they could devote their time to a better alternative instead?

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    19. Re:You do the world a favor.... by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      What you pay for in scientific journals is the publishing and only the publishing, not the research itself.
      It used to be significant and useful work pre-internet. It involved typesetting, printing and physical distribution. You pay, that's normal.

      Now, things have changed, a lot. Scientists do most of the typesetting themselves, and on the internet, there is no more printing and distribution is essentially free.

    20. Re:You do the world a favor.... by tommeke100 · · Score: 1

      I pretty much agree that most PhDs do research of which the only purpose is them getting a PhD. I work with plenty of them, and none did advance the state of the art in their specific domain ( and I'm talking Applied Science - CS, Bio Medical, Geography - here. I'm sure it's much worse in Social Sciences). However, most of them were top of their class, they do get a deep insight into their subjects, and most will also be teaching assistants at the University during their PhD. In that sense, they do offer a benefit to society, since they are also usually tasked with forming or following the education of other students at the under-graduate and graduate level.
      So, really, to me it's a win-win situation. You get motivated and intelligent people doing research and teaching at a very high level, and they are getting a sweet PhD title in return after a couple of years. And if the research leads to useful or applicable discoveries, even better!

    21. Re:You do the world a favor.... by lrichardson · · Score: 2
      "Scientific publication charges are a huge, multi-level scam"

      Even with access, you don't get a copy of the papers on your system: you get the right to access a copy on *their* system. Which means, if, for example, your University goes "OMFG, we can't afford this journal anymore!", after several years of insane price increases, and fails to renew their subscription .... *poof*, you have nada, no stored papers, nothing.

    22. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I say WAHHH to them.

      Because you have NO RIGHT to sell your book on Algebra, that has not changed in 100's of years for $150. 95% of the content in your book is plagiarized from other sources.

      90% of all college textbooks are overpriced by 1000% and incredibly few have any real content that was added from version to version. they simply reorder chapters and "practice problems" to force students to buy a new $150 copy every year. So I support fully anyone that steals from the den of thieves that is academic publishing.

      You area hero to the world if you steal from that pit of villany.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    23. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That may be fine, but having it published and having it openly available to the public should be synonymous.

      I've written and had published a few papers. I can understand the review process done by the journal experts before my papers were published. And I can understand they wanting some exclusivity to the paper ... for some time period.

      But once the journal is in print for a few months, the articles should be free to the world. The added value to the publisher should be made up by sales of the journal to libraries.

    24. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's pretty hard. You need a lot of gravitas to generate momentum for a journal. There are thousands of spam-level journals out there ( ref beall's list of predatory publishers ) who just want papers and don't offer/care about peer review. You would need several field-leading researchers to support it by submitting to it, reviewing for it, and citing from it. And you would have to tend that reputation for quality very carefully.

      I suspect anyone in that position is so well established that they barely notice how crappy journals are.

    25. Re:You do the world a favor.... by Coisiche · · Score: 2

      I was about to say that lots of people give away some of their time for free (organizing social events, amateur sports teams, etc.) but I realized that's because where I live you actually tend have some spare time and you're probably in the USA and so won't have any.

    26. Re:You do the world a favor.... by jenningsthecat · · Score: 2

      Informative and insightful - thanks. You've given me an idea too. I've often thought that Detroit auto engineers should spend one year in four working as mechanics in garages, just to give them incentive to not make some of the truly wrong-headed design decisions they seem so fond of. So how about having university-based PhDs work one year in four, (or five, or six), in their field, outside of the university? They could work for the private sector, a government agency, or a non-profit. Or they could teach, but at high school or community college, under the watchful eye of someone who can prevent them from confusing the students too much. Or probably any of a half-dozen other alternatives I haven't thought of.

      This would put some (more) holes in the blanket of academic insulation, and provide the "real world" connection whose importance was rightly pointed out by GP.

      --
      'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
    27. Re:You do the world a favor.... by DanielRavenNest · · Score: 1

      > Do you give your work/time away for free?

      Yes, I do. See https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/... and check the edits on any page. For that matter, look at all of Wikipedia.

    28. Re:You do the world a favor.... by xvan · · Score: 2

      What nobody tells you is that scientists have a scoring system based on impact.

      Impact, is some sort of magic formula based on:

      a) the score of you publisher.
      b) the impact of the works that reference your paper

      The score of a journal is based on some magic average impact of the works published on it.
      The score of an institution and of a scientist is based on the total impact of the works produced.

      So, as a scientist, your entire career can be reduced to a number. Many institutions have minimum quotas that must be met to keep a project.

      If you add that you get almost no score for reproducing others work, and that money on the table depends on that score, the result is a big and corrupt stackOverflow system. Your new journal would have low score, so as a scientist you wouldn't want to burn a good paper on a low score publisher. A low score publisher would also give your work a lower "base score", giving it a lower indexation on relevant searches, reducing exposition. Not all papers can be groundbreaking, so relevancy decays fast with time.

    29. Re: You do the world a favor.... by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Or willfully obtuse. So, again: relevant analogy. Do you have one, or not?

  3. Hostage by Vlijmen+Fileer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "... Downloading Pirated Scientifc [sic] Papers"??
    You mean:
    "Freeing scientific papers that were being held hostage"

  4. Google the culprit? by Obfuscant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How much of this is because when someone googles the relevant terms it shows them Sci-Hub results and not their local restricted library? I.e., how may people are deliberately pirating papers versus being counted as pirates because that's where Google took them to?

    1. Re:Google the culprit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The answer to your question is "none of it." Scihub doesn't provide a way to browse the available papers and therefore isn't indexed by search engines. You have to find the DOI or the title of the paper and enter it into the Scihub search box. It then serves you a PDF of the paper.

  5. Psst. Hey journals. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Psst. Hey journals.

    If you didn't make your papers so damn awkward to get to in the first place, people wouldn't need these kind of sites.

    It's your fault.

    1. Re: Psst. Hey journals. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      A single paper is like 38 bucks for me to access. Will I really get 38 bucks of value out of that paper? Can I afford 10 of those? 100? 10,000?

      The value provided by sci-hub to any would-be gentleman scientist is immense. To a plebian like me, it is incalculable.

    2. Re: Psst. Hey journals. by xvan · · Score: 1

      Playing devil's advocate here, but you're saying that you are not bounded to any academic/research institution or company were you could access those papers for free / get someone else would pay those papers?

      I'm all for piracy, but how did you came up to need access to those papers at all? Hitting a paywall after reading a divulgation article doesn't qualify as a need more than the need for a playboy magazine.

      Being a plebeian and not being part of the Academy means that most likely the value of sci-hub to you is 0. If that isn't the case, I'd really like to hear of your situation.

    3. Re: Psst. Hey journals. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm not part of academia, but I like reading CS papers for my own intellectual stimulation. I regularly go through the latest on arxiv, but some times you want to follow some references to older stuff, and that's when you end up having to reach out to Jacobson because you can't find a copy of his seminal paper, etc.

      You're right, I'm a nobody, but that also means no one is really losing anything when I read these papers. I would never pay for a paper anyhow, it's just not going to happen. I'm also not directly using results in my work (which quite frankly is too mundane for most of the stuff I'm interested in).

      I haven't used scihub, but I wouldn't hesitate to do it.

    4. Re: Psst. Hey journals. by butzwonker · · Score: 2

      I'm living in a small, comparatively poor country in Europe, and I'm a scientist, so let me explain the situation to you.

      Via expensive subscriptions we have access to a constantly and seemingly randomly changing selection of journals at our institute. Sometimes I can just download what I need "for free" (free for me, it still costs the tax payer a lot of money, of course), another time I cannot access it. Anything that falls on the borderline to neighbouring disciplines I cannot access - which happens to be a lot in my field, because my work is very cross-disciplinary. The situation is way worse in even poorer countries, e.g. in developing nations, or in those where politicians in charge simply do not understand the nature of scientific work and cut money in the wrong places.

      In a nutshell, rich universities in rich countries already have many advantages, and without sites like sci-hub many research institutions in the poorer parts of the world could just as well close down.

    5. Re: Psst. Hey journals. by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Your post is jaw-droppingly ignorant.

      Just about every computer scientist is unaffiliated with any institution that pays the extortion for access to these papers, covering a wide range of topics such as artificial intelligence, data compression, image processing, graph theory, statistical analysis, ....

      Your seem to be amazed that I might want to see the 1977 Frei and Chen paper on a complete set of basic functions for both line and edge detection in images. You seem to think that I would be satisfied with the commonly used but inferior Sobel or Prewit operators which dont distinguish between lines and edges and so forth.

      There is a reason that almost nobody uses the Frei and Chen's masks even though its superior.. and it has everything to do with access.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    6. Re: Psst. Hey journals. by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      Being a plebeian and not being part of the Academy means that most likely the value of sci-hub to you is 0. If that isn't the case, I'd really like to hear of your situation.

      Plenty of people finish an M.A. and want to take some time off to travel the world or whatever before they start a PhD. Their formal relationship to the university is terminated, so they cannot access the university's subscriptions (not all universities offer alumni access to databases), but they need to keep up with what's happening in the field while they are away.

  6. Is it just my location... by Rei · · Score: 1

    or is the site down? It is sci-hub.io right?

    --
    "99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
  7. Re:I only pirate Game of Thrones by Pocaille · · Score: 1

    Did you check out Rick and Morty?

  8. Re: sci-hub uses compromised University accounts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Wait, it is THEFT? They take it, and it is gone?

    How many bakers were subject to "theft" when Jesus fed a multitude from five loaves?

    Fuck off with your propaganda words. It is copyright violation, a minor civil offense in some countries, and no crime at all in others. Theft is a univerally recognized concept that deprives someone of something that they own. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

  9. Example Usage: Slashdot Story Drill Down by cmholm · · Score: 1

    I first heard of sci-hub via a /. story not too long ago. Subsequently, when the "Prescription Meds Get Trapped In Disturbing Pee-To-Food-To-Pee Loop" story was posted a couple of weeks ago, linking to a paywalled academic paper, I followed my usual steps:

    • 1) try the link, sometimes the paper turns out to be free to read;
    • 2) hit the university home pages of the authors, who often have at least the final draft as a free to read PDF;
    • 3) punt...

    But not this time. I surfed directly to the sci-hub home page, and stuck the paper title into the search box. Success! Having RTFP, I could follow up in discussion with a better idea of what the hell was going on. Whether I should have left it at punting this time is another discussion.

    --
    Luke, help me take this mask off ... Just for once, let me butterfly kiss you with my own eyes.
    1. Re:Example Usage: Slashdot Story Drill Down by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Drone dispatched to your location. Do not attempt to leave the building.

  10. ResearchGate is Legal Alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    A more legal alternative to Sci-Hub is ResearchGate. They depend on the authors uploading their papers, not scraping them from journals. I used my university alumni email to join, but don't believe it is necessary to gain access. So far I've had about 1:4 success with it when seeing articles referenced online. Unfortunately, the latest papers are not always there, but sometimes you get lucky.

    1. Re: ResearchGate is Legal Alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      When I was in Science, it was suuuuper illegal to post your papers anywhere once they had been accepted by a journal. One of the girls in my lab actually had to request permission to use one of her own tables (that she had published in a paper in that very same journal) in a follow-up. As I was leaving Science, it had become legal policy that any research funded by NIH grants had to be posted publicly within a few months of acceptance. Publishers in the Big League, so to speak, holding the work I did hostage so other researchers in my field have to pay money to advance our collective knowledge is bullshit. I worked 80 hour weeks, staring through microscopes, counting endless tiny particles by hand because I loved it... and I loved it because it was cancer research that could one day impact so very, very many lives. It's insane to me that all that work and all that knowledge and all that potential should be restricted to anyone for any reason. I'm not marketing my research to some sort of elite intelligencia (sp?). That's why I always paid money to publish in open-source journals like PLoS. We only get better if we can all communicate with each other and the way the research community communicates is through these papers. Journals should not be able to ransom that away.

    2. Re:ResearchGate is Legal Alternative by LeadSongDog · · Score: 1

      I used my university alumni email to join, don't believe it is necessary to gain access

      There are other ways to join, but join you must if you want ResearchGate to work for you. This still creates a barrier to entry: without established academic credentials of some kind, you can't read the papers there. Certainly, you can't do so anonymously.

      --
      Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
    3. Re:ResearchGate is Legal Alternative by butzwonker · · Score: 1

      ResearchGate sucks, they are a German company of evil spammers and bombard you with unsolicited emails very much like LinkedIn. I'm sure they will let everyone and his grandmother join in order to augment their small user base. Academia.edu is okay, though.

  11. Re:sci-hub uses compromised University accounts by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    " theft of the Universities' resources and theft of the online resource material."

    No, the thief here is the journal that grabbed the researchers' IP not only without compensation, but made them pay to do it. Plantation slaves had a better deal than that. Getting the papers to Sci-hub is the most moral way for the researcher to benefit most from his intellectual property.

  12. What's the relationship between Sci-Hub and GenLib by piojo · · Score: 1

    What's the relationship between Sci-Hub and GenLib, if any? Are they collaborative efforts or just independent efforts that arose in response to need?

    --
    A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
  13. Re: sci-hub uses compromised University accounts by goose-incarnated · · Score: 1

    That is absolutely false. At no time did the researchers who took taxes for their work have the right to lock it behind a paywall. That work was stolen from the public, and you are going to give it back.

    From the researchers PoV, "pirating" their papers is a benefit - scientific researchers are frequently graded on the number of papers that reference *them*, so having more people referencing their work is better for them.

    This is a self-solving problem - The only value authors get is from readers, so a more open system benefits authors, which results in more authors moving to the open system, expanding the importance of the open system, which entices more authors, etc. Once this cycle gets started we can say goodbye, permanently, to Springer, Elsevier, etc paywalls.

    Pirating helps everyone except the publishers. Good riddance.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  14. It depends on what your definition of 'critic' is. by OpenSourced · · Score: 1

    Some critics of Sci-Hub have complained that many users can access the same papers through their libraries but turn to Sci-Hub instead -- for convenience rather than necessity.

    How is that a critic in any way, except to the alternatives?

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
  15. Pirated Scientific Papers? Unlikely. by xororand · · Score: 1

    What on Earth is the chance of encountering a ship on the high seas that carries scientific papers?
    And then you go ahead and brutally rob the owners of said papers?
    I'm sorry but this sounds like pure fantasy, at least in the 21st century. Unless the author fell prey to decades of propaganda and actually meant to refer to copyright infringement.

    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

    US Supreme Court rules that copyright infringement does not easily equate to theft:
    http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/...

    Stop perpetuating propaganda.

  16. Blocked Site by ITMagic · · Score: 1

    Interesting... This site is officially blocked by the NHS in the UK. All our connections use "zscaler" to intercept requests, and redirect them. Interestingly, I was connecting to https://sci-hub.cc/ - the certificate does not look to be a fake one, permitting a MITM attack. How is the page I am seeing being delivered?

  17. Cake and eat it too? by ausekilis · · Score: 2

    On one hand, as a researcher you want to explore and document new and interesting/amazing things while being able to share those things with the world. On the other, you want to be seen as reputable so you look to publish your paper with a "known good" journal in your field, while avoiding those "crap science printing press" publications that are known for just throwing anything through the printer.

    It seems to me that sharing the knowledge as widely as possible is much like just pushing it through the crap science press, the opposite of getting into an established journal. Is the problem that those established journals are just greedy bastards? Or is the problem that there is no other way to separate the wheat from the chaff?

    1. Re:Cake and eat it too? by JoeMerchant · · Score: 1

      It's hard to separate greedy bastards from legitimate need for international travel, office space, editorial salaries, etc.

    2. Re:Cake and eat it too? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Informative

      Peer review is what separates the wheat from the chaff. Like all other parts of the publishing process, peer review can operate even more easily as part of an online site than on paper. But in the time when science was published on paper, some journals accumulated more prestige than others. The only reason these journals still exist is they coast on the prestige acquired in the days of paper. Because journals, even the most prestigious of them never paid the reviewers who defined the very exclusivity of the publication, there is no reason for reviewers not to jump ship to the online world. Researchers and libraries will do it because it saves them a pile of money, while reviewers will be in the same financial position as always. There is no reason whatever to keep churning out those dead-tree buggy whips.

  18. Re:sci-hub uses compromised University accounts by labradort · · Score: 1

    I work in IT administrating such a system. What unbelievable ignorance to mark my comment as a troll. I've seen the traffic coming from sci-hub, I'm not making it up. I've discussed with other University IT admins. Who the hell is scoring this stuff?

    It appears the technical knowledge component in this discussion is nil, and this discussion has become about the liberation of data or something.

    Now, I am not at all surprised at Trump becoming President. People don't know anything, even if the truth is placed right in front of them. Political aims and emotional state overwhelm all logic.

    Wikipedia entry on sci-hub: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Quote: New papers are uploaded daily after accessing them through .edu proxies.

    That is via compromised accounts, folks. These are not the good guys.

  19. Re:sci-hub uses compromised University accounts by labradort · · Score: 1

    You don't care about accounts being stolen and used by organized crime?

  20. This discussion and moderation here is political by labradort · · Score: 1

    Nobody here cares about technology. What you care about is getting everything for free. Why isn't this site called napsterdot if that is all that matters?

  21. This can only end badlly... by tp_xyzzy · · Score: 1

    Pirated papers can only end badly. It's not possible for academics to refer to a paper obtained from pirate source. Once such activities are revealed, there's significant pressure from universities to cancel the credit people got from using pirate papers. This means some people are going to lose their Phd over issue of using the pirate site.

    But it is sad that elsevier has not managed to make their service convinient enough that researchers could access the same data legally. There's high chance that scientific progress is harmed by this problem, and it should be high priority issue to fix immediately. It is strange development that the most bleeding edge technology always need to be at the edge (or over) the legal limits, as it seems those limits are causing real problems in the world.

    1. Re:This can only end badlly... by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      It's not possible for academics to refer to a paper obtained from pirate source.

      What a ridiculous claim. A PhD committee has no way of telling where you got your cited publications from. It is extremely common for students and researchers to visit another city for a few days to use libraries there and look at some publications they don't have access to at their own institution. It is extremely common for students and researchers to make use of interlibrary loan. No one will know that an item in your bibliography came from SciHub and not any of those other, mainstream ways of getting publications.

    2. Re:This can only end badlly... by tp_xyzzy · · Score: 1

      > A PhD committee has no way of telling where you got your cited publications from

      Yeah, when they try to check your publications, and they end up in a paywall of 2 million bucks, it's dead obvious that you're not that rich to get access to it. Or it might take longer to access the papers than it took for you to create your work? It'll be dead obvious when you refer to bunch of amazing papers that noone else has proper access.

    3. Re:This can only end badlly... by tp_xyzzy · · Score: 1

      > very good research is only for those in the privileged high class universities from high class families.

      There's also counterargument that the research might cost significant amount of money. Like france built LHC at some high cost of billions. It is very difficult to get the money back, even if all your research goes as planned. While government pays most of the stuff, it wouldn't be a surprise if they try to recoup some of the cost from people who absolutely need that information. Putting your papers under paywall is one way to do that. It's not simply a matter of excluding part of the population from the information, but it's also about how to ensure that the research can continue in the future.

    4. Re:This can only end badlly... by EndlessNameless · · Score: 1

      It's not simply a matter of excluding part of the population from the information, but it's also about how to ensure that the research can continue in the future.

      That is a laughable argument.

      The LHC was built using tax money granted by CERN's member nations.

      If they want to continue the research, CERN will be funded for new equipment and facilities when the time comes.

      --

      ---
      According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
    5. Re:This can only end badlly... by tp_xyzzy · · Score: 1

      >That is a laughable argument.
      >
      >The LHC was built using tax money granted by CERN's >member nations.

      You have any idea how many people there are in the world that would like to do cutting edge research with nice toys like LHC? Because of money problems, it is simply not possible to supply enough cool gadgets for wannabe researchers...

      Anything that helps solve this problem is clearly useful activity...

    6. Re:This can only end badlly... by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      Yeah, when they try to check your publications, and they end up in a paywall of 2 million bucks, it's dead obvious that you're not that rich to get access to it.

      "Paywall" assumes that the person got the paper online. As I said, there are plenty of ways to get an article without paying, whether writing to the author to kindly ask for a PDF or xerox, visiting another institution whose library has the journal, or using inter-library loan.

      Or it might take longer to access the papers than it took for you to create your work?

      PhD theses are usually written over a period of 3-5 years. Inter-library loan takes 2 weeks, even for very obscure publications. There is nothing that one will cite, that will take a significant amount of time to reach one.

      Do you actually have any experience in academia? The world you describe is a fantasy one.

    7. Re:This can only end badlly... by tp_xyzzy · · Score: 1

      > Inter-library loan takes 2 weeks, even for very obscure publications.

      Is this the reason why people use pirate sites for the papers? The extra 2 weeks?

    8. Re:This can only end badlly... by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      Is this the reason why people use pirate sites for the papers? The extra 2 weeks?

      Why wait two weeks when you can get the material instantly? Also, often when one requests a journal article through inter-library loan, it is often sent to your e-mail as a fairly low-quality scan, but if you get the same article through Sci-Hub, you get a high-resolution PDF that is a lot easier on the eyes.