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Sci-Hub Faces Millions Of Dollars In Damages, Elsevier Complaint Shuts Down Domain (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the some-people-want-to-watch-the-world-burn dept.

Reader Taco Cowboy writes: Sci-Hub is facing millions of dollars in damages in a lawsuit filed by Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers. As a result of the legal battle the site just lost one of its latest domain names. However, the site has no intentions of backing down, and will continue its fight to keep access to scientific knowledge free and open. Several 'backup' domain names are still in play, including Sci-Hub.bz and Sci-Hub.cc. In addition to the alternative domain names users can access the site directly through the IP-address 31.184.194.81. Its TOR domain is also still working -- http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/. Authorized or not, there is definitely plenty of interest in Sci-Hub's service. The site currently hosts more than 51 million academic papers and receives millions of visitors per month. Many visits come from countries where access to academic journals is limited, such as Iran, Russia or China. But even in countries where access is more common, many researchers visit the site, an analysis from Science magazine revealed last week. Late last month we learned that plenty of people were downloading academic papers from Sci-Hub. Over the 6 months leading up to March, Sci-Hub had served over 28 million documents, with Iran, China, India, Russia, and the United States being the leading requestors.

56 comments

  1. inb4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck Elsevier

    1. Re:inb4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wholheartedly second that. And while we're at it, fuck Springer, too.

    2. Re: inb4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any paper published through Elsevier could just as well not exist for me: I don't have access nor would I want to have it, so the paper is worthless. I don't understand why every academic department doesn't simply say no and goes cold turkey on Elsevier. They may have played an important role before the internet, but times have changed.

  2. To plagiarize Dr Malcom ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing that history has taught us it's that knowledge will not be contained. knowledge breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously ...

    1. Re:To plagiarize Dr Malcom ... by messymerry · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Follow the money and it will invariably lead you to a pool of slime... A huge chunk of that knowledge is publicly funded and thus belongs in the public domain anyway. Just another example of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses...

      --
      Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
    2. Re:To plagiarize Dr Malcom ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reality doesn't care about "moral obligations" to make sure you get money.

      Data is a contagion and reality doesn't care when you bitch about how infectious it is.

      It is logistically impossible to control knowledge, throughout the whole universe. Simultaneously. Forever. "Three men can keep a secret if two are dead". But let's not facts get in the way of LOL. DON'T CARE. CHANCE OF MONEY.

    3. Re: To plagiarize Dr Malcom ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's worse than that... Systems like the cat and the cyanide would leak many TB's of data, long before the state of the experiment is measured.

  3. Yeah, me, too by itsownreward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm in the US and I certainly use it. I'm not an academic or associated with an institution, but have an education in physics and computer science. I maintain a keen interest in several academic topics, and sometimes when I find a paper I want to read and can't find it on an author's website or arxiv.org then Sci-Hub is my go-to. It's ludicrous to want to charge someone $20+ to read a paper, especially when, often times, the research was government-funded. I certainly couldn't afford to do it.

    I genuinely hope if this keeps up Sci-Hub goes nuclear and just publishes a few torrents of all the papers. It'd be very Swartzian.

    1. Re:Yeah, me, too by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 2

      And it's just as bad for the non-science journals too. IEEE charges a flat fee around $18 for a reprint, even if the article long ago fell into the public domain. All the journals do this, and when they go bankrupt, which they will, they'll sell it ad-infinitim down the line. All of our science and engineering history behind a paywall, yay.

    2. Re:Yeah, me, too by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      ad-infinitim

      That's classic.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:Yeah, me, too by Rei · · Score: 2

      I don't think anyone should be surprised that so many in the US access it. So, the top users are from "Iran, China, India, Russia, and the United States"? I think XKCD had something to say about that...

      --
      "I know you have questions." "That would be why I just asked them."
    4. Re:Yeah, me, too by ChromeAeonium · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well I am an academic at a public institution, and I sometimes have the same problems when I hit something my institution does not have a subscription for, or does not have access to a certain year (some journals we don't have before or after a particular year). Yeah, I can get ultimately get it if I want, but it's bullshit that I have to jump through hoops, or am expected to shell out money to do my work, just to get papers my tax dollars already paid for. All I want is what is mine. The people paid for this research, they should get access to it. Full stop, end of story, no exceptions, not next year, not when (if) the copyright expires, NOW. Copyright infringement is downloading something you did not pay for. This is not copyright infringement because you have in fact already payed for it. This is getting what you are owed, what you and I have already paid for through our taxes. Leeches like Elsevier and their ilk are the thieves who are stealing from us, not the other way around. Good on anyone who makes publically funded research rightfully available to the public.

    5. Re:Yeah, me, too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could have bolded Iran as well. With a population of 78 million, about the same as Germany, it's no pipsqueak Iraq.
      What is also interesting is that many in the West consider Iran to be as backwards as Iraq, because that is how Iran is universally portrayed in Western Media. Yet do a Google Image Search on Tehran; it's no baked-brick Baghdad.
      Yes, Iran has a batshit-crazy Political Elite. Thus it's always been. One thing that it has in common with certain recent Western Leaders. But the fact that Sci-Hub is popular in Iran says a lot about the people of Iran themselves. So if Reed Elsevier goes under in order that a more ordered and sensible Iran emerges, well, that I would consider to be worth it. Hell, it would be worth it if a more ordered and sensible Iraq emerged. In fact, why not flood the Norks with "Computational and Theoretical Chemistry" and "Physics Letters A". Bound copies, delivered by Airlift, because the Internet is rubbish there. (But not LexisNexis; that would be too cruel.)

    6. Re:Yeah, me, too by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      All I want is what is mine. The people paid for this research, they should get access to it. Full stop, end of story, no exceptions, not next year, not when (if) the copyright expires, NOW. Copyright infringement is downloading something you did not pay for. This is not copyright infringement because you have in fact already payed for it. This is getting what you are owed, what you and I have already paid for through our taxes.

      I absolutely agree with you that there should be stipulations in public research dollars that fruits of research (such as publications) should be made freely available to the public.

      HOWEVER, I actually disagree that -- without this stipulation being incorporated into grants -- a published piece is the property of taxpayers. Just because you have a financial interest in facilitating something doesn't mean you own all possible things that could come out of it -- at least not without a contract that says so.

      What if a taxpayer-funded grant only paid for 1% of the research expenses? What if the grant paid for the lab research time, etc., but the publication also contains significant original work generated by the researcher on his/her own time? (This would be more common in social sciences or humanistic fields where the writing of research itself is a significant act separate from basic data collection/organization.)

      There are all sorts of complex issues about who "owns" something here, and multiple funding sources also muddy the waters. That's why we should have specific guidelines worked into government grant programs that specify free and open publications of research when certain criteria are met.

      Leeches like Elsevier and their ilk are the thieves who are stealing from us, not the other way around.

      Well, to be fair, part of the problem is the researchers who chose not to publish in open journals.

      But of course that's also a larger problem in academia where tenure expectations are often based on the reputation of publications, which usually emphasizes publication in "high-quality" journals... and those are often older ones that are part of these publishing empires. Shifting to open-access publication for research requires commitment from many major researchers in a discipline to actively promote open-access journals and shift the focus away from other journals... but junior scholars often can't take such a risk and publish where they know others will evaluate their work as "influential," regardless of access.

      Putting stipulations on grant money like I mentioned above might solve some of these issues, since it will drive researchers to find ways to publish and/or drive journals to find ways to make such funding more accessible.

    7. Re:Yeah, me, too by guestapoo · · Score: 1

      Not only Sci-hub, libgen (Library genesis) - Iran, China, India, Russia and USA also are the top visitors. But, there is some differences in details (as, I know):

      China: While there are hundreds sites in China for sharing stuffs, but they are not really "free". They are either required real money (of course, less than amount of money you buy "legal" books) or you must earn points to download. So, that is why Chinese prefer sci-hub/libgen.

      Russia: It seems that Russians now more and more like to read English papers/books than before. As I remember, India was in rank #2 before, because Russians have many free sources for Russian stuffs, not just libgen.

      Iran: Always on the top, no matter it's once-famous library.nu (ebooksclub) or libgen.

    8. Re:Yeah, me, too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It makes sense that so many of these countries would be using Sci-hub. It's expensive as hell to pay these prices for the articles if you live in the US. When you have to deal with an unfavourable exchange rate and you just plain don't have as much money, then it's that much worse.

  4. Elsevier had their chance. by nimbius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Elsevier should serve as a warning to other industries like healthcare and insurance. You can pursue profit in an industry, but once it becomes your sole modus operandi you risk the very real incidence of becoming a riot trigger.

    this isnt just a reactionary site contesting some recent policy adopted by Elsevier, its a concerted and dedicated movement against a corporate monster thats spent more than 15 years inventing new ways to privatize the hard work and important research of institutions both public and private. Elsevier contests that its profits are simply industry average and its a thoroughly discredited argument once you realize they are the industry in terms of where most research publication comes from. supporting SOPA and PIPA's fascist information controls and directly opposing open-research mandates by funding legislation in american congress are among the most prominent reasons academics including myself boycot this corporation

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:Elsevier had their chance. by pr0fessor · · Score: 2

      directly opposing open-research mandates by funding legislation in american congress

      You would think that the opinion of an foreign company that wants to make billions off of research funded by american tax payers wouldn't really carry any weight.

    2. Re:Elsevier had their chance. by Sir+Holo · · Score: 1

      Elsevier should serve as a warning to other industries like healthcare and insurance. You can pursue profit in an industry, but once it becomes your sole modus operandi you risk the very real incidence of becoming a riot trigger.

      I, myself, made the decision over a decade ago to (1) NEVER publish my work in any of their journals, and (2) NEVER to perform the (voluntary & unpaid) referee work in evaluating manuscripts submitted for publication in an Elsevier-owned journal.

      Elsevier is evil to the core. Go try to find yourself a copy of Einstein's Annalen der Physik paper. Oops! Elsevier bought-up the journal, and owns its entire archives.

      I choose, instead, to publish in Nature, Physical Review, and other respectable journals.

      Fuck Elsevier.

  5. ISO / ANSI / IEC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Anyone know of a similar site with ISO / ANSI / IEC documentation.
    Some of those docs are close to $1000

  6. Questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why should I, a researcher, have to pay journals to publish my work, sign over my copyrights to them, and have my work paywalled with ridiculous prices to access my work? Journals rely on free peer review and editing, appointing volunteers to those positions. The only part the journals actually pay for is the actual publishing of papers, whether in print or online. The journals exploit scientists and the peer review process generally lacks transparency and is open to unethical behavior. Why do we tolerate this practice? What is stopping more open access journals from being formed, which adopt peer review practices that are far less susceptible to abuses?

    1. Re:Questions by wickerprints · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To answer your last question, the primary reason why there are not more open access journals, and why the outrageous pricing of journals exists, is because of the issue of reputability.

      The system of knowledge dissemination in academia, historically, has largely relied on peer review, but as the corpus of that knowledge has grown explosively, it has become increasingly challenging for individual researchers to quickly identify influential and important discoveries. Consequently, academics relied on journal editors to elevate the status of certain papers through the reputation of their journals. Getting published in Nature or Cell carries far more prestige than some "second-" or "third-tier" journal, and through this mechanism, companies like Elsevier realized they could use this as leverage.

      In short, the pressure to publish in reputable and highly visible journals is what created the market opportunity for monopolists to extort huge sums of money from the academics who created this flawed and dysfunctional system. The publishers exploited this flaw, but it is the researchers and the institutions which employ them that largely created the flaw in the first place.

      The move to an open-access model is not one that can be done in a short period of time, because it takes time for journals to develop the reputation that is the basis for their value. Elsevier knows this, and in response, they know they can't tighten the screws too much. But they are greedy bastards too. Sci-Hub threatens to topple their house of cards rather than letting them milk the system as long as they can until academics collectively wake up and decide that enough is enough.

    2. Re:Questions by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Why should I, a researcher, have to pay journals to publish my work, sign over my copyrights to them, and have my work paywalled with ridiculous prices to access my work?

      That's an easy one for Elsevier to answer: "Because MONEY! Sweet, sweet money. Not your money, oh no, OUR money! It's all OURS! Mine, mine, mine, ME ME ME!"

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    3. Re:Questions by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      The move to an open-access model is not one that can be done in a short period of time, because it takes time for journals to develop the reputation that is the basis for their value.

      Actually, it could be done rather quickly -- if academics simply just quit the major journals. Journals don't simply get reputation from their name alone -- they get their reputation from the people who continue to be involved with them. If major academics on the editorial board of a journal decided to quit en masse and did it publicly, that journal's reputation could plunge quickly, and much of that reputation could move to a new replacement open-access journal.

      The Slashdot story I linked above regarding Lingua (now reformed as Glossa) is just one example; there are plenty of others that have happened in recent decades.

      And whether the old journal's reputation simply dies or stays somewhat high (with less of its former glory) is irrelevant. The point is that an editorial board of major scholars reconstituted as a new journal can quickly move a lot of reputation to a new place... this doesn't necessarily have to be a slow process.

    4. Re:Questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why should I, a researcher, have to pay journals to publish my work, sign over my copyrights to them, and have my work paywalled with ridiculous prices to access my work? Journals rely on free peer review and editing, appointing volunteers to those positions. The only part the journals actually pay for is the actual publishing of papers, whether in print or online. The journals exploit scientists and the peer review process generally lacks transparency and is open to unethical behavior. Why do we tolerate this practice? What is stopping more open access journals from being formed, which adopt peer review practices that are far less susceptible to abuses?

      Aaron Schwartz had a good idea, but look what happened to him!

    5. Re:Questions by delt0r · · Score: 1

      But academics just won't do this. Too busy trying to get that manuscript in Science or Nature.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
  7. Spending $20-$40 to get useless information by Steve1952 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another big problem with the Elsevier model is that often after fully reading an academic paper, you realize that it is not very useful. I estimate that for every 10 academic papers I read, only about one is a worthwhile "keeper". So the true cost to find a useful academic paper, using the Elsevier model, is actually hundreds of dollars.

    1. Re:Spending $20-$40 to get useless information by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I work in a somewhat obscure field of linguistics and regional studies. Most of the journals that we publish in are run by learned societies or state academies in various countries. They are usually free to publish in and often open access (supported by state funding or dead men's endowments). Peer review is very rigorous.

      When Sci-Hub appeared, I decided to do a search of topics related to my field. I was appalled to find discover that nearly all results (from journals belonging to big holdings like Elsevier) were terrible papers that would never pass muster in my fieldâ(TM)s mainstream journals: the discoveries they claim are obvious facts of the field at best, outright fallacies at worst. It's as if the big holdings are running publication mills for people who want to get a publication to their name thanks to weak peer review.

      Plus the articles are often written in dreadful English or some other language that the author is non-native in, and language revision is sorely necessary. The big holdings seem to be pretty lax about the amount of editing their editors are supposed to do. I feel sorry for anyone who has ever paid for any of this shit. I'm happy that when I discovered this dark side of my field, it didn't cost me or an institution a cent to download a PDF from Sci-Hub.

    2. Re:Spending $20-$40 to get useless information by cats-paw · · Score: 1

      This.

      Also many papers omit details that make it extremely difficult to reproduce results.

      Also too, errors. Some minor- some not so minor.

      Makes you wonder about this whole chain of "reputation" and "authority" that the leeches like Elsevier puport to uphold.

      --
      Absolute statements are never true
  8. Simple rule: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If it's not available for free online, it doesn't get quoted. It doesn't matter if it's available legally or because someone "forgot" it on an FTP server or it's on SciHub: I don't quote what I can't read, and I don't pay for scientific papers. Grow some balls and reserve the right to publish the paper on your homepage. If the magazine won't allow it, don't publish there.

    1. Re:Simple rule: by budgenator · · Score: 1

      I don't quote what I can't read, and I don't pay for scientific papers.

      That's a big key to the problem, Academics need to publish in a reputable and prestigious journal, journals get prestige through publishing influential articles and influence is measured by citations; cut off their citations and they suffocate! I sometimes throw in a jab like "Elsevier, don't they publish the peer reviewed journal "Homeopathy"?" when I'm in a particularly passive/aggressive mood.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    2. Re:Simple rule: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's quite simple. I'm not going to pay much attention to an article treatment from ajayrox.biz even if the person publishing it calls themselves Dr.

  9. Distribute the load? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any way we can contribute hardware of some kind of fault-tolerance (DR backup) for this site's content?

  10. Copyright infringement vs. Extortion by cashman73 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sci-Hub is clearly engaging in copyright infringement by the definition of the law as written. But one could make a very good argument that Elsevier is also engaging in Extortion as well, by charging as much as $30-35 per paper to download a PDF. Is there any data out there on how many people actually pay these fees? Most people with access at a Carnegie Research I institution don't need to pay the fees, but there are a lot of smaller academic institutions whose libraries don't have the resources to subscribe to everything. The options are either email the author and ask for them to send you a copy (most of the time, this works), contact a colleague at another institution and ask them to send you a copy (many academics will do this for friends and collaborators), visit Sci-Hub and download it yourself, or pay the extortion fee and obtain it. Three of these options violate copyright laws as written, but the first two options have the advantage of maintaining contact with other researchers in your field and increasing communication, which can help your career. Do we really want to stifle this all in the name of making a few extra bucks for the publishing companies so that their stock can go up a quarter of a point?

    1. Re:Copyright infringement vs. Extortion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sci-Hub is clearly engaging in copyright infringement by the definition of the law as written.

      Many (most?) of the papers on SciHub are publicly funded research done at publicly funded colleges and universities and therefore in the public domain.

      Is it copyright infringement to host public domain documents?

    2. Re:Copyright infringement vs. Extortion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The research is not actually in the public domain, though there are great arguments that it ought to be.

      When it comes to federally-funded research, universities are granted the intellectual property rights to the research under the Bayh-Dole Act. They must grant the federal government a royalty-free perpetual license to the intellectual property. I don't personally agree with this at all, but those are the rules.

      A condition of publishing in just about every journal is to sign over the copyrights to the journal. The authors no longer own the rights to the work. Furthermore, I don't believe the authors actually receive any royalties, either. In other words, the authors pay the journal to take the copyright, print the manuscript, and then profit from it.

      Universities are happy with the system because of the F&A costs and intellectual property rights they acquire. Journals make money from the authors and subscribers. Editors and peer reviewers don't get paid for their work. A major factor in tenure and funding decisions is the frequency and prestige of peer-reviewed publications, which locks researchers into submitting their manuscripts to the journals. Of course, the journals are very happy with this, because they're able to exploit just about everyone. And in the process, researchers and the public get screwed.

      The system is even more corrupt than that. The peer review process isn't transparent at all. Peer reviewers aren't supposed to be collaborating with the authors on any project, but they can be competitors. A peer reviewer is potentially able to anonymously suppress a paper that might be critical of their work, or that would otherwise be published ahead of their own competing research.

      Citations are also incredibly corrupt. When writing proposals for funding, there's pressure to cite every relevant paper because many reviewers base their recommendations in part on how frequently they are cited. In peer reviewed papers, it's somewhat similar. Often it's possible to tell who a reviewer is or at least what institution they work at based on the papers they insist you cite. Citations can be important in the inductive part of the scientific method to justify a hypothesis based on prior observations. It's also important to justify some decisions in the methdology, especially if those decisions might significantly affect the outcome of the experiment. This is abused in that introductions often become lengthy literature reviews that aren't necessary to support the hypothesis. The reason is that the quality of papers and the prestige of the authors is somewhat judged on how frequently the papers are cited.

      Basically, the entire process is corrupt, but nothing is being done to disrupt the process. I'd love to see excessive citations curtailed and more transparency brought to the peer review process. I certainly believe manuscript authors should collect royalties. An ancillary benefit would be to reduce the number of authors who are listed, but without making significant contributions to the paper.

    3. Re:Copyright infringement vs. Extortion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But one could make a very good argument that Elsevier is also engaging in Extortion as well, by charging as much as $30-35 per paper to download a PDF.

      With all the phony "peer reviewed" documents in the major publishers like Elsevier, I think a good argument could be made for fraud as well. https://science.slashdot.org/story/09/05/09/1514235/more-fake-journals-from-elsevier And some are so obviously fake that I think a very good argument could be made for DELIBERATE fraud. https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf

  11. Move to Antigua? by oneiros27 · · Score: 1

    After all, they're allowed to ignore US copyright:

    http://www.ictsd.org/bridges-n...
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01...
    http://motherboard.vice.com/bl...

    It might not help for stuff published in Europe (or distributed to Europe?), but it'd make it so they'd have the WTO to back them up.

    --
    Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
  12. Benevolent Billionaires by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 1

    It's telling that a 'benevolent billionaire' like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Mark Zuckerburg (as if) doesn't buy Elsevier, destroy all the locks, and re-configure it as totally open information store to benefit all of humanity.

    The fact that none of them ever will belies all their lofty talk of 'there's more than just money' as just that: talk.

    1. Re:Benevolent Billionaires by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Fuck, Bill Gates will never do something like that. He uses his foundation (the largest charity on earth by like an order of magnitude) to enforce intellectual property regimes by refusing to fund any charity that buys medicines manufactured in-country without a patent license even when it is completely legal by that country's own laws. If you want Gates Foundation money, you gotta waste^H^H^H^H^H^H spend it on vastly over-priced drugs.

    2. Re:Benevolent Billionaires by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      Elsevier is publcally traded. Wouldn't that mean that its ownership has a fiduciary duty to shareholders to increase profits, so no one can buy it and reduce its income stream just out of idealism?

    3. Re:Benevolent Billionaires by DeBattell · · Score: 1

      One would have to buy up all the stock and take it private.

    4. Re:Benevolent Billionaires by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With a market cap of about 13.6BillionGBP that would be expensive.

    5. Re:Benevolent Billionaires by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      And yet Elsevier has no respect itself for intellectual property. It steals the IP of authors and makes them pay for it. A boycot by universities is the only cure.

  13. Who is Elsevier by supernova87a · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Elsevier and other publishing conglomerates are absolutely milking researchers, universities, and governments for access to information that in many cases, these public institutions have paid for already through research subsidies, government grants, taxpayer funds, and more. So don't be too sympathetic to the claim that this is ripping off a company's intellectual property.

    In case you have any love for such publishing companies, know that they are really not much better than cable companies. They bundle unpopular journals together that libraries are required to purchase, just to get access to the one journal that they actually want. They add little value aside from binding the paper journals (which is dying) or putting up paywalls to restrict access to information. They bill researchers who submit papers with per-page charges (with surcharges for "color" figures, if you can believe it) for the publication of their works which are submitted for free. And then they recruit academic researchers yet again to be editors for pennies, and then charge subscription fees to authors to access their own and other people's works, who no one got paid for but somehow Elsevier deserves a cut of.

    They deserve to die a slow and painful death for all the value they have extracted from the academic community over decades. And scientists should be more vocal about wresting control of journals from them -- and I mean in a way that more effective than the current open-source / borderline-spam journals that exist out there. This is a market failure / monopoly situation that needs to be broken up like the worst examples in history.

  14. Already removed, get it while it's cached by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Has anyone ever recovered consciousness after being declared âoebrain dead?â

    Numerous accounts of patients who have recovered after a firm diagnosis of âoebrain deathâ demonstrate that âoebrain deadâ patients are not certainly dead. Here are two cases.

    Zack Dunlap, a 21-year-old Oklahoman, flipped over on his 4-Wheeler and suffered catastrophic brain injuries in November 2007. Thirty-six hours after his accident, doctors at United Regional Healthcare System in Wichita Falls, Texas, declared him âoebrain dead.â Preparations to harvest his organs were underway when friends and relatives gathered to say their final goodbyes. His cousin, a nurse, wanting to make certain, scraped his pocket knife along the bottom of Zackâ(TM)s foot. Zack jerked his foot away. Just months later, Zack was walking and talking. Zack recalled hearing the doctor say he was dead and being âoemad insideâ but unable to move.[5]

    Steven Thorpe, a British 17-year-old, suffered horrific injuries in a multi-car accident. Four doctors declared him âoebrain dead.â Doctors asked his family to consider donating his organs before his life-support was turned off. The family sought a second opinion from a neurologist who detected faint brain waves. Seven weeks later, Steven was discharged from the hospital having made a near-full recovery. In 2013, at age 21, now an accountant trainee, he spoke to the media for the first time: âoeHopefully (my experience) can help people see you should never give up. My father believed I was aliveâ"and he was correct.â[6]

    http://webcache.googleusercont...

  15. The posted ip address only gets to the front page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because any attempt to do a search is now blocked because the search engine site is down. Having tried to use the "official site" and found my search terms weren't acceptable, I was able to get away free of cost.

    To me, the very idea of locking well done R&D papers that could improve the lot of mankind as a whole, behind a paywall as is currently done, worthy of selecting a big piss elm club and going hunting, using the club as appropriate to teach the message to TPTB.

  16. On behalf of the research community by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Elsevier (and all the other publishers frankly) can get fucked.
    They aren't just slimy limpets on the industry, they're also slow and inconvenient.

    This is exactly like the RIAA/MPAA trying to control all the media in the world, except that they're not at all shy about the fact they make the researchers pay for the privilege of allowing a publisher to make money off their work. They're a dinosaur that needs to go away.

  17. Re:Slashdot promotes more piracy. by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    "But why does Slashdot feel that criminal activity is justified and publish this blatant attack on IP rights?"

    Because IP rights properly belong to the creators of work. Elsevier creates nothing, which is why we have no respect whatever for the IP it stole from researchers. That it got access to the American court system to sue people in Azerbaijan is why all my votes are going to outsider candidates this year.

  18. Napster moment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The science publishing industry should face their "napster moment", give up their futile resistance, and instead spend their energy figuring out / fighting over who will be the future's Spotify/iTunes.

  19. Download Link? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where's the torrent link to download every paper and a copy of their search software? Or are they just in it for the ad money?

  20. You are forgetting the golden rule by RadioElectric · · Score: 1

    But of course that's also a larger problem in academia where tenure expectations are often based on the reputation of publications, which usually emphasizes publication in "high-quality" journals... and those are often older ones that are part of these publishing empires. Shifting to open-access publication for research requires commitment from many major researchers in a discipline to actively promote open-access journals and shift the focus away from other journals... but junior scholars often can't take such a risk and publish where they know others will evaluate their work as "influential," regardless of access. Putting stipulations on grant money like I mentioned above might solve some of these issues, since it will drive researchers to find ways to publish and/or drive journals to find ways to make such funding more accessible.

    The golden rule is that "He who has the gold, makes the rules." Open-access publishing is expensive (though there is a large variability in the cost). Payment for this has to come from somewhere. It will be budgeted into grants, but funding agencies are not known for being generous and it is difficult to know how to allocate funding for open-access publication. Universities may also have internal funding available to support open-access publishing. As a researcher, if your funding comes from a source where you do not have the final say (e.g. it is held by the university to fund papers they deem "exceptional", or held by a superior who wants to save it for papers they care about) then you can either go to a non open-access journal that will let you publish for free or not publish your finding (which contributes to the lack of publication of "uninteresting" null results).

  21. Author post prints by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Most of these publishers allow the authors to host post prints on their or their institutions websites.

  22. it's theft.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And is nobody going to mention the fact that locking up knowledge behind paywalls etc could be having a serious detrimental effect on the whole of humanity,for all we know,if one particular untrained,under educated,but bright person had access to a few papers and bits of knowledge,they could find something that lots of specialists and "experts" have not spotted,that could was to a universal anti-biotic,a cure for lots of cancers or a very cheap source of energy generation..
    And that's another one of our major problems,over-specialisation,we need more generalists,folk with a working knowledge of hundreds of different fields,folk who can spot connections that all the specialists have missed...
    All research paper publishers and all public funded groups should be forced to supply a copy to say the congress library in America a d the british library in the UK,the same as book publishers have been forced to do for a very long time...
    All knowledge should be searchable by the public,anywhere in the world,preferably for free or if funding needed at very low cost. for a small annual subscription,say £12,a pound a month...
     

  23. Elsevier.......at it again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone needs to teach the oh so clever people at Elsevier abou tthe Streisand Effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect ).

    Scientific Journals are ripe for 100% reform. Should be a Wiki that replaces it, funded by some other method getting rid of the middle men (publishers like Elsevier). Frankly those publishers are no longer needed with today's technology. They serve no purpose whatsoever.

    Oh, anyone remember this debacle with Elsevier? https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2008/11/25/elsevier-math-editor-controversy/ I remember reading that back when it happened and it was hilarious reading!