Slashdot Mirror
Elsevier Wants $15 Million In 'Piracy' Damages From Sci-Hub and Libgen (torrentfreak.com)
lbalbalba writes: Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers, is demanding $15 million in damages from Sci-Hub and LibGen, who make paywalled scientific research papers freely available to the public [without permission]. A good chunk of these papers are copyrighted, many by Elsevier. Elsevier has requested a default judgment of $15 million against the defendants for their "truly egregious conduct" and "staggering" infringement. Sci-Hub's efforts are backed by many prominent scholars, who argue that tax-funded research should be accessible to everyone. Others counter that the site doesn't necessarily help the "open access" movement move forward. Sci-Hub's founder Alexandra Elbakyan defends her position and believes that what she does is helping millions of less privileged researchers to do their work properly by providing free access to research results.
Funny if Elselvier lose!!
Couldn't disagree more. We wouldn't have Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, and a host of other halfway-decent services if Napster hadn't come first.
When the law does not respect the people, the people will not respect the law.
It's a government-imposed monopoly, not capitalism.
From the bottom of my heart: Fuck you!
I am a highly-cited scientist (in my field), but have diligently avoided publishing in, or refereeing articles for (by-rules for-free) any any Elsevier-owned journal – for the entirety of my entire career.
I also go to great pains to avoid citing anything that has appeared in an Elsevier scientific article. Surely the author said something similar somewhere else... or someone else said it...
Elsevier are Copyright-vultures feeding off the free labor and hard work of scientists the world-over.
Yeah, there's a study that was publshed in one of Elsevier's journals. Unfortunately it's not up on scihub yet, so I can't include a link.
All joking aside, yes, this is an itch being scratched, not a primarily political thing. Real work was being blocked by the unavailability of journals anywhere without a strong currency, or without really substantial funding, There's no question that the Elsevier model prevents useful work from being done.
It is due to the unfortunate tradition of basing tenure for scientists on the impact factor of the journals they publish their works in. Elsevier happens to own several high impact journals. Of course, for scientists at research universities where tenure is granted by fellow professor, a simple change of how the faculty evaluate new comers' work can eliminate most of the motivation to publish with an Elsevier journal.
Is there any actual proof that SciHub's illegal activity is having a positive impact on poor countries?
I don't know the answer to your specific question, but I can answer another one:
Does SciHub increase the Impact Factor (IF)* of Elsevier journals, by spreading articles within them more widely, and thus getting them cited more? The answer is an undoubted "YES."
* IF is a "rule-of-thumb" number that gives you a general idea of the relevancy of any particular journal.**
** IF can be gamed, so Thomson-Reuters came out with the "Eigenfactor", which is much more resistant to gaming or "fluffing."
YES YES YES! The Pubic pays THREE times for scientific and engineering information. Everyone does.
(1) Your taxes pay for research projects.
(2) The researcher does the work, and writes-up his/her results in a paper.
(3) A Referee for the Journal gives it a thumbs-up or -down for publication, doing the job for free.
(4) The Researcher must then pay the journal "page charges" to print the article.
(5) To access the article, anyone must go to a library that pays an extortionate subscription fee to the journal to allow the Public access. Alternatively, a person can pay $30-100 for a PDF of the article. This group includes, BTW, the authors of a given article.
I once had to pay $35 to get a PDF of an article where I was a listed co-author!!! (My library, at a top-10 US university, did not describe to the journal in question, so I was stuck.)
Amen.
Elsevier's entire business model is based on restricting the spread of information and keeping the world stupider than it needs to be. It's time for them to be put out of business.
Emperor Trump, are you listening? Make America great again by smashing the filthy neofeudal parasites at Elsevier.
You have fundamental misunderstanding of what Elsevier does and why it does what it does. Elsevier does not pay the authors of the papers it publishes. What the authors get is access and scientific credit. For most scientists you have to publish papers to get credit and feedback from other scientists. Back before the internet Elsevier printed and bound and distributed scientific journals. They did this for papers that were approved by other scientists. Now most of this is done electronicly at a much lower cost. The editorial function of Elsevier remains. Many of the papers Elsevier publishes are actually the result government funded research. In the US government funded research papers can only be tied up for a limited time.
Similar disputes are occurring in the legal field within the US. The law can and is different in different countries. Elsevier is an expensive dinosaur which needs to change with the times.
They want money for 'damages?' Well I want access to the research that MY tax payer dollars payed for. These papers are not being stolen by Sci-Hub, they are being ransomed by the leeches at Elsevier. You can't steal something that is already rightfully belongs to you. These papers rightfully belong to the people. It's completely ridiculous that I or anyone else should have to pay money for a paper three decades old, or pay for something because their institution does not have that particular subscription, or pay for anything else that they already, through their taxes, paid for.
Fuck Elsevier. They are nothing more than a drain on the system. The free sharing of knowledge is one integral to the values of science. If promoting science, and getting what you are paid for, are piracy, then long live scientific piracy.
Prestige and impact factor. Yes, you could start your own journal. However, if I'm some university researcher and I want tenure, or a post-doc looking for a job, it makes much more sense for my career to publish in the most prestigious journal I can. It goes back to the stupid 'publish or perish' model. The system, in its wisdom, says that you have to have those publications, end of story. Nothing else matters.
What you say is true in theory, but it requires a lot of people recognizing the problems we have and being willing to be the change necessary to make improvements. Unfortunately, knowing the problem and taking the steps to change it are two different things.
Are you retarded? If taxpayer fund the research, even in a small way, then taxpayers are entitled to the results. Don't like it? Don't take taxpayer money. It's pretty straightforward isn't it douchebag?
You are right, but that is an entirely different argument from the general one about copyright.
In the UK we have something called Crown Copyright for works created by government and paid for by the taxpayer. These are generally available for free (as in beer) although I believe that in practice there is a charge for printed documents. For example, you can view the Highway Code online without paying, but if you buy it in the shops it's a couple of quid, to cover costs of printing, distribution etc. What you can't do is copy the Highway Code and sell your own version or whatever as it is protected by the Crown Copyright.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it