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Subscription Journals Are Doomed Because of Sci-Hub's Big Cache of Pirated Papers, Suggests Data Analyst (sciencemag.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: There is no doubt that Sci-Hub, the infamous -- and, according to a U.S. court, illegal -- online repository of pirated research papers, is enormously popular. But just how enormous is its repository? That is the question biodata scientist Daniel Himmelstein at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues recently set out to answer, after an assist from Sci-Hub. Their findings, published in a preprint on the PeerJ journal site on July 20, indicate that Sci-Hub can instantly provide access to more than two-thirds of all scholarly articles, an amount that Himmelstein says is "even higher" than he anticipated. For research papers protected by a paywall, the study found Sci-Hub's reach is greater still, with instant access to 85% of all papers published in subscription journals. For some major publishers, such as Elsevier, more than 97% of their catalog of journal articles is being stored on Sci-Hub's servers -- meaning they can be accessed there for free. In a chat with ScienceInsider, Himmelstein concludes that the results of his study could mark "the beginning of the end" for paywalled research.
It's about time...
If they want it gone, they can simply seize the domain name or add filters. I keep hearing news about "controversial" sites which "somehow" are still up no matter how many news articles are written about them about how illegal they are. If they actually want a site done, it's gone within seconds.
I have access to pretty well every journal I need through my university's library. I still use Sci-Hub. One DOI entry and I can have my paper. 5 minutes of bullshit and jumping through menus to get a preview and abstract, then still need to hunt around on the individual page for download link (if it exists - if its offered as a PDF, not some protected web reader nonsense).
I'll stick with the pirate way.
There's no reason why peer review can't be done online en masse by all scientists. They could even rate papers on their credibility.
As long as there are people willing to pay $35 to read a single article, sometimes years old, which upon reading the full text may or may not be of any use to their research, then the paywall model will be fine.
Paywalled research is just a bad idea.
Yes, I understand that the peer review and publication process has to be paid for, but restricting access to the fruits of scientific progress -- and therefore also limiting further progress! -- is the wrong way to do it.
My guess is that we'll transition to an "author pays" model. Researchers employed by institutions will have their fees covered by their employer. Researchers who don't have that option are already disadvantaged under the current model, so the fact that they'll still be disadvantaged isn't so terrible. Plus they'll still be able to publish in free online archives that accept non-reviewed and unedited work. Really good work should find it fairly easy to get someone to fund the peer review and editing required to get it into a journal.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Knowledge shouldn't be locked away in fortresses. Doing so only serves to inhibit the further testing/validation and extension of research. If you want to profit from offering services based on the application of research, fine, but understand that you're going to need to compete with anyone else who has similar desires. -PCP
Need to find out how to mirror Sci-Hub before it gets taken down.
Just out of curiousity I searched for a (not at all famous) paper I published in the 1990s. Found it on Sci-Hub by just entering a few key words in a search engine - conveniently retrievable.
I remembered that at some point in time, a state-funded institution did officially archive my paper. But it took me about half an hour to finally find it, buried behind multiple retrieval forms and links, with no chance to find it had I not looked up its entire, exact title before.
No question, Sci-Hub did the better job of keeping my little contribution to the world's knowledge available to the public.
Isn't this analogous to what the software industry has gone through with cracks and pirated copies? There are still companies around that charge for software of all kinds, although I will admit that big changes occurred.
Oh no, not the end for paywalled research!!
The whole point of research and science to ADD to the COLLECTIVE UNDERSTANDING. It is a goddamned travesty that these cheapskate middle-merchants think it is acceptable to hide away facts and dribble them out bit-by-bit like some filthy, literal Pay-Per-View. If there is any cost associated with the so-called warehousing of data it should be borne by the institutions sitting on their lazy pile of endowments, and funding abosolute SHIT like "gender studies".
F--k these data hoarding pimps. May they die ASAP
usually a short story.. cease fire stand down,, there are moms & babys in every town..
not picking on journals
Why should we have to pay for publicly funded research? A paywall is like a tax on research. Let the information flow.
So that would mean you never get any action
Couldn't have happened to a nicer publisher.
Shriveled husks of a once former manhood. Reduced to testicular fantasies on a website forum. That's the AC way.
After Napster and torrents came along, everyone seemed pretty happy that recorded music was de facto public domain. Lots of teenagers and twentysomethings spent ridiculous amounts of time collecting and hoarding audio tracks in case a crackdown turned off the spigot.
So how do you feel about today's pop music? Nobody can make a killing anymore unless they look and dance and act like a diva or gangsta on TV. And we know what those kinds of music sound like.
The dirty secret of the academic publishing world is that it's a enormous scam designed to funnel taxpayers money into the pockets of rich vendors, who have repeatedly failed to do their jobs because they have no competition and act as a monopolistic racket. Let's not even talk about the kickbacks and benefits they give to the people at these public institutions that are supposed to be upholding the public good but are just looking to inflate their budgets and their ego.
The thing researchers love about sci-hub is that you type in the article name, and you get the article. Imagine that! Something the web search industry figured out 15 years ago has yet to make it into the proprietary morass of vendor locked in library IT systems.... because the academic publishing world is hopelessly corrupt and moribund.
There is no opportunity for a free market force to come in and force these leeches on the taxpayers to do their fucking jobs properly - and their job is to index and store information after it has been verified by peer review. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not complicated. It's not rocket science and it's not brain surgery.
Scihub is the best thing that has ever happened to academic publishing. The management and shareholders of Elsevier and the rest of these thieves should be ashamed of themselves. Ripping off the public for decades on end. It's time to stop.
The problem is that the US corporate government will reign in soon and shut it down like they do for everything that isn't making their cronies wealthier.
e-reader needed (read only no copying windows only) or for $39.99/year e-reader pro that can print / copy with auto citing into your paper (sorry no mac and the DRM system will not work under wine).
Because of Pirate Bay's Big Cache of Pirated Movies
Oh wait, nevermind.
knowledge must be free for there to be a free society
Greed, declining review quality, slow publication, etc. Just like other copyright industries, but probably even more stupid than most. And no loss at all to humanity when these all finally fail. Content will of course continued to be published, after all the authors and the reviewers (the two critical parts of scientific publishing) never got any compensation from journals at all. This will also allow to make a real effort to fix the currently mostly broken review system.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is what Aaron was set up to do when he got in trouble. Many years later, and on a much larger scale, data clearly wants to be free.
C'mon, Slashdot - can't you do any better than obvious paid advertisements for Sci-Hub like this?
Ads like this, detailing how people can get access to almost all research for free, are far too obvious.
People have been claiming that the internet will kill of the academic journal racquet for decades. There have been several concerted attempts to break it, but there is still no sign of it happening. Academic need the status of being published in leading peer-reviewed journals to build a career, and donate their labour to peer review other papers for free to curry favour. Government funded universities need to keep buying electronic access to every article published for their staff and students. Even though they are paying billions to buy papers on research that they and the government funded in the first place! And Elsevier just keeps making more and more journals that are becoming more and more specialised and there is no sign that the market will ever saturate.
The Guardian published a good article on it recently.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science
My guess is that we'll transition to an "author pays" model.
Which is arguably just as bad as paywalled research for exactly the same reason. Now those without financial resources will be unable to publish their research for others to find.
What we need is to revert back to the original scheme from whence the current journals grew. Scientific societies published collections of papers but as the task of collating, refereeing, assembling into volumes and then publishing grew to be a major task publishing companies took over.
However, modern technology makes all of this far easier and now societies could well afford to setup websites which operate like arXiv but with refereeing. This would be free to read, free to publish in and paid for by scientific societies whose goals are to promote the field they are associated with. That's about as ideal a situation for the promotion of scientific ideas as I can think of.
A lot of research is funded by governments, yet the resulting reports should be locked away by some publisher who doesn't contribute any real value.
In the times where print was difficult and expensive you had a role. And you filled that role reasonably well, investing in management and editing, in exchange for some pay.
These days you skip management and editing and just focus on *GIMME MONEY*. So it's about time you shrivel up and die. You ceased to be useful.
Whether it is right to make scientific articles, published by commercial journals, freely available - and on the other hand whether it is right to hamper the freedom of scientific research by making the articles prohibitively expensive - is perhaps open to discussion, although I personally think all scientific research should be freely accessible. But it is clear from the popularity of sites such as this, that there is a huge desire (as well as a need) for open access to research. Unless the commercial scientific journals can somehow address these issues and give people what they want, they won't be sustainable in the long term; and I can't see how they can do that.
...the better for science.
Portable, cheap, and you just need light. And you don't have to worry about losing something cheap.
. . . .why aren't the results available free for any citizen ? After all, we ALREADY paid for it !!