Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Under what jurisdiction would they seize the domain names? Sci-Hub operates under many domains, including those in .ac (Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a group of islands in the South Atlantic), .bz (Belize, a Central American country), .cc (the Cocos/Keeling Islands in the Pacific), among others. Of those, .ac has a connection to the UK due to the islands being a UK territory, and .cc's operations are run by VeriSign, a US company.
The site itself is hosted in Russia, who is unlikely to care about US or EU takedown requests.
It's also available over Tor, so good luck.
Seizing the names isn't really feasible.
This is not true. Many government agencies stipulate the publications must be openly available (e.g., on PubMed). In addition, many scientists make their preprints publicly available, or even their postprints publicly available (even though publishers generally do not allow it).
Where there are problems, it is generally because of the publishers, not because scientists or the government do not want to make the publications available.
I used to work in a lab doing research at a major research university. I worked there and at another lab for eight semesters and three summers. I was not paid - my PI pleaded poverty as he did with all the undergrads. And yet we could not necessarily get all the papers we needed. But I did contribute to some papers directly and indirectly. It's repugnant that I worked for free but couldn't even directly get access to those papers after I left until I went to a graduate program. (Yes, I could email a friend to get a copy but direct access is the point here and they won't do this every week for me for other papers.)
Later I needed access to some medical papers - which are often even harder to obtain than regular science papers. Again my university did not have access. I had to go across town to another university. But of course I could not logon because they restricted access if you were a student from another institution. In the end I had to hustle and find a computer in their library that was very antiquated located near the printers. It luckily did not have a login requirement. I loaded up about 15 papers onto my flash drive. And it was very scary because the foreign institution was (and still is) so strict about this. I am reminded me of the death of an MIT student. MIT is and was so IP obsessed that it assisted in pushing one of its own to suicide.
Now I am no longer affiliated with a university, But I do pay lots of $$$ in taxes to the federal government. Somehow paying for the research now, having done previous research for free, and later for graduate student slave wages does not privilege me with the right to obtain papers. I asked many people if there was some way I could pay as an individual a modest fee (of about $500 a year) to get access to all the typical journals for noncommercial use and was told no such program existed. I even called multiple libraries about this. I later needed some information for urgent personal reasons from a journal article and forked over around $45 for it.
When I brought up how unfair the system was to other people I was either politely ignored, told to stop complaining, or told that IP was necessary and that without high fees the journals could not survive (which is false). Fast forward a few years and now Sci-hub has provided a way for people like me to obtain papers that I have in one way or another already paid for. And suddenly Nature and Elsevier cry crocodile tears. But because they are rich and powerful, people don't condescend to them and insist they stop complaining. The power of campaign finance contributions is so overwhelming.
The system is broken. IP is out of control - it's even corrupted university faculty who blab on about their own intellectual property and restrict the supply of their lecture notes even when they would not otherwise make money from them. There are many papers demonstrating the over indulgence in IP restrictions. One showed that the optimum copyright should last a mere seven years. Knowledge should be freely available as much as possible when its creation has already been paid for.
And we could incentivize new idea production with a lot less IP. Drug patents are another example of how it is abused - pharmaceutical companies charge what the market will bear. And that means monopoly pricing. Screaming "free market" will not help you. Giving someone a legal monopoly is not laissez fair. If you are going to give someone extra privileges, there have to be protections to prevent abuses. Lots of people urgently may need journal access like people with rare diseases. It's hard for policy makers on the state or municipal level to make good decisions without ready access to journal articles - I see this firsthand as someone who serves in local government.
So until there is a realistic alternative that allows wide distribution of knowledge we are stuck with sci-hub. It's almost impossible to have reasonable discussions because all major news outlets are in love with copyright and IP generally and th