Sci-Hub 'Pirate Bay of Science' Blocked In Russia Over Medical Studies

UK academic publisher Springer Nature has filed a complaint against Sci-Hub, a site that provides open access to scientific research papers. "The Moscow City Court was told that Sci-Hub is infringing the company's copyrights and should, therefore, be subjected to blocking," reports TorrentFreak. "Listing 'bulletproof' hosting company Quasi Networks and U.S.-based CloudFlare as facilitating access to the site, Springer Nature complained that three specific works were being made available illegally by Sci-Hub." From the report: As the above table obtained from the Court shows, the research papers cover topics of interest to the medical community in the spheres of heart and brain health -- Effect of glucose-lowering therapies on heart failure, Nitric oxide signaling in cardiovascular health and disease, and Lactate in the brain: from metabolic end-product to signaling molecule. These would ordinarily sit behind paywalls but thanks to Sci-Hub, their contents are available for everyone to absorb for free. It's a situation that's unacceptable to Springer Nature and the Moscow City Court was sympathetic to the company's complaints. As a result, several Sci-Hub and Library Genesis domains (gen.lib.rus.ec, www.libgen.io, scihub.unblocked.gdn, lgmag.org, libgen.unblocked.gdn, sci-hub.tw and libgen.io) are now being rendered inaccessible by Russian Internet Service Providers.

Comments

Re:down

[arglebargle_xiv]

This is Russia, they're down until someone pays the appropriate people more than Springer's fixers did, or an agency gets into a turf war with the one who facilitated the blocking, or one of a million other things that decide how things work in Russia goes into effect.

study

[religionofpeas]

Effect of glucose-lowering therapies on heart failure

This study seemed interesting, so I downloaded the paper from sci-hub to check it, but disappointingly it only talks about using drugs to lower glucose, rather than the obvious therapy of removing glucose and starches from the diet.

Of all the times

[ChromeAeonuim]

Of all the times for Russia to enforce another country's copyright laws, this was an odd choice. A lot of students in less financially sound countries don't have access to the latest publications, which are kept paywalled behind exorbitant fees, so they need Sci-Hub. What other choices do they have, pull $40 out their ass to skim a paper, a paper what was paid for by some country's tax payers which the journals now profit off of, that may or may not even be relevant to what they're looking for? Then do that again a hundred times over? Get real.

I notice that the second paper has an author at University of Louvain in Belgium and the third at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, so clearly, tax payer dollars already went into the listed works. I'm all for copyright laws protecting the rights of artists, writers, musicians, and the like, but the situation in scientific publications is just ridiculous. The journals are just using all the means they can to hold onto their bygone cash cow, to everyone else's detriment.

Re: Of all the times

[edris90]

All of science borrows from the works of all scientists before. There should be no protection of scientific works as it's all derivative work countless people gone by. Every time things are monetized they go to shit

Re:Of all the times

[sad_]

it might not be the authors choice, my wife also does medical studies/trials, sometimes she needs access to research papers that are not available to her (even though the university has several subscriptions, you still miss out). what she does and what works most of the time is contact the authors directly, they will almost always send the research papers for free.

Still hoping for justice

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for the day those scientific publishing barons are recognized for the parasites they are and are driven out of their comfy places. Springer, Elsevier, all of you.

Re:Open access?!?

[MrMr]

I will give one good argument for your 'should'. Quoting from the last Nature Reviews paper in the list above:
Research in P.J.M.'s laboratory has been supported over the years by the Swiss National Science Foundation, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST; Saudi Arabia), the University of Lausanne (UNIL; Switzerland), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL; Switzerland), Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV; Switzerland), the National Centre for Competence in Research (NCCR) Synapsy and the Préfargier Foundation
Clearly Nature is paywalling, at least partially, publicly funded research results.

f*ck springer

[Anonymous Coward]

Always use sci-hub, even when your institution has access to the article. It's just easier and much faster.
Knowing that you might cause a small loss of profit for those 'scientific publishing' companies is just a plus.
Those f*ckers deserve it.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science