7 ms·
I've used sci-hub a few times. It's a little buggy and not every article can be accessed, but it works well enough to try when I'm not on campus. $30 to read a
by travjones 11y ago
I've used sci-hub a few times. It's a little buggy and not every article can be accessed, but it works well enough to try when I'm not on campus.
$30 to read a single article is ridiculous anyway and presents a barrier to scientists who don't have, can't afford, or don't want to pay for access. I hope sci-hub stays up and improves for some time.
- Cyph0n 11y agoIf you're a student, your university likely has a proxy service that allows you to access journals from anywhere using your credentials. My previous uni gives access to alumni for life, so I can access journals for free from wherever.
- r3bl 11y agoAnd what are people outside of the U.S. supposed to do?
- dfc 11y agoThe GP is a great person to ask that question to in light of the fact that he is a student in UAE. I am curious why you assumed that GP is from the US?
- niels_olson 11y agoLet me guess: Because the spoken language is English and the site has a clearly US-centric culture? Even more specifically, an SV culture. Have you ever seen a housing article about Fresno on the front page? New York? One could argue the bias lacked utility, but it's hardly incriminating.
- sidarape 11y agoI don't think it is unique to the US... I'm in Canada and also have that.
- cyphar 11y agoI'm in Australia and we have the same service. But it is bullshit that academic papers are hidden behind paywalls.
- Cyph0n 11y agoI'm living in the United Arab Emirates. My previous college has subscriptions in most journals. My current institute also has access.
- secure 11y agoAgreed. I studied in Germany, and none of the academic institutions I know of make papers accessible to alumnis. For students, sure, but for alumnis? Never heard of it.
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoThe local hack: get a lifetime membership at the uni computer club. This gets you a shell account on a computer inside the uni network, and Rob's your uncle. Lifetime cost is about $100 here, and that money goes to a good cause.
- krisdol 11y agoMy uni didn't have any of that. YMMV
- peterhuston 11y agoFrom a Norwegian IP you can get access to many medical journals, see http://www.helsebiblioteket.no/om-oss/english http://www.helsebiblioteket.no/om-oss/english. This can be achieved through TOR if you choose only to exit through a node in Norway.
- logicrook 11y agoEven with that, every uni does not subscribe to everything. You can still find important papers behind paywalls. In my uni we had pages-long emails for the lab explaining the different procedures (at least 4, e.g. access with some other proxy, etc) to try to get access to an article before requesting it.
- grendelt 11y agoNot from anywhere. Most major publishers, sure, but some journals are a little esoteric or very specific in their discipline and not part of the main journal subscription collections.
- snake117 11y agoI frequently took advantage of this when I was a student. It was amazing that I could bypass any paywall and get access to all the journals/articles that I needed either for my courses or my own curiosity. Unfortunately, that great privilege was revoked when I stopped paying tuition (aka graduated).
- JabavuAdams 11y ago> My previous uni gives access to alumni for life, so I can access journals for free from wherever. Huh. Need to check on this, thanks. That said I hope sci-hub succeeds.
- alphydan 11y agoWhat about poor countries who can't afford to pay for many subscriptions in the field? Should their scientists be banned from making contributions to science? Spain is not very poor, but when I was doing research in Seville, the department simply could not afford subscriptions to most physics journals, so we had to write directly to the authors with mixed success. How do you think a scientist in Senegal would feel about spending $6,000 [0] for access to a single journal for 5 researchers. If the per-capita GNI is $1,000 [1], the equivalent in the US would be for your university to pay $330,000 for 5 people in your department to read _a single_ journal!! [0] http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?issn=03784371 http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?issn=03784371 [1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD/countries/SN-ZF-XN?display=graph http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD/countries...
- Cyph0n 11y agoI agree completely. Open access is really the only way to go if we want scientific knowledge to be equally accessible everywhere. However, if you were fortunate enough to attend a college that does have access, you should take advantage of it.
- czr80 11y agoProbably a researcher in Senegal has access through this: http://www.research4life.org/about/ http://www.research4life.org/about/
- alphydan 11y agoI specifically chose the journal above, because it's not included in that initiative. Research4life only gives access to what the first world thinks the third world should concern itself with. Namely <<leading journals and books in the fields of health, agriculture, environment, and applied sciences>>. I think it's a generous initiative, but it misses the point of open access. If you're poor and passionate about math, theoretical physics, or some branches of computer science ... then, sorry, these journals are only for the rich kids.
- freshyill 11y agoNo doubt $30 is expensive, but many journals do provide free access to their content in developing countries.
- vezycash 11y agoKindly give a few examples. Tired of seeing $$ to read beyond the abstract.
- lloyd-christmas 11y agohttp://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/devecon.dtl http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/devecon.dtl
- aldanor 11y agoNot in Russia
- tosseraccount 11y agoMost papers have some to all public funding behind them. Even papers from Stanford and MIT. Shouldn't the public have free access? We paid for them.
- zbjornson 11y agoThe NIH now requires that NIH-funded research publications be made open-access upon acceptance. They're usually on pubmed central. These tend to be the ugly author manuscripts instead of the typeset format but at least they're available. https://publicaccess.nih.gov/ https://publicaccess.nih.gov/
- qft 11y agoInstead of paying the publishers, who contribute nothing to the work at all (remember they also charge us researchers hundreds of dollars just to get our work published), I'd rather donate the same $30 to sci-hub.
- ansgri 11y agoAnother option: pay $5 to actual editors and designers, and $15 to reviewers. And save $10. Remember, the publisher typically doesn't even help with paper formatting, never mind copyediting. Unpaid reviewers (who allegedly agree to work for some 'reputation' — BS, they're anonymous) delegate the actual scientific review to the least busy student of those capable to write a syntactic semblance of a positive review. And then you're forced to pay $30 to have a chance to finally review it for yourself, as you're the only one interested in quality. Please pay the reviewers, or everybody (in many applied areas at least) will self-publish in blogs and judge quality on HN votes. Like it has happened with most of software research.
- dalke 11y agoWhere do you get good editing and design work for $5? Most reviewers don't want $15 from the author. Quoting http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/peer-review-survey-2009.html http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/peer-review-survey-20... : > Reviewers divided over incentives: Just over half of reviewers think receiving a payment in kind (e.g. subscription) would make them more likely to review; 41% wanted payment for reviewing, but this drops to just 2.5% if the author had to cover the cost. Acknowledgement in the journal is the most popular option.
- facetube 11y agoI suspect the parent meant $5 per sale; if you were selling millions of copies of papers, you'd have a substantial editing and design budget.
- dalke 11y agoAhh, that makes sense - I missed the context. When does it end? I'm reading papers from the 1960s and '70s - where should I send the $5? Do I adjust for inflation? And how do I send Deutsche Marks to West Germany?