24 ms·

Sci-Hub, spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz, angering publishers all over again

308 points by Thriptic 11y ago

pink_dinner 11y ago
This is all about violating a license/copyright law. If we were talking about a large company using GNU/copyleft code and not sharing their changes back to the community, many people in the community would be demanding the law get involved (the Thesis Wordpress theme is a great example of this..which caused anger and outright hatred about 5 years ago in the HN community). It's really difficult for me to stand behind any community that doesn't put all licenses on an equal footing. If you want the government to stop going after you for copyright infringement, you shouldn't be then using those same tactics to go after people violating the terms of your license. This girl, Like Aaron Swartz, is nothing but a petty thief. It's pretty easy to put up a website with stolen papers/content. The other issue is that it takes millions of dollars to fund the research for many of these papers. With no incentive to make money on the research, companies will either stop the research, or it will go completely private and there will be no access for anyone. Many of these online revolutionaries really seem to understand how the world actually works. If you want to change it, start a research company and actually do the research yourself.
- Thriptic 11y ago
  > The other issue is that it takes millions of dollars to fund the research for many of these papers. With no incentive to make money on the research, companies will either stop the research, or it will go completely private and there will be no access for anyone. Most of the basic research being published is government funded and is conducted by universities or other academic entities, not companies. The publishing companies (Elsevier) aren't conducting any of the research; for the most part they are simply hosting manuscripts.
  - pink_dinner 11y ago
    There are many thousands of papers on this website. You can't tell me all of them are government funded. Even so, it will not change the system. It will only make it more difficult to conduct research in the future.
    - Thriptic 11y ago
      > Even so, it will not change the system. It will only make it more difficult to conduct research in the future. I don't see why. If anything it is in the academics' best interest to have their papers show up on this service as it increases access and probability of citation. Also please explain how more ready access to information hinders research. You are aware that academics make 0 dollars off of content submitted to journals right? 100% of the profits go to the publishers.
      - sndean 11y ago
        > If anything it is in the academics' best interest to have their papers show up on this service as it increases access and probability of citation. Most people I know (myself included) are very happy to see most of their papers on sci-hub. We couldn't care less about how people find them, as long as they're cited. > You are aware that academics make 0 dollars off of content submitted to journals right? And yes, in fact, in my field, publishing costs ~$2500 per paper. More if it's open-access.
    - revelation 11y ago
      You seem to legitimately misunderstand this, so let's make this very very clear: of all the thousands of papers on that website, the publisher aka Elsevier and others had no part in the actual research, they have not funded the research, they have in fact very likely taken money from the very researchers.
    - jjoonathan 11y ago
      > You can't tell me all of them are government funded. The majority are. A minority (<<1% to ~30% depending on field) were (also) funded by private grants and industry. In all three cases, the institution funding the research will receive 0 compensation from the journal if you pay $30+ for a paper. It all goes to the journal and its 40%+ profit margin. "But why don't competing journals steal their business?" Because the top few journals are the de-facto clearinghouses and ratings-providers for academics. If you are an academic who values his career, you will pay what they ask.
- jdbernard 11y ago
  Calling Aaron Swartz "nothing but a petty thief" is a bit too dismissive. This is not a black-and-white issue. For example, many times the millions of dollars used to fund the research were given by governments and grant organizations: public entities.
  - pink_dinner 11y ago
    "Calling Aaron Swartz "nothing but a petty thief" is a bit too dismissive." He's not a hero. Not even close. He was caught breaking into university computers and taking files that were not his. Most accounts of him were high-strung and when he didn't get his way? A petulant child. He seems like a nightmare to work with at Reddit and pretty much told everyone to fuck off that didn't agree with him. The fascinating thing is that his behavior sounds just like Donald Trump. Only..it's acceptable because his views match with many of the people in the community. "many times" Like I said above, this isn't all. You can't guarantee that not all of the documents in question were not funded by private entities. Research may be funded by the government, but those universities many times outsource it to private companies (and they pay workers to complete it). Everyone gets hurt in the process. It's just sad the dogma and the cult of personality have to be so pervasive on HN.
    - bloaf 11y ago
      >Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states. A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples. A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." The rule of law is generally good for humanity. Defending it is fine. But you need to remember that the law is a messy human undertaking that is subject to change, not an unassailable universal truth. People can break the law, and still be in the right. What people like Swartz and the folks at Sci-Hub are doing is making the judgement call that free access to scientific information provides a benefit to humanity that outweighs the cost of breaking the laws keeping the information restricted. Scientists-the people generating the content in question-tend to agree. There is no doubt that the publishers will have the lawyers on their side, but I've always thought that to be the weakest of endorsements. >There, where the state ceaseth—there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody. http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/11 http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/11
- nefitty 11y ago
  To quote the Big Lebowski, "Donny, you're out of your element." Publishers like Elsevier and Taylor & Francis pay nothing to acquire research papers, or for the volunteer peer reviews and edits. These companies have 30% profit margins. They are basically flipping a product back to the people who created it and need it, with literally almost no value add. They claim to be curators of content, but at the point we're at with the internet that role can be distributed. Our tax dollars also paid for a lot of the research locked up behind these paywalls. I'm sure you knew your comment about Alexandra Elbakayan being a "petty thief" was going to be contentious. We went through this with Aaron Swartz already. Try looking at the depths of her position before you start supporting a position that drove a young man to suicide. Edited for rhetorical stylings
  - dang 11y ago
    > "Shut the fuck up Donny, you're out of your element." > really fucking pissed me off Please don't do this here. If you're "really fucking pissed off" by a bad or unfair comment, wait until you can post something civil. Otherwise the signal/noise ratio gets worse and we end up with a flamewar.
    - nefitty 11y ago
      Got it mate. It's just my style, but I will keep your suggestion in mind in the future.
      - dang 11y ago
        Thanks, we appreciate it. It's a style that works fine in many contexts (I always think of rugby players who beat the crap out of each other and then go out drinking together), but on large internet forums it acts the way salt does on a slug.
- michaelbuddy 11y ago
  A "petty thief" he says. I'm thinking you don't know what petty means. "Petty" would be the exact opposite. Just for the sake of argument, let's say she's a thief. The theft here is for the purpose of freeing up science around the world instead of it being locked away by people who didn't even contribute to the science. In many cases, the science is publicly funded. So freeing this information is not petty, in many ways it's selfless and honorable if you look at what can be done with it. A 'petty' thief would be somebody who rips out some of the copper from your home creating thousands in damage just to make a measly $10 from it, which could have been easily earned, possibly for less work and less time. That's selfish and petty. get it troll?
  - dang 11y ago
    We've asked you before to stop posting political rants to HN. You've continued to do that, and here you've added a personal attack. We ban people for doing these things, so please don't keep doing them.
    - michaelbuddy 11y ago
      oh it's an attack to call someone a troll who attacked the subject in the story?? And how is my "rant" here political? Do you want discourse or not?
- lolidaisuki 11y ago
  You can think of it as theft if you accept that science should be done behind closed doors. Many people think that scientific discoveries belong to everyone.
- deleted 11y ago
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- wolfgke 11y ago
  > This is all about violating a license/copyright law. If we were talking about a large company using GNU/copyleft code and not sharing their changes back to the community, many people in the community would be demanding the law get involved Companies: not sharing their changes back to the community Publishers: not sharing the papers with everyone willing to do research I see a parallel...
- pixelman32 11y ago
  Scientific journals don't necessarily fund research, and groups who fund research don't necessarily benefit from proceeds from journal subscriptions. Funding scientific research isn't as simple as, say, funding startups. A vast majority of scientific research, especially basic research, yields no returns on investment. The real issue people have with the way journals work is that they seemingly don't provide a great deal of value. Imagine if GitHub worked like a science journal: You would submit your code to GitHub. They might have someone do a code review or run some tests to assure a baseline level of quality. Then they would lock your repository and charge anyone who wanted to see more than just the readme file $30 - $50. All of the proceeds from that go directly to GitHub. You, the author of the repository, get nothing. A software developer simply would not tolerate this model, but it's the norm in science.
- jostmey 11y ago
  Having participated in the publishing process, I firmly believe the actions of this girl are justified. When what is legal no longer aligns with what is right, the law must change, or else it becomes a joke.
- andrepd 11y ago
  >The other issue is that it takes millions of dollars to fund the research for many of these papers. With no incentive to make money on the research, companies will either stop the research, or it will go completely private and there will be no access for anyone. You seem to be basically misunderstanding the whole thing. This isn't about research funding, it's about publisher fees. The issue with the papers is not that they take money to produce and so the researchers then charge money for others to see the results, and that therefore bypassing these fees would deprive the researchers of their hard-earned money they need to keep funding their million dollar research. That is not at all what this is about. The fees being charged are publisher fees, absolutely ridiculous fees for a minimal service that is completely obsolete in the internet age, hampers collaboration and the flow of information, slows down science, prevents underprivileged persons from accessing the research that is in the vast majority of cases publicly funded, and serves only to give money to these publishers, of which absolutely 0% goes to the researchers themselves.
  - pink_dinner 11y ago
    "The fees being charged are publisher fees, absolutely ridiculous fees for a minimal service that is completely obsolete in the internet age, hampers collaboration and the flow of information, slows down science, prevents underprivileged persons from accessing the research that is in the vast majority of cases publicly funded" So we should be able to do whatever we want when we don't agree with a law? this is between publishers and researchers. "and serves only to give money to these publishers, of which absolutely 0% goes to the researchers themselves." This sounds like the 'all music should be shared and free' argument all over again. The last decade of Napster and Torrents have pretty much destroyed any chances of an Indy musician to make a living without the sponsorship of a big corporation. It essentially pushed all of the Indy artists out. They actually had a chance to make a living with music before file sharing became part of our culture (and the belief that bits on a computer should somehow be free since it takes nothing to copy them). The irony is that the exact same thing is happening with job outsourcing and now those same people are clamoring for government intervention. We somehow need to stop the free flow of information when it directly affects your job. I worked in academia in a different life and nearly all research is conducted in some part by private entities pumping money into the University. This won't have the desired effect and will essentially make research even more private. I don't believe the GNU is a truly free license. If I decided to take software, use it in a proprietary app, and then sell it with no source, I would be taken to court (and people here on HN would want me sued out of existence (I've seen it many times already)). Should I have a right to do this? Because this is exactly what is going on here. A copyright license is being broken and you believe it's justified.
- SCAQTony 11y ago
  The handle "Pink Dinner" was created 15-days ago; about the time Alexandra Elbakyan hit the news hard. If you view the comments posted by this user one might consider them agenda driven toward this sort of topic? ... YMMV
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Let's assume good faith. Unless the profile's deleted a bunch of prior pro-Elsevier pieces and filled in a bunch of others, primary evidence doesn't look exceedingly shill-like.
dang 11y ago
Sci-Hub has been discussed a great deal on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sci-hub&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sci-hub&sort=byPopularity&pref... There were other major threads that don't come up in that search, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11279903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11279903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424276 But the current article looks like it adds new information, so we won't treat it as a dupe.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  You are going to make ColinWright very happy if you show up all the dupes like this :-)
  - dang 11y ago
    It was but a small portion of all the dupes.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      :-) Do you have an internal tool that helps you find dupe stories? I personally don't mind duplicates because the conversation on most HN articles is usually very insightful and almost always interesting. In fact, I often go back to old stories just to read the comments. I'd love to go back to old duplicate stories just for that reason :-)
tclmeelmo 11y ago
So what about scientific textbooks? Not undergraduate ones, but the really narrow topic ones that are used in graduate classes as reference materials for professionals. They're frequently written by author(s) who are partly to fully funded on government grants, and they too are very expensive, as some journal articles are. Are these fair game for distribution on Sci-Hub too?
- j2kun 11y ago
  I don't think anyone who has written such a book has ever made a significant profit from it. The attitude among researchers in my field, at least, is that all such books are a labor of love. With this in mind, it sounds like a perfect use case for sci-hub.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > I don't think anyone who has written such a book has ever made a significant profit from it. The attitude among researchers in my field, at least, is that all such books are a labor of love. I don't think it's necessarily so altruistic - there are a number of benefits to writing a book that go beyond the monetary incentive. That said, yes, these authors almost never even cover their own expenses (opportunity cost) when writing these books, let alone turn a profit. The "real" profits[0] go to the publishers. [0] if any! Publishers operate like venture firms in this regard - they make most of their money off of the blockbuster hits, and there's a long tail of books that are unprofitable or very close to unprofitable.
    - ig1 11y ago
      > Publishers operate like venture firms in this regard - they make most of their money off of the blockbuster hits, and there's a long tail of books that are unprofitable or very close to unprofitable. Not really true for specialist academic work publishers, they don't (and shouldn't) expect books to become hits, rather they operate a volume game. A specialist book might sell 200-500 copies so to make profit they essentially have to publish a large volume of books at a high-price point. A typical editor at such a firm will typically have to publish 1-2 books a week to make the economics work out. It doesn't really apply for journal publishing either although at most publishers more establish journals will typically subsidize the the newer ones (a new journal can easily take 5-10 years to reach break-even point).
jostmey 11y ago
I typed in a doi to a paper I co-authored, and I was proud to see my work pop up. So it works.
calibraxis 11y ago
Interesting, time to research Robert K. Merton to understand deeper: "The world is broken, and money always wins. [...] I would like to reference Robert K. Merton, the founder of sociology of science. He studied ethos of research communities. And what he found is that communism is one of the four important ethical norms (along with universalism, disinterested, and organized skepticism) that makes science work. By communism, he meant the common ownership of scientific discoveries, according to which scientists give up intellectual property in exchange for recognition. I think that his work is very relevant to what is happening in science now."
- deleted 11y ago
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- calibraxis 11y ago
  BTW, here's Merton's explanation [pdf]: (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/merton_sociology_science.pdf http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/merton_...)
return0 11y ago
the parallels to swartz sound like overdramatization. she created the website for people (like me) who dont have access to all the libraries and dont want to spend a lifetime searching colleagues with access. there is just too much science nowadays to justify paywalling it. its a very practical matter for scientists to be well informed. i am split whether i like this publicity. on the one hand, it may lead to closing it down, on the other hand it might finally force the hand of regulators against the scientists who publish only behind paywalls. To anyone who tries to defend elsevier here on the grounds of capitalist justice: hold your horses, you are defending a greedy corporation that offers nothing to science. think about this: the fee for making a paper 'open access' in , say, cell journals is $5000 per paper, even though elsevier does not pay the writer, does not write or format the paper, does not edit any images, does not review the content, does not correct the paper. i.e. you pay $5000 for hosting one pdf file, possibly 2 (it gets worse, some grants e.g. the erc grants require open access and high impact factor, hence shelling more money to elsevier). this is not an issue of copyright, its about an outright crazy system which forces scientists behind paywalls because funding sources explicitly require it. if you think only commercial publishers have the gift of curating good science, look at elife, an open access journal with reasonable fees, a great website, and multiple high profile papers already. please dont defend businesses that are literally potentially harming your health.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > the parallels to swartz sound like overdramatization. I don't think so. Read Swartz' Guerilla Open Access Manifesto for details: > https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto > https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt > https://archive.org/download/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008.pdf
  - aw3c2 11y ago
    Sure but the origins of this are much older.
- cubano 11y ago
  Defend Elsevier? I think not. I am currently working with a startup that has to do with prescription drug refilling. Obviously, interactions between drugs and such can have fatal consequences if not understood, so we responsibly are providing that information to our users. Elsevier provides an API for that data, but wanted to charge around $40k/year for access. Our business model is of course free to users (we charge the pharmacies a modest monthly fee) $40k/yr simply too damn high...so potentially life-and-health saving information is kept from the people whom need it the most. Yes we did eventually find a lower cost provider, but as far as shedding tears for Elsevier? Hell fucking no.
Kenji 11y ago
I applaud this woman. What she does is brave and constructive. Sci-hub is a fantastic tool, easy to use and pleasant.
- deleted 11y ago
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amelius 11y ago
I hope they can also make this into a common platform for commenting and asking questions about scientific papers. Yes, there have been efforts that try to accomplish this, but something like this only works well if everybody is using it. Perhaps wishful thinking, but I believe it would be fantastic if every scientific paper had a "home" on Sci-Hub.
- return0 11y ago
  She already has enough in her hands keeping this up. Someone will have to lend a hand (her being in russia seems to be deterring some). P.s. now that you mentioned it, i had started building something like that: https://sciboards.com/ https://sciboards.com/
  - amelius 11y ago
    It seems you could be the perfect person to help her out :)
amelius 11y ago
Wouldn't it be much safer for her to put all the content on bittorrent? Or would there be a lack of seeders?
- bcook 11y ago
  Library Genesis has torrent & edonkey URL's. Yes, lack of seeders is a problem.
sugarfactory 11y ago
It'd be great if it were implemented as a peer-to-peer protocol as it'd make taking the service down much more difficult. EDIT: Although making the service completely peer-to-peer might be impossible, it is possible to distribute articles in a peer-to-peer way. I'm considering an architecture which consists of a peer-to-peer network to share articles, and servers to download articles and put them on the network. In this architecture, even if all the servers got taken down at least the articles which have been shared would be accessible provided that the peer-to-peer network is alive.
- return0 11y ago
  it can't as there must be proxies inside university networks that have (legal) access to the journals.
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  Sci-Hub and other open access advocacy things are practically the ideal use case for IPFS. One and done. Whoever implements it, you're welcome for the idea. Especially with Internet Archive involvement, IPFS should be quite compelling these days, even in its infancy.
lambdadmitry 11y ago
I would like to reiterate my points that I've made in a different HN submission on the topic [1]: Alexandra isn't in any way similar to Aaron Swartz, she's an opportunistic supporter of an oppressive regime. She is playing an "activist hero" card now, but in reality she's not even close to an "activist" in a common Western sense. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11180762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11180762
- x0x0 11y ago
  Thank you for translating those quotes. I would suggest, however, that supporting open access isn't necessary a fascist or liberal position, so while her political views in your linked comment seem repugnant, that doesn't necessarily change the good she's doing here.
- nickodell 11y ago
  A person can't be an activist for all causes. If you require that all of your allies share all of your viewpoints, you're going to be awfully short of support. Pick what matters to you and what doesn't.
  - return0 11y ago
    So you are saying the ends justify the means?
- return0 11y ago
  I agree that there are no parallels with Swarz, but it's true that inadvertedly her site has caused more stir and more impact than 15+ years of pushing for open access publishing. The ad hominem does not change that.
  - lambdadmitry 11y ago
    I totally agree with you on serendipity of scihub. However, it's the "Robin Hood" attitude (it's ad hominem right from the start) that disgusts me, and the linked article has a lot of it.
thaw13579 11y ago
To play devil's advocate, how is this kind of "civil disobedience" going to change the system? Why not pursue ways to legally change the system, e.g. new regulation on academic publishing?
- x0x0 11y ago
  it reduces what publishers have to lose and weakens their negotiating position
  - thaw13579 11y ago
    My understanding is that the publishers make most of their profit through licensing to universities and libraries. Scihub doesn't seem like a viable (legal) alternative for institutions though. It probably cuts out income from one-off purchases, I guess, but I wonder how much of the pie that is...
    - x0x0 11y ago
      It allows an institution to drop small journals and cut back on licensing for bigger ones without their users feeling any pain. Nearly everyone who reads journals knows about this; institutions don't have to bring it up in contract negotiations for it to help them.
- timroy 11y ago
  Sci-Hub's sort of "civil disobedience" avoids the need to change the system at all, and so it doesn't matter if Sci-Hub changes the system. Hoping that over the next decade we can implement legal changes to lower the costs to the system doesn't help the researchers who need access - for their careers and for their (presumably useful) research - right now. :-) good devil's advocate question
- calibraxis 11y ago
  Typically, radicals & reformists work in concert. The problem is, when the reformists sell out the radicals (as with progressive Democrats and Occupy.)
czr80 11y ago
So many of these discussions take it for granted that publishers don't do anything of value. This blog post, by an open access advocate, was for me very illuminating on what value they actually add (http://cameronneylon.net/blog/polecon-of-oa-publishing-i-what-is-it-publishers-do-anyway/ http://cameronneylon.net/blog/polecon-of-oa-publishing-i-wha...) Quoting from that link: "One of the big challenges is discussing the costs and value added in managing peer review is that researchers who engage in this conversation tend to be amongst the best editors and referees. Professional publishers on the other hand tend to focus on the (relatively small number of) contributors, who are, not to put too fine a point on it, awful. Good academic editors tend to select good referees who do good work, and when they encounter a bad referee they discount it and move on. Professional staff spend the majority of their time dealing with editors who have gone AWOL, referees who are late in responding, or who turn out to be inappropriate either in what they have written or their conflicts of interest, or increasingly who don’t even exist! .... Much of the irritation you see from publishers when talking about why managing peer review is more than “sending a few emails” relates to this gap in perception. The irony is that the problems are largely invisible to the broader community because publishers keep them under wraps, hidden away so that they don’t bother the community." I'm sure there must be some way to achieve this and also make the content freely available. But whatever system replaces the current one has to deal with these issues too.
- return0 11y ago
  > I'm sure there must be some way to achieve this and also make the content freely available. But whatever system replaces the current one has to deal with these issues too. Post-publication peer review could solve all of these (and the access issue too!). I'm still not convinced of the superiority of pre-publication review by only 3 (usually quite busy) people max.
  - KKKKkkkk1 11y ago
    I don't understand. What is the difference between post-publication peer review and no peer review? What is a journal for if the papers are not peer reviewed?
datashovel 11y ago
Perhaps controversially, I'd say this is one of the biggest problems facing the world today (ie. inaccessible research papers). Where is the real money and influence that we need in order to change this?
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > Where is the real money and influence that we need in order to change this? Civil disobedience
- return0 11y ago
  It's a political issue really. Universities should require publication ONLY to non-profit publishers. Requiring "Open access" doesn't really cut it, because the publishers just charge more for open access. And at the very least, there should be a large initiative to change from publishing papers to a more sane , modern and orderly cataloguing of scientific data.
adrianwaj 11y ago
This is like an mp3 search engine for academic research. Is there a Soundcloud for academic research? Sounds like a no-brainer idea to me.. with comments and annotation possible against the actual text. Also, users could also upload audio (eg podcasts) and video (eg lectures and presentations). You could build up really powerful communities as well that could peer-review on demand (for a fee.) Quora has shown that experts can gain a following on a single site. Maybe some type of open-source site for different areas-of-study that is unified in a single mega-site (like Jobberbase was at one point.)
- thatcat 11y ago
  > comments and annotation possible against the actual text fermats library does this and allows users to suggest papers for discussion. Most papers listed are high profile, though community participation seems low, not the best ux. Highest commented story has 62 comments on 'Ideal Money' by John Nash. http://fermatslibrary.com/ http://fermatslibrary.com/
  - adrianwaj 11y ago
    Thanks for link. I think comments do add value, especially for the author looking for feedback, moreso than perhaps the reader. Soundcloud has time-based comments on tracks and also general comments. Both are important. Amazon's book reviews also work well. Another important aspect of research is references/bibliography and it would be great to have an in-text access to a reference. eg a popup that can reveal the exact quote or piece of text that a paper is referring to. Doing reference cross-checks is something that can be very tedious but could be great at locating additional and interesting material for the reader. Surely this use-case has been addressed in current journal UX..
- deleted 11y ago
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voidhorse 11y ago
While there are plenty of problems with academic publishing, and the notion of making articles free and easily accessible is one I can certainly support, I do not see the rending such articles as free as a grand step in the general increase of knowledge as so many seem to think. Making the articles available to all is not the same as educating all. You are only opening the gates to the niche crowd that already has some level of access to at least some of the articles via institutions. The level of background competence required to read academic work is what keeps the world ignorant and ensures the success and increasing erudition of the few. Unless you can devise a means of not only making academic material accessible but also eminently readable you are only, in mass archiving papers, preaching to the choir, so to speak. You are making it easier for what is already a niche crowd to remain a niche crowd. Nothing more. Nothing less. I'm not implying that this is something that shouldn't be done, nor am I saying it's not commendable to a degree, but I am suggesting the glorification that's heaped on this sort of thing, "free information from its chains—to give it to the masses free of charge." and "research Robin Hood" is a little gross when there are astounding issues with education at the ground level which prevent masses of people from getting into academic circles in the first place. Furthermore, many people see: Big bad useless publisher. while that's true to some degree, far too many people ignore the complexities involved in publication proceeders. Sometimes careful and well-considered revision of existing systems is a better approach than outright anarchy and noble liberation of information. When you dismantle one mechanism of publication you must implement another. The sheer volume of research that is published prevents any completely unguided system from being that effective. We could go back to old ways, wherein some journals were edited by an executive editor so to speak, but that doesn't seem so great either. Peer review has a lot of flaws, but to simply hope that publication will just work itself out when our current infrastructures are bypassed is far too naive in my view. Even with peer review systems, gatekeeping, and money grubbing publishers academic dishonesty and turning over of papers, snuffing of other's works, and popularity contests all occur. Do we really expect such problems to disappear and not get potentially 10x worse in a completely open system? I'm not trying to advocate anything in particular here; not conservation of current, admittedly broken practice, nor radical upheaval and dissolution of all systematic forms of publishing. I am only trying to point out that publishing is a complex issue that is too frequently under-analyzed and, furthermore, it is assumed far too frequently that complete and unrestricted access to information, and complete freedom to publish anything whatsoever sans constricting publication or review procedure is automatically a good ting.
fenollp 11y ago
How about open access but curation is the paid service? Wouldn't that satisfy the publishers? If they are as good at curation as they say then they should be very happy

308 points by Thriptic 11y ago

This is all about violating a license/copyright law. If we were talking about a large company using GNU/copyleft code and not sharing their changes back to the community, many people in the community would be demanding the law get involved (the Thesis Wordpress theme is a great example of this..which caused anger and outright hatred about 5 years ago in the HN community). It's really difficult for me to stand behind any community that doesn't put all licenses on an equal footing. If you want the government to stop going after you for copyright infringement, you shouldn't be then using those same tactics to go after people violating the terms of your license. This girl, Like Aaron Swartz, is nothing but a petty thief. It's pretty easy to put up a website with stolen papers/content. The other issue is that it takes millions of dollars to fund the research for many of these papers. With no incentive to make money on the research, companies will either stop the research, or it will go completely private and there will be no access for anyone. Many of these online revolutionaries really seem to understand how the world actually works. If you want to change it, start a research company and actually do the research yourself.

Thriptic 11y ago
> The other issue is that it takes millions of dollars to fund the research for many of these papers. With no incentive to make money on the research, companies will either stop the research, or it will go completely private and there will be no access for anyone. Most of the basic research being published is government funded and is conducted by universities or other academic entities, not companies. The publishing companies (Elsevier) aren't conducting any of the research; for the most part they are simply hosting manuscripts.
- pink_dinner 11y ago
  There are many thousands of papers on this website. You can't tell me all of them are government funded. Even so, it will not change the system. It will only make it more difficult to conduct research in the future.
  - Thriptic 11y ago
    > Even so, it will not change the system. It will only make it more difficult to conduct research in the future. I don't see why. If anything it is in the academics' best interest to have their papers show up on this service as it increases access and probability of citation. Also please explain how more ready access to information hinders research. You are aware that academics make 0 dollars off of content submitted to journals right? 100% of the profits go to the publishers.
    - sndean 11y ago
      > If anything it is in the academics' best interest to have their papers show up on this service as it increases access and probability of citation. Most people I know (myself included) are very happy to see most of their papers on sci-hub. We couldn't care less about how people find them, as long as they're cited. > You are aware that academics make 0 dollars off of content submitted to journals right? And yes, in fact, in my field, publishing costs ~$2500 per paper. More if it's open-access.
  - revelation 11y ago
    You seem to legitimately misunderstand this, so let's make this very very clear: of all the thousands of papers on that website, the publisher aka Elsevier and others had no part in the actual research, they have not funded the research, they have in fact very likely taken money from the very researchers.
  - jjoonathan 11y ago
    > You can't tell me all of them are government funded. The majority are. A minority (<<1% to ~30% depending on field) were (also) funded by private grants and industry. In all three cases, the institution funding the research will receive 0 compensation from the journal if you pay $30+ for a paper. It all goes to the journal and its 40%+ profit margin. "But why don't competing journals steal their business?" Because the top few journals are the de-facto clearinghouses and ratings-providers for academics. If you are an academic who values his career, you will pay what they ask.
jdbernard 11y ago
Calling Aaron Swartz "nothing but a petty thief" is a bit too dismissive. This is not a black-and-white issue. For example, many times the millions of dollars used to fund the research were given by governments and grant organizations: public entities.
- pink_dinner 11y ago
  "Calling Aaron Swartz "nothing but a petty thief" is a bit too dismissive." He's not a hero. Not even close. He was caught breaking into university computers and taking files that were not his. Most accounts of him were high-strung and when he didn't get his way? A petulant child. He seems like a nightmare to work with at Reddit and pretty much told everyone to fuck off that didn't agree with him. The fascinating thing is that his behavior sounds just like Donald Trump. Only..it's acceptable because his views match with many of the people in the community. "many times" Like I said above, this isn't all. You can't guarantee that not all of the documents in question were not funded by private entities. Research may be funded by the government, but those universities many times outsource it to private companies (and they pay workers to complete it). Everyone gets hurt in the process. It's just sad the dogma and the cult of personality have to be so pervasive on HN.
  - bloaf 11y ago
    >Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states. A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples. A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." The rule of law is generally good for humanity. Defending it is fine. But you need to remember that the law is a messy human undertaking that is subject to change, not an unassailable universal truth. People can break the law, and still be in the right. What people like Swartz and the folks at Sci-Hub are doing is making the judgement call that free access to scientific information provides a benefit to humanity that outweighs the cost of breaking the laws keeping the information restricted. Scientists-the people generating the content in question-tend to agree. There is no doubt that the publishers will have the lawyers on their side, but I've always thought that to be the weakest of endorsements. >There, where the state ceaseth—there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody. http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/11 http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/11
nefitty 11y ago
To quote the Big Lebowski, "Donny, you're out of your element." Publishers like Elsevier and Taylor & Francis pay nothing to acquire research papers, or for the volunteer peer reviews and edits. These companies have 30% profit margins. They are basically flipping a product back to the people who created it and need it, with literally almost no value add. They claim to be curators of content, but at the point we're at with the internet that role can be distributed. Our tax dollars also paid for a lot of the research locked up behind these paywalls. I'm sure you knew your comment about Alexandra Elbakayan being a "petty thief" was going to be contentious. We went through this with Aaron Swartz already. Try looking at the depths of her position before you start supporting a position that drove a young man to suicide. Edited for rhetorical stylings
- dang 11y ago
  > "Shut the fuck up Donny, you're out of your element." > really fucking pissed me off Please don't do this here. If you're "really fucking pissed off" by a bad or unfair comment, wait until you can post something civil. Otherwise the signal/noise ratio gets worse and we end up with a flamewar.
  - nefitty 11y ago
    Got it mate. It's just my style, but I will keep your suggestion in mind in the future.
    - dang 11y ago
      Thanks, we appreciate it. It's a style that works fine in many contexts (I always think of rugby players who beat the crap out of each other and then go out drinking together), but on large internet forums it acts the way salt does on a slug.
michaelbuddy 11y ago
A "petty thief" he says. I'm thinking you don't know what petty means. "Petty" would be the exact opposite. Just for the sake of argument, let's say she's a thief. The theft here is for the purpose of freeing up science around the world instead of it being locked away by people who didn't even contribute to the science. In many cases, the science is publicly funded. So freeing this information is not petty, in many ways it's selfless and honorable if you look at what can be done with it. A 'petty' thief would be somebody who rips out some of the copper from your home creating thousands in damage just to make a measly $10 from it, which could have been easily earned, possibly for less work and less time. That's selfish and petty. get it troll?
- dang 11y ago
  We've asked you before to stop posting political rants to HN. You've continued to do that, and here you've added a personal attack. We ban people for doing these things, so please don't keep doing them.
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    oh it's an attack to call someone a troll who attacked the subject in the story?? And how is my "rant" here political? Do you want discourse or not?
lolidaisuki 11y ago
You can think of it as theft if you accept that science should be done behind closed doors. Many people think that scientific discoveries belong to everyone.
deleted 11y ago
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wolfgke 11y ago
> This is all about violating a license/copyright law. If we were talking about a large company using GNU/copyleft code and not sharing their changes back to the community, many people in the community would be demanding the law get involved Companies: not sharing their changes back to the community Publishers: not sharing the papers with everyone willing to do research I see a parallel...
pixelman32 11y ago
Scientific journals don't necessarily fund research, and groups who fund research don't necessarily benefit from proceeds from journal subscriptions. Funding scientific research isn't as simple as, say, funding startups. A vast majority of scientific research, especially basic research, yields no returns on investment. The real issue people have with the way journals work is that they seemingly don't provide a great deal of value. Imagine if GitHub worked like a science journal: You would submit your code to GitHub. They might have someone do a code review or run some tests to assure a baseline level of quality. Then they would lock your repository and charge anyone who wanted to see more than just the readme file $30 - $50. All of the proceeds from that go directly to GitHub. You, the author of the repository, get nothing. A software developer simply would not tolerate this model, but it's the norm in science.
jostmey 11y ago
Having participated in the publishing process, I firmly believe the actions of this girl are justified. When what is legal no longer aligns with what is right, the law must change, or else it becomes a joke.
andrepd 11y ago
>The other issue is that it takes millions of dollars to fund the research for many of these papers. With no incentive to make money on the research, companies will either stop the research, or it will go completely private and there will be no access for anyone. You seem to be basically misunderstanding the whole thing. This isn't about research funding, it's about publisher fees. The issue with the papers is not that they take money to produce and so the researchers then charge money for others to see the results, and that therefore bypassing these fees would deprive the researchers of their hard-earned money they need to keep funding their million dollar research. That is not at all what this is about. The fees being charged are publisher fees, absolutely ridiculous fees for a minimal service that is completely obsolete in the internet age, hampers collaboration and the flow of information, slows down science, prevents underprivileged persons from accessing the research that is in the vast majority of cases publicly funded, and serves only to give money to these publishers, of which absolutely 0% goes to the researchers themselves.
- pink_dinner 11y ago
  "The fees being charged are publisher fees, absolutely ridiculous fees for a minimal service that is completely obsolete in the internet age, hampers collaboration and the flow of information, slows down science, prevents underprivileged persons from accessing the research that is in the vast majority of cases publicly funded" So we should be able to do whatever we want when we don't agree with a law? this is between publishers and researchers. "and serves only to give money to these publishers, of which absolutely 0% goes to the researchers themselves." This sounds like the 'all music should be shared and free' argument all over again. The last decade of Napster and Torrents have pretty much destroyed any chances of an Indy musician to make a living without the sponsorship of a big corporation. It essentially pushed all of the Indy artists out. They actually had a chance to make a living with music before file sharing became part of our culture (and the belief that bits on a computer should somehow be free since it takes nothing to copy them). The irony is that the exact same thing is happening with job outsourcing and now those same people are clamoring for government intervention. We somehow need to stop the free flow of information when it directly affects your job. I worked in academia in a different life and nearly all research is conducted in some part by private entities pumping money into the University. This won't have the desired effect and will essentially make research even more private. I don't believe the GNU is a truly free license. If I decided to take software, use it in a proprietary app, and then sell it with no source, I would be taken to court (and people here on HN would want me sued out of existence (I've seen it many times already)). Should I have a right to do this? Because this is exactly what is going on here. A copyright license is being broken and you believe it's justified.
SCAQTony 11y ago
The handle "Pink Dinner" was created 15-days ago; about the time Alexandra Elbakyan hit the news hard. If you view the comments posted by this user one might consider them agenda driven toward this sort of topic? ... YMMV
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Let's assume good faith. Unless the profile's deleted a bunch of prior pro-Elsevier pieces and filled in a bunch of others, primary evidence doesn't look exceedingly shill-like.

dang 11y ago

Sci-Hub has been discussed a great deal on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sci-hub&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sci-hub&sort=byPopularity&pref... There were other major threads that don't come up in that search, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11279903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11279903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10424276 But the current article looks like it adds new information, so we won't treat it as a dupe.

chris_wot 11y ago
You are going to make ColinWright very happy if you show up all the dupes like this :-)
- dang 11y ago
  It was but a small portion of all the dupes.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    :-) Do you have an internal tool that helps you find dupe stories? I personally don't mind duplicates because the conversation on most HN articles is usually very insightful and almost always interesting. In fact, I often go back to old stories just to read the comments. I'd love to go back to old duplicate stories just for that reason :-)

tclmeelmo 11y ago

So what about scientific textbooks? Not undergraduate ones, but the really narrow topic ones that are used in graduate classes as reference materials for professionals. They're frequently written by author(s) who are partly to fully funded on government grants, and they too are very expensive, as some journal articles are. Are these fair game for distribution on Sci-Hub too?

j2kun 11y ago
I don't think anyone who has written such a book has ever made a significant profit from it. The attitude among researchers in my field, at least, is that all such books are a labor of love. With this in mind, it sounds like a perfect use case for sci-hub.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > I don't think anyone who has written such a book has ever made a significant profit from it. The attitude among researchers in my field, at least, is that all such books are a labor of love. I don't think it's necessarily so altruistic - there are a number of benefits to writing a book that go beyond the monetary incentive. That said, yes, these authors almost never even cover their own expenses (opportunity cost) when writing these books, let alone turn a profit. The "real" profits[0] go to the publishers. [0] if any! Publishers operate like venture firms in this regard - they make most of their money off of the blockbuster hits, and there's a long tail of books that are unprofitable or very close to unprofitable.
  - ig1 11y ago
    > Publishers operate like venture firms in this regard - they make most of their money off of the blockbuster hits, and there's a long tail of books that are unprofitable or very close to unprofitable. Not really true for specialist academic work publishers, they don't (and shouldn't) expect books to become hits, rather they operate a volume game. A specialist book might sell 200-500 copies so to make profit they essentially have to publish a large volume of books at a high-price point. A typical editor at such a firm will typically have to publish 1-2 books a week to make the economics work out. It doesn't really apply for journal publishing either although at most publishers more establish journals will typically subsidize the the newer ones (a new journal can easily take 5-10 years to reach break-even point).

jostmey 11y ago

I typed in a doi to a paper I co-authored, and I was proud to see my work pop up. So it works.

calibraxis 11y ago

Interesting, time to research Robert K. Merton to understand deeper: "The world is broken, and money always wins. [...] I would like to reference Robert K. Merton, the founder of sociology of science. He studied ethos of research communities. And what he found is that communism is one of the four important ethical norms (along with universalism, disinterested, and organized skepticism) that makes science work. By communism, he meant the common ownership of scientific discoveries, according to which scientists give up intellectual property in exchange for recognition. I think that his work is very relevant to what is happening in science now."

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calibraxis 11y ago
BTW, here's Merton's explanation [pdf]: (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/merton_sociology_science.pdf http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/merton_...)

return0 11y ago

the parallels to swartz sound like overdramatization. she created the website for people (like me) who dont have access to all the libraries and dont want to spend a lifetime searching colleagues with access. there is just too much science nowadays to justify paywalling it. its a very practical matter for scientists to be well informed. i am split whether i like this publicity. on the one hand, it may lead to closing it down, on the other hand it might finally force the hand of regulators against the scientists who publish only behind paywalls. To anyone who tries to defend elsevier here on the grounds of capitalist justice: hold your horses, you are defending a greedy corporation that offers nothing to science. think about this: the fee for making a paper 'open access' in , say, cell journals is $5000 per paper, even though elsevier does not pay the writer, does not write or format the paper, does not edit any images, does not review the content, does not correct the paper. i.e. you pay $5000 for hosting one pdf file, possibly 2 (it gets worse, some grants e.g. the erc grants require open access and high impact factor, hence shelling more money to elsevier). this is not an issue of copyright, its about an outright crazy system which forces scientists behind paywalls because funding sources explicitly require it. if you think only commercial publishers have the gift of curating good science, look at elife, an open access journal with reasonable fees, a great website, and multiple high profile papers already. please dont defend businesses that are literally potentially harming your health.

wolfgke 11y ago
> the parallels to swartz sound like overdramatization. I don't think so. Read Swartz' Guerilla Open Access Manifesto for details: > https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto > https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt > https://archive.org/download/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008.pdf
- aw3c2 11y ago
  Sure but the origins of this are much older.
cubano 11y ago
Defend Elsevier? I think not. I am currently working with a startup that has to do with prescription drug refilling. Obviously, interactions between drugs and such can have fatal consequences if not understood, so we responsibly are providing that information to our users. Elsevier provides an API for that data, but wanted to charge around $40k/year for access. Our business model is of course free to users (we charge the pharmacies a modest monthly fee) $40k/yr simply too damn high...so potentially life-and-health saving information is kept from the people whom need it the most. Yes we did eventually find a lower cost provider, but as far as shedding tears for Elsevier? Hell fucking no.

Kenji 11y ago

I applaud this woman. What she does is brave and constructive. Sci-hub is a fantastic tool, easy to use and pleasant.

deleted 11y ago
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amelius 11y ago

I hope they can also make this into a common platform for commenting and asking questions about scientific papers. Yes, there have been efforts that try to accomplish this, but something like this only works well if everybody is using it. Perhaps wishful thinking, but I believe it would be fantastic if every scientific paper had a "home" on Sci-Hub.

return0 11y ago
She already has enough in her hands keeping this up. Someone will have to lend a hand (her being in russia seems to be deterring some). P.s. now that you mentioned it, i had started building something like that: https://sciboards.com/ https://sciboards.com/
- amelius 11y ago
  It seems you could be the perfect person to help her out :)

amelius 11y ago

Wouldn't it be much safer for her to put all the content on bittorrent? Or would there be a lack of seeders?

bcook 11y ago
Library Genesis has torrent & edonkey URL's. Yes, lack of seeders is a problem.

sugarfactory 11y ago

It'd be great if it were implemented as a peer-to-peer protocol as it'd make taking the service down much more difficult. EDIT: Although making the service completely peer-to-peer might be impossible, it is possible to distribute articles in a peer-to-peer way. I'm considering an architecture which consists of a peer-to-peer network to share articles, and servers to download articles and put them on the network. In this architecture, even if all the servers got taken down at least the articles which have been shared would be accessible provided that the peer-to-peer network is alive.

return0 11y ago
it can't as there must be proxies inside university networks that have (legal) access to the journals.
jsmthrowaway 11y ago
Sci-Hub and other open access advocacy things are practically the ideal use case for IPFS. One and done. Whoever implements it, you're welcome for the idea. Especially with Internet Archive involvement, IPFS should be quite compelling these days, even in its infancy.

lambdadmitry 11y ago

I would like to reiterate my points that I've made in a different HN submission on the topic [1]: Alexandra isn't in any way similar to Aaron Swartz, she's an opportunistic supporter of an oppressive regime. She is playing an "activist hero" card now, but in reality she's not even close to an "activist" in a common Western sense. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11180762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11180762

x0x0 11y ago
Thank you for translating those quotes. I would suggest, however, that supporting open access isn't necessary a fascist or liberal position, so while her political views in your linked comment seem repugnant, that doesn't necessarily change the good she's doing here.
nickodell 11y ago
A person can't be an activist for all causes. If you require that all of your allies share all of your viewpoints, you're going to be awfully short of support. Pick what matters to you and what doesn't.
- return0 11y ago
  So you are saying the ends justify the means?
return0 11y ago
I agree that there are no parallels with Swarz, but it's true that inadvertedly her site has caused more stir and more impact than 15+ years of pushing for open access publishing. The ad hominem does not change that.
- lambdadmitry 11y ago
  I totally agree with you on serendipity of scihub. However, it's the "Robin Hood" attitude (it's ad hominem right from the start) that disgusts me, and the linked article has a lot of it.

thaw13579 11y ago

To play devil's advocate, how is this kind of "civil disobedience" going to change the system? Why not pursue ways to legally change the system, e.g. new regulation on academic publishing?

x0x0 11y ago
it reduces what publishers have to lose and weakens their negotiating position
- thaw13579 11y ago
  My understanding is that the publishers make most of their profit through licensing to universities and libraries. Scihub doesn't seem like a viable (legal) alternative for institutions though. It probably cuts out income from one-off purchases, I guess, but I wonder how much of the pie that is...
  - x0x0 11y ago
    It allows an institution to drop small journals and cut back on licensing for bigger ones without their users feeling any pain. Nearly everyone who reads journals knows about this; institutions don't have to bring it up in contract negotiations for it to help them.
timroy 11y ago
Sci-Hub's sort of "civil disobedience" avoids the need to change the system at all, and so it doesn't matter if Sci-Hub changes the system. Hoping that over the next decade we can implement legal changes to lower the costs to the system doesn't help the researchers who need access - for their careers and for their (presumably useful) research - right now. :-) good devil's advocate question
calibraxis 11y ago
Typically, radicals & reformists work in concert. The problem is, when the reformists sell out the radicals (as with progressive Democrats and Occupy.)

czr80 11y ago

So many of these discussions take it for granted that publishers don't do anything of value. This blog post, by an open access advocate, was for me very illuminating on what value they actually add (http://cameronneylon.net/blog/polecon-of-oa-publishing-i-what-is-it-publishers-do-anyway/ http://cameronneylon.net/blog/polecon-of-oa-publishing-i-wha...) Quoting from that link: "One of the big challenges is discussing the costs and value added in managing peer review is that researchers who engage in this conversation tend to be amongst the best editors and referees. Professional publishers on the other hand tend to focus on the (relatively small number of) contributors, who are, not to put too fine a point on it, awful. Good academic editors tend to select good referees who do good work, and when they encounter a bad referee they discount it and move on. Professional staff spend the majority of their time dealing with editors who have gone AWOL, referees who are late in responding, or who turn out to be inappropriate either in what they have written or their conflicts of interest, or increasingly who don’t even exist! .... Much of the irritation you see from publishers when talking about why managing peer review is more than “sending a few emails” relates to this gap in perception. The irony is that the problems are largely invisible to the broader community because publishers keep them under wraps, hidden away so that they don’t bother the community." I'm sure there must be some way to achieve this and also make the content freely available. But whatever system replaces the current one has to deal with these issues too.

return0 11y ago
> I'm sure there must be some way to achieve this and also make the content freely available. But whatever system replaces the current one has to deal with these issues too. Post-publication peer review could solve all of these (and the access issue too!). I'm still not convinced of the superiority of pre-publication review by only 3 (usually quite busy) people max.
- KKKKkkkk1 11y ago
  I don't understand. What is the difference between post-publication peer review and no peer review? What is a journal for if the papers are not peer reviewed?

datashovel 11y ago

Perhaps controversially, I'd say this is one of the biggest problems facing the world today (ie. inaccessible research papers). Where is the real money and influence that we need in order to change this?

wolfgke 11y ago
> Where is the real money and influence that we need in order to change this? Civil disobedience
return0 11y ago
It's a political issue really. Universities should require publication ONLY to non-profit publishers. Requiring "Open access" doesn't really cut it, because the publishers just charge more for open access. And at the very least, there should be a large initiative to change from publishing papers to a more sane , modern and orderly cataloguing of scientific data.

adrianwaj 11y ago

This is like an mp3 search engine for academic research. Is there a Soundcloud for academic research? Sounds like a no-brainer idea to me.. with comments and annotation possible against the actual text. Also, users could also upload audio (eg podcasts) and video (eg lectures and presentations). You could build up really powerful communities as well that could peer-review on demand (for a fee.) Quora has shown that experts can gain a following on a single site. Maybe some type of open-source site for different areas-of-study that is unified in a single mega-site (like Jobberbase was at one point.)

thatcat 11y ago
> comments and annotation possible against the actual text fermats library does this and allows users to suggest papers for discussion. Most papers listed are high profile, though community participation seems low, not the best ux. Highest commented story has 62 comments on 'Ideal Money' by John Nash. http://fermatslibrary.com/ http://fermatslibrary.com/
- adrianwaj 11y ago
  Thanks for link. I think comments do add value, especially for the author looking for feedback, moreso than perhaps the reader. Soundcloud has time-based comments on tracks and also general comments. Both are important. Amazon's book reviews also work well. Another important aspect of research is references/bibliography and it would be great to have an in-text access to a reference. eg a popup that can reveal the exact quote or piece of text that a paper is referring to. Doing reference cross-checks is something that can be very tedious but could be great at locating additional and interesting material for the reader. Surely this use-case has been addressed in current journal UX..
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voidhorse 11y ago

While there are plenty of problems with academic publishing, and the notion of making articles free and easily accessible is one I can certainly support, I do not see the rending such articles as free as a grand step in the general increase of knowledge as so many seem to think. Making the articles available to all is not the same as educating all. You are only opening the gates to the niche crowd that already has some level of access to at least some of the articles via institutions. The level of background competence required to read academic work is what keeps the world ignorant and ensures the success and increasing erudition of the few. Unless you can devise a means of not only making academic material accessible but also eminently readable you are only, in mass archiving papers, preaching to the choir, so to speak. You are making it easier for what is already a niche crowd to remain a niche crowd. Nothing more. Nothing less. I'm not implying that this is something that shouldn't be done, nor am I saying it's not commendable to a degree, but I am suggesting the glorification that's heaped on this sort of thing, "free information from its chains—to give it to the masses free of charge." and "research Robin Hood" is a little gross when there are astounding issues with education at the ground level which prevent masses of people from getting into academic circles in the first place. Furthermore, many people see: Big bad useless publisher. while that's true to some degree, far too many people ignore the complexities involved in publication proceeders. Sometimes careful and well-considered revision of existing systems is a better approach than outright anarchy and noble liberation of information. When you dismantle one mechanism of publication you must implement another. The sheer volume of research that is published prevents any completely unguided system from being that effective. We could go back to old ways, wherein some journals were edited by an executive editor so to speak, but that doesn't seem so great either. Peer review has a lot of flaws, but to simply hope that publication will just work itself out when our current infrastructures are bypassed is far too naive in my view. Even with peer review systems, gatekeeping, and money grubbing publishers academic dishonesty and turning over of papers, snuffing of other's works, and popularity contests all occur. Do we really expect such problems to disappear and not get potentially 10x worse in a completely open system? I'm not trying to advocate anything in particular here; not conservation of current, admittedly broken practice, nor radical upheaval and dissolution of all systematic forms of publishing. I am only trying to point out that publishing is a complex issue that is too frequently under-analyzed and, furthermore, it is assumed far too frequently that complete and unrestricted access to information, and complete freedom to publish anything whatsoever sans constricting publication or review procedure is automatically a good ting.

fenollp 11y ago

How about open access but curation is the paid service? Wouldn't that satisfy the publishers? If they are as good at curation as they say then they should be very happy