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Germany vs. Elsevier: universities win temporary free journal access
- code5fun 9y agoJesus christ yes pleas
- pedrocr 9y ago>“Most papers are now freely available somewhere on the Internet, or else you might choose to work with preprint versions. Clearly our negotiating position is strong. It is not clear that we want or need a paid extension of the old contracts.” Awesome! It's going to be fun when Elsevier eventually tries to go after SciHub in Germany for copyright violations. I can imagine state prosecutors asking: "So you want us to prosecute someone for not paying you for access to public research?". One can hope...
- lima 9y agoSciHub is not located in Germany so there's little they can do.
- pedrocr 9y agoThere's precedent for blocking DNS and other similar stuff. It's effective for a general audience but probably not most of the scientific one.
- Vinnl 9y agoThey've managed to get many of the domains blocked already, but it's such a game of whack-a-mole that it doesn't really help.
- romeo88 9y agoIs SciHub still reachable somewhere?
- Vinnl 9y agoYes, Wikipedia usually lists the working domains. But, of course, it's probably not legal.
- Quanttek 9y ago80.82.77.83 80.82.77.84 sci-hub.la sci-hub.hk sci-hub.tv sci-hub.tw sci-hub.name sci-hub.mn See the Wikipedia entry
- Cenk 9y agoI try to keep this post updated with the latest accessible links: https://citationsy.com/blog/download-research-papers-scientific-articles-free-sci-hub/ https://citationsy.com/blog/download-research-papers-scienti...
- jerheinze 9y ago> Is SciHub still reachable somewhere? Yes: scihub22266oqcxt.onion
- d0mine 9y agoYou need something like Tor Browser to access it https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
- davidgerard 9y ago
- MaxBarraclough 9y agoRelated: I'm constantly amazed that Google Books is still alive.
- calcifer 9y agoIt's barely alive and it doesn't even resemble what it was supposed to be. Google Books was originally meant to scan - and make available online - all of the worlds books within 10 years. The New Yorker has a good article on how and why it failed [1]. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-ever-happened-to-google-books https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-ever-happen...
- inetknght 9y agoI use Google Books. I hope it doesn't go away. My biggest gripe, though, is the inability to download books, even books that I've uploaded from a local file.
- pedrocr 9y agoGoogle Books I can understand the argument against. There are actual copyrights to protect. In the case of research Elsevier does approximately nothing. The research and the peer review has already been paid for by every one of us. That we then don't get free access to it is a scandal. States could solve this whole mess tomorrow by just passing a law that states "if you take our money to do research the end result needs to be available to the general public for free". The chicken-and-egg problem of everyone just moving to open-access journals for everything would be solved.
- semi-extrinsic 9y agoI don't think Elsevier see SciHub as the biggest threat. No, the biggest threat is that now the EU has told researchers "You have to publish OA", researchers have two options: publish preprints of everything, or start paying Elsevier loads of cash. Obviously everyone is now starting to do the first option (usually via institutional repos, which at least Google Scholar indexes). And people are finding it to be a good low-effort system. Elsevier lost when they agreed to allow people (mostly just some people in math and physics back then) to post preprints online.
- Vinnl 9y agoI think you are overestimating the system. Researchers are going for the second option in large droves, as that's the one that helps their career forward, and it's often not their own money they're paying with. If you're interested, I've written about why they're forced to do so at [1] and [2]. (And the reason I'm following it so closely is because I'm trying to fix it - if you want to follow that, see [3].) [1] https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarly-publishing-eef794937c9c https://medium.com/flockademic/the-vicious-cycle-of-scholarl... [2] https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or-break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-ca... [3] https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic https://tinyletter.com/Flockademic
- kurthr 9y agoWell, it's not their own money (to spend on coke and whores), but typically those are still their research funds so they have to make a decision as to whether to publish or buy new equipment, supplies, or get another TA/RA position. Often the funds are pre-loaded with overhead for the department so it's more expensive than it appears. Indexed preprints make a whole lot of sense, if they'll let you do it.
- Vinnl 9y agoWell, to some extent. If it's their own research funds, they will have to consider what's better for their career, and often, that publication will win over new equipment, for example. That said, there are often funds available from e.g. the library, your funder, or even nationwide funds such as in the Netherlands and I think the UK, that will cover the costs of making articles available as open access. It's pretty much a no-brainer to use them for researchers.
- jacquesm 9y agoSomeone should use this to download all the papers available for 'archival purposes'.
- hh3k0 9y agoThe will ban you quite fast if you attempt that. In fact, I think they ban (and have banned) entire IP ranges/whole universities for that.
- woliveirajr 9y ago> The nationwide deal sought by scientists includes a open-access option, under which all corresponding authors affiliated with German institutions would be allowed to make their papers free to read and share by anyone in the world. This is a very good clause to the German institutions. Everybody will like to exchange letters, informations, get in contact with German authors. And when we have communication, we have knowledge and data sharing, and everybody benefits from it. Specially the corresponding authors.
- Vinnl 9y agoThat's already often allowed. What the negotiators will want is that all those papers will be free to read (or actually: use, under a permissive Creative Commons license) by default.
- heinrichhartman 9y agoInteresting move, to give free access. You would think that, withholding access is a great way for Elsivier to increase pressure in the negotiation. The fact, that they are not doing it, shows how weak their position really is. Researchers will (and have) find effective ways to share research results w/o traditional publishers. This would surface very quickly once access was temporarily revoked.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> shows how weak their position really is Or Elsevier’s belief that the opposition is tenuously formed. If temporary free access prompts a critical mass to decamp, Elsevier will have staved off both permanence and precedent.
- revelation 9y agoIf a critical mass decamps, they still don't have a contract with Elsevier. I don't see how granting free access unilaterally improves their negotiation position other than goodwill in manipulating the executive and legislative government..
- Vinnl 9y agoWhy would that prompt them to decamp?
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Why would that prompt them to decamp? People tend to become politically involved (loosely defined) when desperate. Remove the source of desperation and engagement fades. Convincing people to come to a meeting or go to a rally or draft a letter to the dean or call or write to their representative gets harder when the problem goes from specific, e.g. I need X study to write my paper, to abstract.
- Vinnl 9y agoBut there was no source of desperation yet - there has not been a period in which researchers have not had access. (Well, technically, there was a short one at the start of last year IIRC, but Elsevier prolonged access then just as well.)
- zerostar07 9y agomeh. sci-hub.tv has permanent free access
- jordigh 9y agoHow exactly are the DNS blocks happening? How did you find this domain that is still working?
- oevi 9y agoanother one still working is their .hk domain.
- Vinnl 9y agoWikipedia's page on Sci-Hub is usually pretty quickly updated with the still relevant URLs. It's rather interesting to watch, as they also list outdated URLs. Really exemplifies what a whack-a-mole game it is.
- chmod775 9y agoIt's probably a matter of whether the TLD/registrar gives in to US interests. ICANN might also have a say.
- faitswulff 9y agoI look at their Facebook page, generally: https://www.facebook.com/sci.hub.org/ https://www.facebook.com/sci.hub.org/ From one Gustavo Rosa on Facebook: All these domains are working! http://sci-hub.la/ http://sci-hub.la/ http://sci-hub.hk/ http://sci-hub.hk/ http://sci-hub.mn/ http://sci-hub.mn/ http://sci-hub.name/ http://sci-hub.name/ http://sci-hub.tv http://sci-hub.tv http://sci-hub.tw http://sci-hub.tw http://tree.sci-hub.la/ http://tree.sci-hub.la/ http://80.82.77.84/ http://80.82.77.84/ http://80.82.77.83/ http://80.82.77.83/
- jsilence 9y agoWondering why SciHub is not yet on some sort of IPFS / FreeNet / Tor Storage something. Plain file storage obviously would not be enough, metadata and possibly full text index would have to be stored with each entry. Searchable. could even come with a recommendation service like Mendeley or Researchgate based on which papers you pinned in your client.
- Vinnl 9y agoSo many people in the open access community are holding their breath waiting for what happens when access is cut off - with the expectation that there will not really be a backlash, making the negotiating position stronger. This move by Elsevier implies that they share this expectation, in which case this would be the best move they could do, but by giving away that they don't think their position is strong, they effectively still weaken their position. So all in all, if the German negotiators remain firm (and it looks like they will), the prospects for open access appear to be pretty good. (Note that when I talk about open access, I mean the entire set of ideals usually associated with it as described at [1], not just "pay $3000 to $5000 to make a single article available.) [1] https://fairoa.org/ https://fairoa.org/
- soneca 9y agoIn Brazil, last year there was a long strike by bank agency employees for bigger salaries. It went barelly noticed because most of bank services now can be performed online or through ATMs (even among the poor, as someone who is so poor to not have a smartphone, also is too poor to use a bank). More than 20 days of all agencies closed and almost no one cared. I am sure it actually weakened their position.
- pault 9y agoSorry for the naive question, but why don't the universities collaborate to publish their own open access journals? Don't the ivy leagues have enough prestige to pull it off? Why is Elsevier needed in the information age?
- rubidium 9y ago"universities collaborate" is likely the reason.
- govg 9y agoElseiver has "prestige". What that means is that some of their journals have become the standard destinations to publish at. It's a vicious cycle, to get acknowledged (and perhaps promoted etc) you need to publish in the locations accepted by the people senior to you, then you get sucked in and apply it to the next batch. It would require a massive collective effort to change it, and in some sense this is exactly that. Note something similar happened in CS where there is a successful free journal now, open access and most people put up papers on Arxiv. This was caused by a similar revolt by major universities.
- jjhbw 9y agoGreat developments. I am a bit pessimistic, however, as Elsevier still has all the publications related to the life and medical sciences in a stranglehold. I think the lacklustre adoption of preprint publishing in these fields is partly to blame.
- brookside 9y agoThere is an increasing awareness of the "reproducibility crisis"[1] where it seems a large portion of published scientific studies have dubious findings. I wonder if this is another argument to overthrow Elsevier to as clearly their peer review for publication is a poor filter. Or, is it possible the peer review process will become even weaker in a new more open paradigm? [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778
- Vinnl 9y agoIt's not Elsevier-specific peer review that's under scrutiny, but institutionalised peer review in general. That's said, that's still only among a minority of academics, and considering academia is pretty conservative, I don't think that that will play a large role in this situation.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoMaybe for open Internet publishing, instead of publish/don't publish peer review, it'd make sense to have a rating of the reproducibility. If you could search only for reproducible papers that met a threshold, you'd know what you were reading.
- Vinnl 9y agoUnfortunately, that requires people to actually attempt to reproduce papers and to publish about that, and often nobody wants to fund that.
- 60devs 9y agoWhat is the role of the publisher? I think there are many ways to publish things nowadays... Is the publisher responsible for peer review? Or how does that system work?
- Vinnl 9y agoPeer review is done by fellow researchers, without being paid by the publisher. However, the publisher does find the editorial board (and sometimes pays them) that finds the peer reviewers, often (but less and less so) provides typesetting and proof reading services, and most importantly provide the infrastructure that makes the articles available and makes sure that they remain available in the future. (And there's a ton of other things, like making sure people pay to access articles when they have a subscription and the like, but those are services they provide to themselves...)
- wsy 9y agoFor well-established journals, the editorial board finds new editors, so there is no cost involved for publishers. With respect to typesetting and proofreading, my personal experience is that the 'service' provided by Elsevier was of such a low quality that it actually caused _increased_ effort on the author's side. Making the articles available is indeed the core business of a publisher. However, prices for that kind of service should have decreased significantly over the last two decades, not increased.
- Vinnl 9y agoYes, to be clear: I am not arguing that the value they provide justifies in any way the extortionate fees they're asking. Quite the opposite, in fact - I believe it's mostly "justified" (or at least made possible) through a disfunctioning market.
- cbcoutinho 9y agoThe value that rests with the publisher is mainly the reputation of specific journals it maintains. In some (most?) scientific fields, publishing in a high-reputation journal is of primary importance for grant funding, author's job prospects, attracting top talent, etc. For example, the Journal of Membrane Science is one of the most highly regarded journals in my field. Anyone in the field can be pretty confident that an article in that journal is a high-quality work, meaning it's scientifically rigorous and representative of the state of the art. Researchers want to publish in that journal so that they are associated with 'the best' in their field. Articles in another journal, Membranes, which I just discovered now on Google, would not receive the same amount of credence from professionals in the field. This is partly due to practitioners themselves unwilling to trust lesser-known journals; however, professionals are busy and need an easy way to filter feed from the chaff. The value provided by Elsevier in that sense is that they maintain a type of filter of quality. I'm sure all of the same authors and professionals could start a new journal and immediately stop publishing in Journal of Membrane Science, but it could be a less-than-optimal career choice. In a sense, timing would be everything.
- erdbeerkuchen 9y agoHere is a list of universities and other institutions which have cancelled their contracts with Elsevier: https://www.projekt-deal.de/vertragskundigungen-elsevier-2017/ https://www.projekt-deal.de/vertragskundigungen-elsevier-201...
- majidazimi 9y agoBasically everyone... All top universities are in the list...
- FabHK 9y agoReading that list warmed my heart. Hasta la vista, Elsevier!
- Certhas 9y agoThe stated goals of the German universities are: • Teilnehmereinrichtungen: alle zur Teilnahme an Allianz- und Nationallizenzen berechtigten Einrichtungen in Deutschland. • Die DEAL-Einrichtungen haben dauerhaften Volltextzugriff auf das gesamte Titel-Portfolio (E-Journals) der ausgewählten Verlage. • Alle Publikationen von Autorinnen und Autoren aus deutschen Einrichtungen werden automatisch Open Access geschaltet (CC-BY, inkl. Peer Review). • Angemessene Bepreisung nach einem einfachen, zukunftsorientierten Berechnungsmodell, das sich am Publikationsaufkommen orientiert. Basically: Give us access to everything you have, publish all our authors open access, and we'll pay you an appropriate amount, relative to how many papers of ours you publish. They call this the PAR model, for publish&read. Springer and Wiley have in principle agreed to negotiate a PAR license [1]. This would be enormous, especially as other countries would have a blueprint what to ask for. It also shows just how poorly the UK has handled their renegotiation (it was generally seen as the UK caving completely) [2]. [1] An English presentation from the end of last year on the state of things: https://www.projekt-deal.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017-10-16_ICOLC_DEAL_final.pdf https://www.projekt-deal.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017-... [2] https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/time-for-elsexit/ https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/time-for-elsexit/
- sleavey 9y agoI thought UK research councils now require open access publications, either provided by journals ("gold") or by placing manuscripts on open archives ("green"). While this typically involves grant holders paying more for publication (since open access journals usually charge more), it's hardly "caving completely", unless I'm missing something...?
- revelation 9y agoI don't see how requiring grant holders to spend money on the Elsevier "open access" fees is a win for the council? You can always pay more, the point of negotiation is to get more for less. Mandating that researchers pay the Elsevier fees seems like a clear-cut win for Elsevier... You start out with full rights to your paper. Then you hand over a exclusive "do whatever you want license" to Elsevier for free. Then the UK council requires you to further pay Elsevier so the paper is downloadable from their shitty-ass website. That is an unmitigated disaster.
- inglor 9y agoIs there a service where I could pay around $5-$10 a month and get access to all (most) relevant papers? I'm not a scientist, I'm not affiliated with any academic institution at the moment (I still TA here and there though).
- claudius 9y agoarxiv.org? I’m not sure they take individual donations, though.
- rspeer 9y agoYou could possibly give to Cornell Fund for the Library [1] and tell them it's for arXiV. (Don't know if this is true for Cornell, but my own alma mater will accept and confirm arbitrary earmarks, even on small donations. It encourages more donations, and it doesn't actually mess with their priorities because money is fungible.) [1] https://alumni.library.cornell.edu/content/give-library https://alumni.library.cornell.edu/content/give-library
- a3_nm 9y agoYou can simply use Sci-hub. I don't see any moral argument against it. The research that you want to access was probably entirely done by researchers who don't get a dime of the subscription money of publishers.
- FabHK 9y agoAnd research, writing, and peer-review was publicly funded most likely anyway.
- btrettel 9y agoDeepDyve is the closest legal option I am aware of. https://www.deepdyve.com/ https://www.deepdyve.com/ I tried their service before and did not like that the papers had to be read in the browser. I'd prefer living near a research library.
- Vinnl 9y ago
- mnm1 9y ago"Most papers are now freely available somewhere on the Internet, or else you might choose to work with preprint versions." This is a huge win for proponents of free information sharing like Scihub and others. Germany's argument seems to basically boil down to, make us a favorable deal or we'll just pirate or obtain from other sources and Elsevier will lose out completely. Brilliant! I love their boldness and willingness to have some balls to fight for science instead of corporate greed in this negotiation.
- Vinnl 9y agoWhile I'm sure they're aware of Sci-Hub, they're not referring to that (well, not explicitly...). For example, another option is inter-library loan.
- djhworld 9y agoI get recruitment spam from Elsevier recruiters a lot, I wasn't entirely sure of what they did (at University we had subscriptions to IEEE and ACM and another one I can't recall the name of for CS stuff) so the name wasn't familiar to me. I'm still not enitirely sure what value they offer?
- ImaCake 9y agoA lot of life sciences papers are published in Elsevier journals. Unfortunately, there are very few pre-prints.
- Havoc 9y agoThat's hilarious. Elsevier will lose this fight for sure...it's exactly the type of thing Germans will stubbornly dig in their feet out of principle for.
- aurizon 9y agoElsevier and their lackeys and running dogs of documentary oppression are nothing more than an elevated street gang that uses the assigned mandatory copyright. Copyright has expanded without limit and now acts as the weapon that Elsevier wields against the people. Look at how the Disney Corp lobbied for ever longer copyrights. This can only be solved by national governments taking back academic authors rights by law. Sadly Elsevier bribes (AKA 'lobbys') with their war chest of money stolen from authors. With current cloud tech, they could be replaced in days. All the prior archives should also be freed by legislation.
- amygdyl 9y agoI realized recently that solely because I'm out of practice, I had begun to assume the same truth not claimed by press but repeated words they use that are untouched by mind it Voice. The non fitting words are part of a extortion demanding money with menaces which the papers are undoubtedly liable for arrest in the reception I am receiving. I only exhort IT ID NOT CRIMINAL YO SHATE YOUR OWN WORK SORRY UNIVERSITY SOLD YOU FOR A CRACKNPIPE AND HABDJOB BUT THIS HAPPEBS Why DIDN'T YOU STRIKE against making business of only the bits that don't pay you? Shoot most academic staff are too taint anyhow to protest. I will sell advertising and commission the best available lay editorial to create entirely new copyrights from the unchanged science. I'll distribute free to recipients, commercial and individual alike, the stipulation I make is that you or anyone involved finds who makes your science accessible to the public the lay public but if you can get the new science into shape K12 can from, you will have my heart. I spent two decades after the advertising industry the parallel and black market knowledge, because once the lousy journal publications are sorted, the new science needs more enthusiastic publication, and above all dissemination. SciHub cannot execute you to download anything. I, on a SciAm on cranial steroids plus donor die board posed to answer"what do the kids need let's assume adult supervision is gone by 2040." Now optimism is in the kit anyway. But if this had serious purpose, it's making academic writers and researchers money that I'm into. Twenty years I slaves to check in bit nuts how to trade advertising spots how I want. But that's all fine, I have to start someplace. This start also enables the actual publications to be produced fit real or samples from marke In my paper to my then future co-founder in 1995 was my number how much is wasted by friction inside agencies buying print advertising. I imagined that online advertising agency trades are cheap. Nope. MediaCom's former CEO lamented the market costs %60 to transact... this costs vertical under network umbrella m THIS IS HOW WE LIST THE MIDDLE CLASS MIDDLE MARKET INDUSTRY WORKS AND BUSINESSES THEY DONT SHOW MISSING FROM GDP UNTIL GONE.. ONLY MASSIVE COMPANIES AFFORD ACADEMIC STAFF but back and forth between the university and the business was established and forged links for others to follow This is the reality of my publishing I could capture the sixty percent Raise a fortune to secure a niche Azure like niche, big safe ablto play seriously It I could capture the ambition of every student who on enrolling in sixth form, learn that once you graduate, the work that you are developing for your dissertation is eligible for Professionals printing and payment, the chances of getting funding for your post grad are since the gmex rule, almost a shoe in, most people pay for their ways, while learning to write and edit for any of the Hundred thousand trade assn publications that paid for the new libraries after the gmex trust bought and closed Elsevier and anyhow the lot I am sure Google scrapped the $300,000,000 spent on magazine advertising online trading plans, because of political pressure. They have half reasons and we felt real strange. My co-founder suffered from the just exhausted punishment meted for daring to give the establishment some dose of the way law is written. He died because of a foul copyright infringement ... So much if I look corporate, I don't lately but it's my default dress, believe nothing. I'm one angry geek
- nurettin 9y agoThe insider gossip is that the CEO ordered for access to be kept open.