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This is huge. Not only does it pressure publishers like Elsevier, it also legitimizes Sci-Hub in a way: if UC, one of the biggest and most reputable Universitie

This is huge. Not only does it pressure publishers like Elsevier, it also legitimizes Sci-Hub in a way: if UC, one of the biggest and most reputable Universities in the world including Berkeley and UCLA, says thry won't pay for Elsevier, researchers will just use Sci-Hub to access paywalled articles. And it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone, because the world's best researchers are all going to be using it.

minikites 8y ago
Or they can use the interlibrary lending service: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary-loan http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary...
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Is it any good? Even if it is, it's nowhere near as good as scihub.
  - jrochkind1 8y ago
    It's "good" in the sense that if you fill out a form (probably manually entering things in boxes in a web form), you'll probably have a PDF in your email within 2 or 3 business days, so long as nearly any library anywhere has a copy (licensed electronic or on paper). For a hard-to-find article not really available anywhere else, that's pretty neat. For something you could just get on sci-hub? Nah.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      I end up with some ILL scans in the same day as the request.
  - kevinventullo 8y ago
    In the early 2010's, I was able to find stuff through ILL that I couldn't find anywhere on the internet. Not sure how extensive SciHub is nowadays.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  True, but nobody wants to wait a few days for an article in 2018.
  - Techonomicon 8y ago
    nor in 2019!
jrochkind1 8y ago
While they're not gonna say it in the press release, you gotta figure the decision-makers know that many professors and students are using sci-hub _already_, and find it _easier to use_ than the official licensed channels, and that this was part of what gave them the ability to cancel the Elsevier license.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  > And it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone, because the world's best researchers are all going to be using it I wouldn't count on that, could lead to the reverse, Elsevier coming to terms with the threat and getting serious. If the worlds best (and wealthiest biggest-spending) research institutions are willing to go this route, Elsevier is gonna be thinking, uh oh we're in trouble, better bring out the big guns. The tricky thing is that it's often _authors themselves_ who willingly share their stuff on "pirate" sites, and Elsevier wants to avoid at all costs the academic authors realizing they have different interests and goals than Elsevier. Elsevier is in a tough spot in the long-term, despite their crazy profit-margins today -- and we all want it to keep getting tougher and tougher. But if they think they're going down, they're going to start lashing out...
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    What bigger guns do publishers have to use against sci-hub that they haven't used yet? They have already used lawsuits against sci-hub and getting their domain names blocked in jurisdictions where that sort of thing can happen. Pressuring for IP-address blocks across different ISPs? Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub.
    - jrochkind1 8y ago
      > Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub Have you done or read much UX analysis with academics? They do _not_ tend to be adepts at things like tor browser. Not even in "hard-science" disciplines. Some are, some aren't. They don't want to jump through any hoops at all, they see getting/finding articles as a necessary evil, mostly to get citations to put in papers. They are busy, and have no time for any extra hoops, and aren't really interested in learning new tools for accessing articles. In fact that's WHY they are using sci-hub, simply because it's the quickest lowest barrier way to get the stuff, without having to learn any special tools. I'm not sure either what bigger guns Elsevier has, but they'll try to figure it out. They have not yet tried to go against _authors_ for sharing the articles they wrote, but Elsevier has copyright or exclusive license to distribute. Or against individual academics for consuming pirated articles. (You know the emails/letters you get if you're torrenting a movie from piratebay without a VPN or what have you? Nobody has ever sent one to an academic for sharing or downloading an article... yet).
tony_cannistra 8y ago
But, Sci-hub (which I use every day and am in full support of!) is a band-aid solution to the open-access problem. I wonder if the entire UC system going offline from Elsevier access is enough to stop other researchers from submitting to their journals. Probably not initially, but I know that many of my colleagues avoid submitting to journals that they know their peers don't read.
- gh02t 8y ago
  It's mostly a problem in more specialized fields where there are only really one or two journals servicing it. If Elsevier owns the only journal(s) in your field then you're gonna be in a tough spot. Organizing and launching a new journal is challenging, which is one of the reasons Elsevier has been so hard to overthrow despite almost everyone being unhappy with them. What is also needed is for more journals to be founded or defect. Elsevier's big subscribers can exert some leverage, but Elsevier's strategy has been to lock down their control of publishing in entire fields, meaning that you may not have much alternative.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, doesn't say that even UC researchers will no longer submit to Elsevier journals (or no longer be on Elsevier journal editorial boards). They can and presumably will keep submitting to Elsevier journals. UC just won't pay for licenses to access those journals. If UC tried to tell faculty which journals they were or were not allowed to submit to, that would be a LOT more controversial to them. I mean, this _could_ have been controversial too, but that would be even more so. If this actual decision wasn't controversial among faculty, my guess is it's because they're all using sci-hub anyway.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, or even UC researchers no longer doing that. The policy which resulted in it—UC’s push for open access for public-funded research, and Elsevier’s unwillingness to allow open access on terms UC was willing to accept—implies that, should the breach not be healed, there will eventually be a problem for at least some subset of UC researchers publishing in Elsevier journals.
jononor 8y ago
Do we have backups of Sci-Hub?
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Yes.
- gpm 8y ago
  Given enough storage space you can even make one yourself, the papers are distributed via a set of torrents.
colourlessgreen 8y ago
Hey, they may also use UnPaywall

minikites 8y ago

Or they can use the interlibrary lending service: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary-loan http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary...

jjoonathan 8y ago
Is it any good? Even if it is, it's nowhere near as good as scihub.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  It's "good" in the sense that if you fill out a form (probably manually entering things in boxes in a web form), you'll probably have a PDF in your email within 2 or 3 business days, so long as nearly any library anywhere has a copy (licensed electronic or on paper). For a hard-to-find article not really available anywhere else, that's pretty neat. For something you could just get on sci-hub? Nah.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    I end up with some ILL scans in the same day as the request.
- kevinventullo 8y ago
  In the early 2010's, I was able to find stuff through ILL that I couldn't find anywhere on the internet. Not sure how extensive SciHub is nowadays.
jrochkind1 8y ago
True, but nobody wants to wait a few days for an article in 2018.
- Techonomicon 8y ago
  nor in 2019!

jrochkind1 8y ago

While they're not gonna say it in the press release, you gotta figure the decision-makers know that many professors and students are using sci-hub _already_, and find it _easier to use_ than the official licensed channels, and that this was part of what gave them the ability to cancel the Elsevier license.

jrochkind1 8y ago
> And it is much less likely now that Sci-Hub will be a problem for anyone, because the world's best researchers are all going to be using it I wouldn't count on that, could lead to the reverse, Elsevier coming to terms with the threat and getting serious. If the worlds best (and wealthiest biggest-spending) research institutions are willing to go this route, Elsevier is gonna be thinking, uh oh we're in trouble, better bring out the big guns. The tricky thing is that it's often _authors themselves_ who willingly share their stuff on "pirate" sites, and Elsevier wants to avoid at all costs the academic authors realizing they have different interests and goals than Elsevier. Elsevier is in a tough spot in the long-term, despite their crazy profit-margins today -- and we all want it to keep getting tougher and tougher. But if they think they're going down, they're going to start lashing out...
- philipkglass 8y ago
  What bigger guns do publishers have to use against sci-hub that they haven't used yet? They have already used lawsuits against sci-hub and getting their domain names blocked in jurisdictions where that sort of thing can happen. Pressuring for IP-address blocks across different ISPs? Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub.
  - jrochkind1 8y ago
    > Finally, sci-hub is accessible via .onion through Tor. Maybe that's not a viable access method for the general public, but the sort of people who read a lot of research articles can jump through the hoop of setting up Tor Browser if that's what they need to keep using sci-hub Have you done or read much UX analysis with academics? They do _not_ tend to be adepts at things like tor browser. Not even in "hard-science" disciplines. Some are, some aren't. They don't want to jump through any hoops at all, they see getting/finding articles as a necessary evil, mostly to get citations to put in papers. They are busy, and have no time for any extra hoops, and aren't really interested in learning new tools for accessing articles. In fact that's WHY they are using sci-hub, simply because it's the quickest lowest barrier way to get the stuff, without having to learn any special tools. I'm not sure either what bigger guns Elsevier has, but they'll try to figure it out. They have not yet tried to go against _authors_ for sharing the articles they wrote, but Elsevier has copyright or exclusive license to distribute. Or against individual academics for consuming pirated articles. (You know the emails/letters you get if you're torrenting a movie from piratebay without a VPN or what have you? Nobody has ever sent one to an academic for sharing or downloading an article... yet).

tony_cannistra 8y ago

But, Sci-hub (which I use every day and am in full support of!) is a band-aid solution to the open-access problem. I wonder if the entire UC system going offline from Elsevier access is enough to stop other researchers from submitting to their journals. Probably not initially, but I know that many of my colleagues avoid submitting to journals that they know their peers don't read.

gh02t 8y ago
It's mostly a problem in more specialized fields where there are only really one or two journals servicing it. If Elsevier owns the only journal(s) in your field then you're gonna be in a tough spot. Organizing and launching a new journal is challenging, which is one of the reasons Elsevier has been so hard to overthrow despite almost everyone being unhappy with them. What is also needed is for more journals to be founded or defect. Elsevier's big subscribers can exert some leverage, but Elsevier's strategy has been to lock down their control of publishing in entire fields, meaning that you may not have much alternative.
jrochkind1 8y ago
Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, doesn't say that even UC researchers will no longer submit to Elsevier journals (or no longer be on Elsevier journal editorial boards). They can and presumably will keep submitting to Elsevier journals. UC just won't pay for licenses to access those journals. If UC tried to tell faculty which journals they were or were not allowed to submit to, that would be a LOT more controversial to them. I mean, this _could_ have been controversial too, but that would be even more so. If this actual decision wasn't controversial among faculty, my guess is it's because they're all using sci-hub anyway.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Note this announcement doesn't say anything about submitting to journals, or even UC researchers no longer doing that. The policy which resulted in it—UC’s push for open access for public-funded research, and Elsevier’s unwillingness to allow open access on terms UC was willing to accept—implies that, should the breach not be healed, there will eventually be a problem for at least some subset of UC researchers publishing in Elsevier journals.

jononor 8y ago

Do we have backups of Sci-Hub?

jacquesm 8y ago
Yes.
gpm 8y ago
Given enough storage space you can even make one yourself, the papers are distributed via a set of torrents.

colourlessgreen 8y ago

Hey, they may also use UnPaywall