3 ms·

I wonder how this dichotomy of "use Wikipedia and SciHub, but you don't cite them directly" affects the ethics of graduates.

smt88 8y ago
Citing Wikipedia directly is silly when Wikipedia often has its own citation of a primary source that you can use instead. Wikipedia is explicitly not a primary source by design. SciHub is different because it replicates primary sources. I'd argue that it's unethical to keep publicly funded science behind a paywall, so perhaps the ethical question you're implying is more nuanced than that of simple "piracy".
jacobolus 8y ago
People cite Wikipedia all the time in peer-reviewed journal papers. Many e.g. high school teachers recommend that their students not cite (any) encyclopedias directly, because they want the students to learn how to read and cite primary sources. Reading a secondary source for an overview then diving into primary sources is a perfectly fine and ethical way to do research. I can’t see how schools and teachers advising students to read secondary sources for context but then follow their references to primary sources to read for the details would cause any kind of ethical compromise. There is no reason to cite SciHub (just like there is no reason to cite Academia.edu, ResearchGate, some professor’s personal webpage with a hosted preprint, Google Scholar, etc.) whether or not someone uses it.
tnecniv 8y ago
Sci-Hub isn't a thing that you cite. It gives you a publication from a conference / journal. That's what you cite. Citing Sci-Hub would be like citing google.
geofft 8y ago
I think you have a point and a lot of replies are missing it. Tacit acceptance of Sci-Hub is tacit acceptance that some laws don't matter and everyone knows it. That's certainly an ethical stance with implications. It's not necessarily a bad stance (D&D would call it "chaotic good") and it is I think my own stance, but once you decide that laws are secondary to your personal and professional needs if you don't get caught, you're likely to use the same argument in other respects. Citing the original paper instead of the Sci-Hub URL only increases the extent to which you're pretending to follow the law. Wikipedia has primary sources linked, yes, but it has its own biases. It tries not to, but it still has them to some extent, perhaps just in terms of what sections have been written and what haven't based on editors' interests. If you use Wikipedia to find primary sources, you're filtering your research through those biases. That has direct implications, and indirect implications for ethics in that you've decided this filtering is acceptable to you and also that it's acceptable (and perhaps required) not to acknowledge it. (And yes, of course there are other biases in terms of what university libraries stock, what previous academics have written about, what funding agencies are interested in, etc. I'd say that how much you pay attention to these potential biases and whether you see them as significant is also a question of ethics.)
- darkpuma 8y ago
  How many grad students for generations have been smoking dope despite the laws against it? Using sci-hub despite the law is not a significant departure from the status quo of grad students ignoring dumb laws when it suits them. Sci-hub does not present a uniquely deleterious effect on the ethics of grad students. Also, even if sci-hub were legal, you still wouldn't cite the sci-hub url. That's not how things are cited.
- semi-extrinsic 8y ago
  > once you decide that laws are secondary to your personal and professional needs if you don't get caught, you're likely to use the same argument in other respect I don't think it's that clear cut. If you drive above the speed limit, or smoke weed in a state where it's not allowed, or pirate some DVDs, you're not automatically going to progress to more serious crimes. People seem to be perfectly capable of "ahh let's ignore this stupid law" and not start sliding down some slippery slope.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  Because some laws just don't matter. This is a good thing to realize for people. Laws aren't automatically right and moral just because they're laws. There are plenty of reasons why a law can exist, and morality usually isn't the reason.
- gnomewascool 8y ago
  > but once you decide that laws are secondary to your personal and professional needs if you don't get caught, you're likely to use the same argument in other respects. I think it's more nuanced than this. Something being illegal and immoral, are two different things (there's overlap, but not always). Some laws are completely wrong and breaking them is not immoral. IMO (you may disagree) academic articles "belonging" to the publishers and being copyrighted, is one of them. Hence, I'd rephrase what you wrote above as: "but once you decide that laws are secondary to your [...] needs [...], if they're terrible laws that should be changed, (but probably won't be, at least in the near future, due to inertia and lobbying), you're likely to use the same argument in other respects", which is much less problematic and in some ways a good thing. Obviously, motivated reasoning is an issue, so you should be very careful not to fall into that trap and start breaking laws willy-nilly arguing that they're all bad laws. > Citing the original paper instead of the Sci-Hub URL only increases the extent to which you're pretending to follow the law. How is it at all relevant how I got a paper? Once upon a time, there were paper copies of journals in libraries. If you were citing a paper at that time, you wouldn't write "Journal of X, found on the 3rd shelf, in the 5th aisle of the Y library". In current times, you can (usually) legally get a paper by pestering the original author for a copy, by e-mail. If you do, you wouldn't cite the paper as "obtained from Original Researches, mailto:zzz"). (If you put a "link" in the citation, it should be the DOI (digital object identifier) as it's the universal(-ish), immutable (hopefully) identifier.)
jplayer01 8y ago
Nobody needs to cite scihub. Download the papers you need off of it, cite them.

smt88 8y ago

Citing Wikipedia directly is silly when Wikipedia often has its own citation of a primary source that you can use instead. Wikipedia is explicitly not a primary source by design. SciHub is different because it replicates primary sources. I'd argue that it's unethical to keep publicly funded science behind a paywall, so perhaps the ethical question you're implying is more nuanced than that of simple "piracy".

jacobolus 8y ago

People cite Wikipedia all the time in peer-reviewed journal papers. Many e.g. high school teachers recommend that their students not cite (any) encyclopedias directly, because they want the students to learn how to read and cite primary sources. Reading a secondary source for an overview then diving into primary sources is a perfectly fine and ethical way to do research. I can’t see how schools and teachers advising students to read secondary sources for context but then follow their references to primary sources to read for the details would cause any kind of ethical compromise. There is no reason to cite SciHub (just like there is no reason to cite Academia.edu, ResearchGate, some professor’s personal webpage with a hosted preprint, Google Scholar, etc.) whether or not someone uses it.

tnecniv 8y ago

Sci-Hub isn't a thing that you cite. It gives you a publication from a conference / journal. That's what you cite. Citing Sci-Hub would be like citing google.

geofft 8y ago

I think you have a point and a lot of replies are missing it. Tacit acceptance of Sci-Hub is tacit acceptance that some laws don't matter and everyone knows it. That's certainly an ethical stance with implications. It's not necessarily a bad stance (D&D would call it "chaotic good") and it is I think my own stance, but once you decide that laws are secondary to your personal and professional needs if you don't get caught, you're likely to use the same argument in other respects. Citing the original paper instead of the Sci-Hub URL only increases the extent to which you're pretending to follow the law. Wikipedia has primary sources linked, yes, but it has its own biases. It tries not to, but it still has them to some extent, perhaps just in terms of what sections have been written and what haven't based on editors' interests. If you use Wikipedia to find primary sources, you're filtering your research through those biases. That has direct implications, and indirect implications for ethics in that you've decided this filtering is acceptable to you and also that it's acceptable (and perhaps required) not to acknowledge it. (And yes, of course there are other biases in terms of what university libraries stock, what previous academics have written about, what funding agencies are interested in, etc. I'd say that how much you pay attention to these potential biases and whether you see them as significant is also a question of ethics.)

darkpuma 8y ago
How many grad students for generations have been smoking dope despite the laws against it? Using sci-hub despite the law is not a significant departure from the status quo of grad students ignoring dumb laws when it suits them. Sci-hub does not present a uniquely deleterious effect on the ethics of grad students. Also, even if sci-hub were legal, you still wouldn't cite the sci-hub url. That's not how things are cited.
semi-extrinsic 8y ago
> once you decide that laws are secondary to your personal and professional needs if you don't get caught, you're likely to use the same argument in other respect I don't think it's that clear cut. If you drive above the speed limit, or smoke weed in a state where it's not allowed, or pirate some DVDs, you're not automatically going to progress to more serious crimes. People seem to be perfectly capable of "ahh let's ignore this stupid law" and not start sliding down some slippery slope.
jplayer01 8y ago
Because some laws just don't matter. This is a good thing to realize for people. Laws aren't automatically right and moral just because they're laws. There are plenty of reasons why a law can exist, and morality usually isn't the reason.
gnomewascool 8y ago
> but once you decide that laws are secondary to your personal and professional needs if you don't get caught, you're likely to use the same argument in other respects. I think it's more nuanced than this. Something being illegal and immoral, are two different things (there's overlap, but not always). Some laws are completely wrong and breaking them is not immoral. IMO (you may disagree) academic articles "belonging" to the publishers and being copyrighted, is one of them. Hence, I'd rephrase what you wrote above as: "but once you decide that laws are secondary to your [...] needs [...], if they're terrible laws that should be changed, (but probably won't be, at least in the near future, due to inertia and lobbying), you're likely to use the same argument in other respects", which is much less problematic and in some ways a good thing. Obviously, motivated reasoning is an issue, so you should be very careful not to fall into that trap and start breaking laws willy-nilly arguing that they're all bad laws. > Citing the original paper instead of the Sci-Hub URL only increases the extent to which you're pretending to follow the law. How is it at all relevant how I got a paper? Once upon a time, there were paper copies of journals in libraries. If you were citing a paper at that time, you wouldn't write "Journal of X, found on the 3rd shelf, in the 5th aisle of the Y library". In current times, you can (usually) legally get a paper by pestering the original author for a copy, by e-mail. If you do, you wouldn't cite the paper as "obtained from Original Researches, mailto:zzz"). (If you put a "link" in the citation, it should be the DOI (digital object identifier) as it's the universal(-ish), immutable (hopefully) identifier.)

jplayer01 8y ago

Nobody needs to cite scihub. Download the papers you need off of it, cite them.