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> The French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages. Thi

> The French really love their language, traditional publishers continue to publish in French whereas new-tech is more often in English or other languages. This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen. Most french researchers are perfectly happy using these sites, and dislike strongly the draconian schemes of scientific journal publishers (which publish texts mostly in english). Several people are pushing for french university libraries to stop paying subscriptions to journals and give all that money directly to scihub. Yet, these initiatives are always blocked at higher levels.

bnegreve 8y ago
Yes, few facts to support this claim: the french are big consumers of SciHub content (biggest in the EU [1]) and the CNRS (one of the main french national scientific organization) has boycotted traditional publishers on several occasions (e.g. Springer [2]). The CNRS also supports Hal which is the french equivalent of arXiv. I think this has more to do with the copyright lobby than anything else. [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/visuel/2016/05/10/edition-scientifique-geopolitique-d-un-piratage_4916792_1650684.html https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/visuel/2016/05/10/edition-sc... (in french) [2] https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/french-universities-cancel-subscriptions-to-springer-journals-29882 https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/french-universities... [3] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/
Someone1234 8y ago
> This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen. But everything to do with the French government's attitude towards traditional publishers and why they work so closely together. This issue doesn't begin and end with research publishing, it is bigger and older than that. Calling something "ridiculous" simply because you want a black & white answer to a larger complex cultural phenomenon is a little disappointing.

bnegreve 8y ago

Yes, few facts to support this claim: the french are big consumers of SciHub content (biggest in the EU [1]) and the CNRS (one of the main french national scientific organization) has boycotted traditional publishers on several occasions (e.g. Springer [2]). The CNRS also supports Hal which is the french equivalent of arXiv. I think this has more to do with the copyright lobby than anything else. [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/visuel/2016/05/10/edition-scientifique-geopolitique-d-un-piratage_4916792_1650684.html https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/visuel/2016/05/10/edition-sc... (in french) [2] https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/french-universities-cancel-subscriptions-to-springer-journals-29882 https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/french-universities... [3] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/

Someone1234 8y ago

> This sentence is ridiculous and has nothing to do with scihub and libgen. But everything to do with the French government's attitude towards traditional publishers and why they work so closely together. This issue doesn't begin and end with research publishing, it is bigger and older than that. Calling something "ridiculous" simply because you want a black & white answer to a larger complex cultural phenomenon is a little disappointing.