8 ms·

Those aren't lost sales. Nobody sane would pay $40 or so for a 20 pages paper. Even if Scihub didn't exist. Publishers know nobody pays that. There are other op

Those aren't lost sales. Nobody sane would pay $40 or so for a 20 pages paper. Even if Scihub didn't exist. Publishers know nobody pays that. There are other options free for academic, such as subscriptions universities pay for or inter-library loans. Non-academic clients may try asking somebody who has a subscription access for a given paper (I know I did provide paper PDFs a few times when asked). Publishers don't prey on individual users, they prey on universities. They try to get them to pay for journal access. Non-academic clients? Not profitable enough for us, go away. Scihub threatens this business model, because universities may decide to stop paying that money because Scihub exists. It's much more convenient than bothering a random person to provide you a paper or inter-library loan which makes this an actual risk to them.

HenryKissinger 7y ago
The current business model of publishers is predatory and harms science more than it helps, but I see self publishing and private open source initiatives as equally problematic. The definitive long-term solution, in my view, is a centralized public repository, like the Library of Congress. Call it the Federal Scientific Repository or the National Research Papers Database. It would be funded by Congress, or the LoC, and peer review would still occur. But the process of publishing papers in journals with editors and letters to the editor, as well as the environmental and financial expense of printing thousands of paper copies of these publications and shipping them to universities around the country, will cease. The hundreds (if not thousands) of thick volumes on the shelves of university libraries are never consulted by anybody - researchers use the Internet - and take up too much valuable space. It's time the research world catches up.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The adjacent-possible path to that all but certainly involves something that very closely resembles Sci-Hub, to demonstrate that the alternative of continuing proprietary publishing will not function. Without a Sci-Hub-like option, the political pressure on government (and likely: university) archives to not provide free-to-the-public services will likely continue. Only the continued persistence of a truly free option, in flagrant violation of an unjust and immoral legal environment, can break down that wall.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  How on earth can self publishing and open source even be problematic? Let alone equally so as ones whose only role is profiteering by restricting public spread only by if they get their cut or not and providing no validation - peer reviewers.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    It's the same "discovery problem" that every long tail market encounters: a significant portion of the tail is going to be either low-quality or irrelevant to most consumers of that domain. So you need aggregators, and those aggregators will face pressure to moderate the long tail by surfacing the most relevant results, while also still providing access to the tail in some form (see also Ben Thompson's aggregation theory [1]). Unfortunately, this dynamic is more social than anything: there can only be so many aggregators that can occupy the zeitgeist. That scarcity of attention leads to rent-seeking behavior, which is the main problem with academic journals. The current situation is probably approaching optimal; large institutions fund the moderation and aggregation through journal subscriptions, while access is widely available via Sci-Hub. Without a profit motive, such moderation would be even more politically-driven than it is today. At the same time, the Sci-Hub community does need to ensure its continued existence because it is such a massive boon to science writ large. [1] https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/
    - xamuel 7y ago
      The "moderation" part of journals, the editorship and peer review, is already performed virtually entirely by volunteers.
_fizz_buzz_ 7y ago
My roommate is a student with full access to basically all journals. Funny enough, he still uses scihub because it is easier to use.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  This is a big reason why piracy exists even when something is available through official means. Those offering a paid services should always ensure there is a benefit and convenience compared to piracy. Valve and Steam wouldn't be here if it was clumsy like in the beginning. Gamers like that getting a game is just a click away, that it installs and checks all the required dependencies, keeps the game file updated, allows you to preload and keep your game saves in the cloud (when possible).
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  That's a really bad sign for mainstream journals. At the end of the day when considering the behavior of large numbers of heterogeneous users, UX is king for all data consumption. The pricepoint matters, but people would use SciHub even if traditional journals somehow moved to free publication... If the UX is better for SciHub.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- onychomys 7y ago
  I use sci-hub at home because remoting into my academic network requires me to use 2FA. It's not like the journal is charging my institution per download, so there's no monetary difference between me getting it either way. So I go the lazy route and I don't really feel bad about it.
- Phemist 7y ago
  I also have full access to basically all journals and recently surveyed well over 500 papers in my field of research. Sci-hub was an indispensable tool for this, because it provides a consistent user interface to download _all_ papers. I was able to automate 90% of the PDF downloads because of it, some were blocked because of captcha's, but I was able to solve those manually. This type of semi-automation would be very impractical and cost an order of magnitude more time if I had to dig through the probably non-existent API documentation individual publishers have, or try and scrape their I'm sure by now heavily obfuscated websites.
grawprog 7y ago
>Those aren't lost sales. Nobody sane would pay $40 or so for a 20 pages paper. Even if Scihub didn't exist. Publishers know nobody pays that. There are other options free for academic, such as subscriptions universities pay for or inter-library loans. This may sound tinfoil hattish, but ever since I was in school i've believed it's to keep knowledge out of the hands of the poor. Accessing journals is basically out of the question for ordinary people, unless they go to a university library, or spend money they're not going to spend, almost all reporting on science is complete and utter garbage that at best, gets most of the facts wrong, at worst misrepresents or distorts the article being reported on completely. I don't like making blanket statements, but i've noticed, many people lack even basic knowledge of scientific methodology and almost see it as a black voodoo magic or something. Average people have no real way to verify scientific claims made by media even if they wanted to. I have to be honest too, going through school, this attitude was prevalent among my teachers, that scientific knowlege was best left to scientists to interpret for average people. Everything around science has a 'it's our special club' thing going on designed to trickle only what information scientists and authorities deem necessary. Hell, the data from my own project was locked away by the government behind a paywall, despite it being funded by tax money under the stipulation in our grant that our results and data would all be made publically accessible and we were only studying small mammals. Science, especially publically funded science, should be available for everyone. I've never agreed with the idea of hidden knowledge. Human progress comes from humans learning and sharing knowledge with eachother. Keeping knowledge locked up for a special elite cripples the progress of humanity.
- michaelmior 7y ago
  poor != unintelligent That said, I get the concern that non-scientists can often misrepresent scientific findings. I read the other day that apparently lemon peels are 10,000 times more effective than chemotherapy at treating cancer for example. But I don't think the solution is to lock away knowledge. The solution should be to try to educate people as much as possible.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    >But I don't think the solution is to lock away knowledge. The solution should be to try to educate people as much as possible. Yeah...me too...I'm guessing people didnt actually read what I wrote...

HenryKissinger 7y ago

The current business model of publishers is predatory and harms science more than it helps, but I see self publishing and private open source initiatives as equally problematic. The definitive long-term solution, in my view, is a centralized public repository, like the Library of Congress. Call it the Federal Scientific Repository or the National Research Papers Database. It would be funded by Congress, or the LoC, and peer review would still occur. But the process of publishing papers in journals with editors and letters to the editor, as well as the environmental and financial expense of printing thousands of paper copies of these publications and shipping them to universities around the country, will cease. The hundreds (if not thousands) of thick volumes on the shelves of university libraries are never consulted by anybody - researchers use the Internet - and take up too much valuable space. It's time the research world catches up.

dredmorbius 7y ago
The adjacent-possible path to that all but certainly involves something that very closely resembles Sci-Hub, to demonstrate that the alternative of continuing proprietary publishing will not function. Without a Sci-Hub-like option, the political pressure on government (and likely: university) archives to not provide free-to-the-public services will likely continue. Only the continued persistence of a truly free option, in flagrant violation of an unjust and immoral legal environment, can break down that wall.
Nasrudith 7y ago
How on earth can self publishing and open source even be problematic? Let alone equally so as ones whose only role is profiteering by restricting public spread only by if they get their cut or not and providing no validation - peer reviewers.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  It's the same "discovery problem" that every long tail market encounters: a significant portion of the tail is going to be either low-quality or irrelevant to most consumers of that domain. So you need aggregators, and those aggregators will face pressure to moderate the long tail by surfacing the most relevant results, while also still providing access to the tail in some form (see also Ben Thompson's aggregation theory [1]). Unfortunately, this dynamic is more social than anything: there can only be so many aggregators that can occupy the zeitgeist. That scarcity of attention leads to rent-seeking behavior, which is the main problem with academic journals. The current situation is probably approaching optimal; large institutions fund the moderation and aggregation through journal subscriptions, while access is widely available via Sci-Hub. Without a profit motive, such moderation would be even more politically-driven than it is today. At the same time, the Sci-Hub community does need to ensure its continued existence because it is such a massive boon to science writ large. [1] https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/
  - xamuel 7y ago
    The "moderation" part of journals, the editorship and peer review, is already performed virtually entirely by volunteers.

_fizz_buzz_ 7y ago

My roommate is a student with full access to basically all journals. Funny enough, he still uses scihub because it is easier to use.

m-p-3 7y ago
This is a big reason why piracy exists even when something is available through official means. Those offering a paid services should always ensure there is a benefit and convenience compared to piracy. Valve and Steam wouldn't be here if it was clumsy like in the beginning. Gamers like that getting a game is just a click away, that it installs and checks all the required dependencies, keeps the game file updated, allows you to preload and keep your game saves in the cloud (when possible).
shadowgovt 7y ago
That's a really bad sign for mainstream journals. At the end of the day when considering the behavior of large numbers of heterogeneous users, UX is king for all data consumption. The pricepoint matters, but people would use SciHub even if traditional journals somehow moved to free publication... If the UX is better for SciHub.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
onychomys 7y ago
I use sci-hub at home because remoting into my academic network requires me to use 2FA. It's not like the journal is charging my institution per download, so there's no monetary difference between me getting it either way. So I go the lazy route and I don't really feel bad about it.
Phemist 7y ago
I also have full access to basically all journals and recently surveyed well over 500 papers in my field of research. Sci-hub was an indispensable tool for this, because it provides a consistent user interface to download _all_ papers. I was able to automate 90% of the PDF downloads because of it, some were blocked because of captcha's, but I was able to solve those manually. This type of semi-automation would be very impractical and cost an order of magnitude more time if I had to dig through the probably non-existent API documentation individual publishers have, or try and scrape their I'm sure by now heavily obfuscated websites.

grawprog 7y ago

>Those aren't lost sales. Nobody sane would pay $40 or so for a 20 pages paper. Even if Scihub didn't exist. Publishers know nobody pays that. There are other options free for academic, such as subscriptions universities pay for or inter-library loans. This may sound tinfoil hattish, but ever since I was in school i've believed it's to keep knowledge out of the hands of the poor. Accessing journals is basically out of the question for ordinary people, unless they go to a university library, or spend money they're not going to spend, almost all reporting on science is complete and utter garbage that at best, gets most of the facts wrong, at worst misrepresents or distorts the article being reported on completely. I don't like making blanket statements, but i've noticed, many people lack even basic knowledge of scientific methodology and almost see it as a black voodoo magic or something. Average people have no real way to verify scientific claims made by media even if they wanted to. I have to be honest too, going through school, this attitude was prevalent among my teachers, that scientific knowlege was best left to scientists to interpret for average people. Everything around science has a 'it's our special club' thing going on designed to trickle only what information scientists and authorities deem necessary. Hell, the data from my own project was locked away by the government behind a paywall, despite it being funded by tax money under the stipulation in our grant that our results and data would all be made publically accessible and we were only studying small mammals. Science, especially publically funded science, should be available for everyone. I've never agreed with the idea of hidden knowledge. Human progress comes from humans learning and sharing knowledge with eachother. Keeping knowledge locked up for a special elite cripples the progress of humanity.

michaelmior 7y ago
poor != unintelligent That said, I get the concern that non-scientists can often misrepresent scientific findings. I read the other day that apparently lemon peels are 10,000 times more effective than chemotherapy at treating cancer for example. But I don't think the solution is to lock away knowledge. The solution should be to try to educate people as much as possible.
- grawprog 7y ago
  >But I don't think the solution is to lock away knowledge. The solution should be to try to educate people as much as possible. Yeah...me too...I'm guessing people didnt actually read what I wrote...