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Indian Government proposes to buy bulk subscriptions of all scientific journals
- sudhirj 6y agoIs this even possible under the licensing agreements of journals? Why isn't every country already doing this?
- newswasboring 6y agoI'm guessing they will be able to define their own license if the order is big enough. If not, I think a new National Library can be established and every citizen is automatically a member?
- AndrewOMartin 6y agoMaybe because the country sees the absurdity in paying for the research and then paying again to read the results.
- wolco2 6y agoWhy not create a new journal that would be free for all? If the subscription journals provide no value I don't see the problem.
- input_sh 6y agoThere's plenty of such journals out there (commonly referred to as open access journals). But popular subscription journals are seen as crown jewels for researchers and readers are unwilling to pay ridiculous amounts of money to read a paper or two, so sci-hub remains extremely popular.
- netizen-9748 6y agoAs a scientist, it is of my opinion that this is rather absurd. Research should be viewed as being for the betterment of humanity and furthering our knowledge, not personal prestige
- vagrantJin 6y agoAs a former scientist, the depths of academia I have visited and what I have seen had better not reach the light of day.
- rusticpenn 6y agoUnfortunately ones career is based on personal prestige in this field.
- whereistimbo 6y agoBut would it be indexed by Scopus, which is owned by Elsevier? Some research grants might require researcher's past findings to be indexed in Scopus.
- HPsquared 6y agoThey already are, effectively, through publicly-funded universities.
- jestinjoy1 6y agoRelated: A case is going on in Delhi HC against libgen and sci-hub. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/delhi-hc-asks-libgen-sci-hub-to-stop-uploading-articles-as-they-face-copyright-infringement-charges/story-cRWCB1sGs1yMqR3TCpuvmL.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/delhi-hc-asks-libg...
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agoSo how about pay them ransom money and let us use scihub in peace
- Iwan-Zotow 6y agoscihub rules!
- zajdband 6y agoArgentina has been doing this for decades. The Ministry of Education has one account and all the different institutions (universities and research organizations) share the same unique password.
- whereistimbo 6y agoHow could that work in practice? Is anyone able to change the same unique password?
- cyberlurker 6y agoSource please, that’s kind of incredible.
- swiley 6y agoBetter would have been to legalize sci-hub or make the journals illegal. This is just regulatory capture.
- shash 6y agoI don’t see how that could be done with WIPO rules and whatnot. Like it or not, undeserved as it may be, the journals _do_ have copyright, and it’s hard to get around that.
- tchalla 6y agoSo basically, the society pays money to do research and then pays again to access PDF/HTML files with enormous license fees. Looks like a win-win strategy from publishers. They have effectively co-opted "open access" to make public institutions pay even more money to host PDF files.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoIsn’t the % cost of journal access as a total of govt. R&D sub 1%?
- gruez 6y agoHow hard would it be for the government to issue an edict like "from 2025 all research must be published in an open access journal to receive public funding"?
- Bancakes 6y agoProbably harder than simply creating and standardising a .gov website that hosts research. It's difficult to demonstrate how journals are more than (or utilised better than) search engines.
- 6510 6y agoMaybe the science education should involve some basic marketing training to teach the scientist that the fruits of their skills + months of their work + expensive equipment + other funding doesn't add up to something they can just give away. Maybe if they paid for everything themselves it would be ethical. Either way it is just incredibly dumb and we should punish them for spending tax money like that if they don't grow up soon. Maybe just bill them as an extra tax if they want to publish behind closed doors. Gradually increase the tax until they see the light. Or call it a fine if you like.
- gruez 6y agoAFAIK the problem isn't with finding a place to host the papers, but that the non-open access journals require you to sign over the paper's copyright to them.
- cute_boi 6y agothey could just have allow and legalize scihub .
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoThis is a great news, Universities were already using their subscription to give access to its students, researchers; Considering govt. was paying for that (public universities) and other research centers for access anyways; Giving access to all tax payers makes absolute sense. The current Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India - Prof. K. VijayRaghavan[1] have been publicly pushing for greater scientific literacy in the country incl. using the current rise in coverage of science/research in mass media due to pandemic as a platform to promote wider adoption of scientific content. [1]https://twitter.com/kvijayraghavan https://twitter.com/kvijayraghavan
- mncharity 6y ago> This is a great news The journal aspect, regrettably not. The publishers are trying to shut down sci-hub, and to disincentivize policies of mandatory open-access. And they have a long history of getting in a door with tolerable cost and terms, and then each time you need to renew the contract, costs are higher, terms are worse, and both are bundled so "there's nothing you can do about it, is there?". Combine those ethics with Indian governance's potential for kickbacks, and sadly, not good news.
- seg_lol 6y agoIndia should mandate that all research done in the country with any level of state sponsorship should also be made available through a digital library within six months of publication in any journal.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoTrue, but what's the alternative? India cannot do something radical like endorsing SciHub or Libgen and risk derailing progress in academic scientific publishing. But it doesn't mean India hasn't done anything in the past to disrupt absurd greedy licensing regimes e.g. Generic medicines vs Int'l Pharma Patents. I see every day lives getting saved by generic medicines from 'generic medicine only' stores in India and not to mention India's generic medicines being the lifeline for other poor countries. For this, India's generic medicine industry has been facing the ire from WTO to Interpol[1]. [1]https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/Generic-makers-wary-about-Interpol-pact-with-drug-majors/article20590463.ece https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/Generic-maker...
- jmartrican 6y agoHow would the logistics of this even work? Like would every citizen be given their own unique creds, or do they share just one? Would the publishers charge a massive fee for all 1 billion citizens (at a massive discount) or would they just charge for one account? What about password sharing with citizens from another country?
- teatree 6y agoGenuine cases languish in Indian judicial system for decades, couldn't they just make the case against SciHub run around in the system for a few decades. Why waste money to satisfy somebody's greed when it can be put to much better use ? Can't these researchers get a VPN and access SciHub, Govt of India banned many porn sites, made no difference to its users ? Use the same money and fund more research!
- hiyer 6y agoThe case probably will run for years if not decades. The problem is the court will ask ISPs to block the sites in the meantime while the case is subjudice. Thankfully Indian ISPs are not very strict about blocking and the websites are accessible with the usual workarounds like proxies or VPNs.
- throwawaysea 6y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25604013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25604013
- djohnston 6y agoStop placating the parasitic middleman. I wish the govt would donate to sci hub and tell elsevier et al to shove it.
- malloreon 6y agoWhat’s to stop me, as a journal publisher, from saying, “hmmm, yes, Indian government? So that will be...1.35 billion subscriptions, yes?”
- detaro 6y agothe fact that then you sell them 0 subscriptions? It's not like "the government has said it'll do this, so now it has to do it at all costs", and governments of larger countries do have options to make a publishers life difficult if they are unreasonable, so there is some interest on both sides to negotiate.
- zoomablemind 6y agoIn general this should save money in the research budget line. Especially, when the research in separate centers (labs, universities etc) is funded from the public-supported programs/grants. Of course, it's a question about terms of the deal. Still, the government being a government can just mandate an open-access pre-publication in a national archive. China required in-advance submission of all technical docs just to allow a foreign product on their market. India is a huge market too, so there's quite a bit of leverage there for this.
- 20kleagues 6y agoThis is incredible, from the point of view of the average researcher they will simply be able to (legally) obtain any paper they wish. The effort to get more publishing in open-journals is something which will go on in parallel, but this is going to immediately boost access for the average person who doesn't have the time (or money) to lobby for open-publishing.
- prtkgpt 6y agoAnd not follow them at all. Find them at the nearest bhel puri stand!
- oli5679 6y agohttp://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju... Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier. There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost. That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable. "I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal — there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's already being done: we can fight back. Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends. But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies. There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture. We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access. With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us? Aaron Swartz July 2008, Eremo, Italy