7 ms·

what a brave woman, she is singlehandedly disrupting the scientific publications cartel

by slt2021 6y ago

xkcd-sucks 6y ago
"Russian hackers stealing valuable Western IP" actually kind of surprised I haven't heard this yet
- tpmx 6y ago
  She's Kazakhstani, not Russian, but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Views_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Views_and_c... > Elbakyan has stated that she is inspired by communist ideals, although she does not consider herself a strict Marxist.] She has stated that she supports a strong state which can stand up to the Western world, and that she does not want "the scientists of Russia and of my native Kazakhstan to share the fates of the scientists of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, that were 'helped' by the USA to become more democratic." ... > In 2017, a species of parasitoid wasps discovered by Russian and Mexican entomologists was named after Elbakyan (Idiogramma elbakyanae). Elbakyan was offended by this, writing, "If you analyse the situation with scientific publications, the real parasites are scientific publishers, and Sci-Hub, on the contrary, fights for equal access to scientific information." Following this event, and in the context of her long-running tense relations with the liberal, pro-Western wing of the Russian scientific community, she blocked access to Sci-Hub for users from the Russian Federation. So basically she's a Putin supporter.
  - xyzzy123 6y ago
    That seems overly reductive. Must all people who want the USA to do well be "Biden supporters" or "Trump supporters"? I think not.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      (I'm not american.) At the very least we should be able to agree that her goals align remarkably well with Putin's goals. And to be clear: I also believe that freeing scientific information from publishers is a nice goal - it's just that her goal is broader than that.
      - pessimizer 6y ago
        That famous Marxist, Putin.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Putin is a parasite, a die-hard capitalist, and an oligarch. He isn't anything like Elbakyan ideologically, at all. I'm afraid you're ideologically illiterate.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into political, ideological, and/or nationalistic flamewar. This comment manages to be all three, and it's a step change in the thread—a step down. Let's climb the other way please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - tpmx 6y ago
      You're of course right. Sorry about that.
- a_bonobo 6y ago
  Scholarly Kitchen is the 'house' blog of the publishing industry, they've run very similar articles >https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-think-sci-hub-is-just-downloading-pdfs-think-again/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-th... >Let me be clear: Sci-Hub is not just stealing PDFs. They’re phishing, they’re spamming, they’re hacking, they’re password-cracking, and basically doing anything to find personal credentials to get into academic institutions. While illegal access to published content is the most obvious target, this is just the tip of an iceberg concealing underlying efforts to steal multiple streams of personal and research data from the world’s academic institutions. Comment 1: >The notion that Sci-Hub is not involved in hacking is laughable. The founder of Sci-Hub, when asked about this, disingenuously replies that Sci-Hub itself does not engage in hacking and phishing, without disputing that it relies on these to operate. More evidence that there is something big and powerful behind Sci-Hub: the Russian mafia. Or this howler, a blog-post on Russian information warfare that then goes into Sci-Hub: >In the scholarly information community, some individuals apparently sympathetic with the open information calls of Sci-Hub and LibGen actively shared authentication information, inadvertently providing institutional credentials to cybercriminals and cyberwarriors, who are probably still sitting on the usernames and passwords or, more likely, the information they grabbed before the passwords were changed. Experts estimate that we’ve seen 1% of the information Wikileaks and the Russians have purloined over the years. >https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/03/publishing-in-a-time-of-information-warfare-a-wakeup-call/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/03/publishing-in...
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Oh no, the cyber mafia warriors... Taking scientific papers and making them freely available??
  - 177tcca 6y ago
    What's the Russian mob's next big play, then, Cartel? Reading cryptocurrency whitepapers, or selling CRISPR service out of the back of a truck? The fact that people still fall for this shit, on both sides of the table, is depressing.
crumbshot 6y ago
Agreed, and with a very pure and selfless motive, in massively broadening access to works of scientific research. Elbakyan's project really is a shining beacon of anti-capitalist action, against our broken system where a small number of private companies control access to what should be communal resources, solely to enrich themselves.
- rualca 6y ago
  > Elbakyan's project really is a shining beacon of anti-capitalist action (...) The scientific journal racket is all but capitalism. It's largely rentism disseminated and fostered by entrenched state and institutional interests and status quo. These publisher's devised a scheme where they not only force highly-educated and trained specialists to produce cutting-edge work for free but also afterwards demand high fees for them to access that same work.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Yes, capitalism is a worthy ideal. But don't forget that rentism is one of its failure modes, and a very common one; I don't think it's inaccurate to describe attempts to fight rentism as anti-capitalist.
    - atdrummond 6y ago
      Rent seeking is just as endemic in purportedly socialist/communist countries.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Yes, capitalism is a worthy ideal The “ideals” of capitalism were shallow post-hoc rationalizations that came after people called out the problems resulting from the mode by which the elite mercantile class had replaced the feudal hereditary aristocracy as the class around whose particular interests the political and economic order were organized. It was an improvement over feudalism, but the subsequent improvements have occurred with the general replacement of capitalism, in its original sense, with the modern mixed economy; capitalism is now a reversal of progress, not an ideal to aspire to.

what a brave woman, she is singlehandedly disrupting the scientific publications cartel

xkcd-sucks 6y ago

"Russian hackers stealing valuable Western IP" actually kind of surprised I haven't heard this yet

tpmx 6y ago
She's Kazakhstani, not Russian, but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Views_and_controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan#Views_and_c... > Elbakyan has stated that she is inspired by communist ideals, although she does not consider herself a strict Marxist.] She has stated that she supports a strong state which can stand up to the Western world, and that she does not want "the scientists of Russia and of my native Kazakhstan to share the fates of the scientists of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, that were 'helped' by the USA to become more democratic." ... > In 2017, a species of parasitoid wasps discovered by Russian and Mexican entomologists was named after Elbakyan (Idiogramma elbakyanae). Elbakyan was offended by this, writing, "If you analyse the situation with scientific publications, the real parasites are scientific publishers, and Sci-Hub, on the contrary, fights for equal access to scientific information." Following this event, and in the context of her long-running tense relations with the liberal, pro-Western wing of the Russian scientific community, she blocked access to Sci-Hub for users from the Russian Federation. So basically she's a Putin supporter.
- xyzzy123 6y ago
  That seems overly reductive. Must all people who want the USA to do well be "Biden supporters" or "Trump supporters"? I think not.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    (I'm not american.) At the very least we should be able to agree that her goals align remarkably well with Putin's goals. And to be clear: I also believe that freeing scientific information from publishers is a nice goal - it's just that her goal is broader than that.
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      That famous Marxist, Putin.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Putin is a parasite, a die-hard capitalist, and an oligarch. He isn't anything like Elbakyan ideologically, at all. I'm afraid you're ideologically illiterate.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into political, ideological, and/or nationalistic flamewar. This comment manages to be all three, and it's a step change in the thread—a step down. Let's climb the other way please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - tpmx 6y ago
    You're of course right. Sorry about that.
a_bonobo 6y ago
Scholarly Kitchen is the 'house' blog of the publishing industry, they've run very similar articles >https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-think-sci-hub-is-just-downloading-pdfs-think-again/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-th... >Let me be clear: Sci-Hub is not just stealing PDFs. They’re phishing, they’re spamming, they’re hacking, they’re password-cracking, and basically doing anything to find personal credentials to get into academic institutions. While illegal access to published content is the most obvious target, this is just the tip of an iceberg concealing underlying efforts to steal multiple streams of personal and research data from the world’s academic institutions. Comment 1: >The notion that Sci-Hub is not involved in hacking is laughable. The founder of Sci-Hub, when asked about this, disingenuously replies that Sci-Hub itself does not engage in hacking and phishing, without disputing that it relies on these to operate. More evidence that there is something big and powerful behind Sci-Hub: the Russian mafia. Or this howler, a blog-post on Russian information warfare that then goes into Sci-Hub: >In the scholarly information community, some individuals apparently sympathetic with the open information calls of Sci-Hub and LibGen actively shared authentication information, inadvertently providing institutional credentials to cybercriminals and cyberwarriors, who are probably still sitting on the usernames and passwords or, more likely, the information they grabbed before the passwords were changed. Experts estimate that we’ve seen 1% of the information Wikileaks and the Russians have purloined over the years. >https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/03/publishing-in-a-time-of-information-warfare-a-wakeup-call/ https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/03/publishing-in...
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Oh no, the cyber mafia warriors... Taking scientific papers and making them freely available??
- 177tcca 6y ago
  What's the Russian mob's next big play, then, Cartel? Reading cryptocurrency whitepapers, or selling CRISPR service out of the back of a truck? The fact that people still fall for this shit, on both sides of the table, is depressing.

crumbshot 6y ago

Agreed, and with a very pure and selfless motive, in massively broadening access to works of scientific research. Elbakyan's project really is a shining beacon of anti-capitalist action, against our broken system where a small number of private companies control access to what should be communal resources, solely to enrich themselves.

rualca 6y ago
> Elbakyan's project really is a shining beacon of anti-capitalist action (...) The scientific journal racket is all but capitalism. It's largely rentism disseminated and fostered by entrenched state and institutional interests and status quo. These publisher's devised a scheme where they not only force highly-educated and trained specialists to produce cutting-edge work for free but also afterwards demand high fees for them to access that same work.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Yes, capitalism is a worthy ideal. But don't forget that rentism is one of its failure modes, and a very common one; I don't think it's inaccurate to describe attempts to fight rentism as anti-capitalist.
  - atdrummond 6y ago
    Rent seeking is just as endemic in purportedly socialist/communist countries.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Yes, capitalism is a worthy ideal The “ideals” of capitalism were shallow post-hoc rationalizations that came after people called out the problems resulting from the mode by which the elite mercantile class had replaced the feudal hereditary aristocracy as the class around whose particular interests the political and economic order were organized. It was an improvement over feudalism, but the subsequent improvements have occurred with the general replacement of capitalism, in its original sense, with the modern mixed economy; capitalism is now a reversal of progress, not an ideal to aspire to.