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> The website is blocked in a dozen countries, including Austria, Britain, and France. I'm deeply ashamed that my country would block sci-hub given that the cu

> The website is blocked in a dozen countries, including Austria, Britain, and France. I'm deeply ashamed that my country would block sci-hub given that the current system is preventing scientific development.

amelius 5y ago
Scientists should put Scihub in the acknowledgements section of their papers. As in "this research would not have been possible without Scihub".
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  That is a genius hack. ("Genius" might be redundant.)
  - kergonath 5y ago
    That is a huge problem if you acknowledge using an illegal platform in your professional work, including for your co-authors. Almost the opposite of genius, actually.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Ah, but Sci-Hub isn't illegal. There's nothing wrong with visiting the Sci-Hub home page, nor with using it as a convenient way to access open-access papers.
      - kergonath 5y ago
        Right* (depending on jurisdiction, ymmv). Getting from it articles that you cannot have otherwise is (except for the vanishingly few articles in the public domain, which are not really likely to be found on Sci-Hub anyway. I tried). Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. It is also against the policy of all the institutions I know, so could be grounds for termination. And again, this could apply to your co-authors as well. I am really not endorsing the subscription model, but putting something like that in your articles' acknowledgments really is not smart.
        amelius 5y ago
        > Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. Not really. It could also mean: Scihub offers an efficient way to explore scientific articles, and without it, I (the scientist) wouldn't have bothered with all the different paywalls to even check if papers were worth reading. And as such, I would not have reached the same results.
        kergonath 5y ago
        It does not make the work possible, though. Just more convenient.
        amelius 5y ago
        No because a scientist can only deal with so much bureaucracy. After a certain limit, they will go into "I will invent it myself" mode. And here is a different argument. Scientists often have brilliant moments while e.g. showering. So they could have written: "this work would not have been possible without showers". The statement itself does not imply anything about whether they paid for the water or not. Or even if they took a shower. Perhaps the thought of a shower triggered the eureka moment.
        Aeolun 5y ago
        > Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. Isn’t that exactly the point? How is it not hindering scientific progress if you do not have access to research that you don’t pay for. It’s not like the journals themselves fund the research, they’re just getting a free ride.
        amelius 5y ago
        > if you do not have access to research that you don’t pay for. The situation is worse as most of the research is already paid for by tax money.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      How so? Might not want to mention it in the same footnote as the grant number.
    - userbinator 5y ago
      That reminds me of a phrase I've heard in relation to file sharing and such: "if everyone runs the red light together, there is nothing to be afraid of".
      - kergonath 5y ago
        Doing it and claiming to have done it in a professional setting are quite different though. I am perfectly willing to believe that a lot of researchers use Sci-Hub (though from my experience they tend to use Researchgate more); I am certain that the number of people who would shout about doing it on the rooftops is nowhere near even a small minority.
        enriquto 5y ago
        What you say does not correspond to my personal experience. As a single data point, in my research group all twelve phd students and five postdocs use SciHub regularly. Some of the faculty don't know it even exists, others do.
      - kzrdude 5y ago
        That metaphor backfirews pretty hard IMO, is that intentional?
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        How so? Everyone running a light together is the expected behavior if you change the color of the light. In other words, it describes nothing that isn't occurring constantly everywhere. Where does the metaphor backfire?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        mb7733 5y ago
        The metaphor backfires because if everyone runs red lights they will collide with one another, as well as with those going through green lights.
    - breck 5y ago
      Courageous, I would say. More important than genius.
      - kergonath 5y ago
        Yes, that would fit better.
      - amelius 5y ago
        If you don't have the courage, you can also do it indirectly: simply reference a paper that states that it would not be possible without Scihub. Then, your paper would not be possible without Scihub either :)
    - jfoutz 5y ago
      I had a snarky remark about Galileo and Copernicus, but it’s probably not relevant.
- breck 5y ago
  I did this! I encourage everyone to do it! Include the Sci hub link with the DOI.
- thrdbndndn 5y ago
  Interestingly, when I was still in university, I never used Sci-hub at all. I can download almost any paper using school's network (or VPN) since the library have subscriptions for basically all the major publishers. I only started to use it occasionally once I've graduated (but I didn't really do any formal research any more.)
  - VortexDream 5y ago
    Interestingly, every student I know uses sci-hub.
    - chakkepolja 5y ago
      Interestingly it's almost necessary in third world.
  - eldaisfish 5y ago
    perhaps you're aware of this but sci-hub solves a second problem in addition to simply access - ease of use. Using a library's system requires a proxy or VPN or a credential verification of some sort. Sci-hub requires the title of the paper. that's it.
    - thrdbndndn 5y ago
      You do need to enable VPN if you're off campus, yes, but that's it. It's super simple, you don't need to go though library's website or anything. I use Google Scholar search exclusively to find papers and you can directly click the link to open the paper (and then download). Constantly copying pasting title, URL or DOI into sci-hub is actually a hassle in this respect when you're just browsing around (I guess there must be extensions or userscripts to make it better, though).
failwhaleshark 5y ago
Publishing papers in journals isn't about scientific development, it's about publish-persish. The issue is the journals suck-in the papers and then walled-garden them like they were their original research when they are simply the publisher. Academia needs to throw away for-profit journal publishers and leave it with social co-ops and nonprofits.
- refurb 5y ago
  No. This is an example of “have your cake and eat it too”. Scientists want to publicize in a prestigious journal. Elsevier is prestigious. Elsevier charges a subscription fee. Other scientists can’t access it. So what scientists want is to be able to publish in the most prestigious journals and have free access to them. It’s like if I said “i want to be able to attend the most prestigious school but I don’t want to pay for it”.
  - tbabej 5y ago
    Except in this case, what makes a journal prestigious is not the subscription fees that the school has to pay, but the free work of editors and peer reviewers that perform selection from the submitted papers. There are free-access journals out there that charge virtually no fees, and still have excellent quality / reputation. One such example is Quantum: https://quantum-journal.org/ https://quantum-journal.org/
    - refurb 5y ago
      Then maybe scientists should stop donating their time? Or do they get something out of it? And it's certainly not the peer review that makes it prestigious since those are anonymous.
      - krastanov 5y ago
        Scientists are indeed moving slowly in that direction. It seems you are under the mistaken belief that they complain without doing anything about it. The fact that someone is vocally unhappy with a flawed status quo, does not mean they are not doing something about it. However, the issue with status quos is that it takes time to change them. Why are you ranting even after being shown examples of scientists doing exactly what you want them to do? Also, it is indeed the presence of very selective peer review that is a big part of "prestige". This is why free community driven open access journals are slowly overtaking the old journals. The price of a journal publication does not correlate much with the prestige. There are even examples of reverse correlation.
easytiger 5y ago
> Britain Not blocked for me at the the original domain
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  It used to be, but recently I've been able to view Sci Hub again.
enriquto 5y ago
> I'm deeply ashamed that my country would block sci-hub given that the current system is preventing scientific development. Are you in France? In that case you'll find that french academic librarians are extremely open to this stuff. I have participated in some proposals to cancel all elsevier+other library subscriptions and give all that money directly to SciHub, and the librarians were always very receptive to the idea. Unfortunately, this sort of initiative inevitably gets stuck in the upper echelons of some administrative procedure and never materializes. I guess predatory editors have a deeply entrenched influence within the academic institutions, otherwise I don't understand how that happens...
- easton 5y ago
  It probably eventually reaches the ears of someone who's heard of the concept of a lawsuit, and is deeply afraid of Elsevier making an example of a school by suing it into the stone-age, something they desperately want to do to scare every other school away from Sci-Hub.
mrleinad 5y ago
Libgen seems to be blocked in at least some parts of the US as well. I tried to access it while reading this thread, and couldn't. Then I remembered I had activated my VPN and I was tunnelling through the US.
- serf 5y ago
  > Libgen seems to be blocked in at least some parts of the US as well. maybe an ISP or VPN service thing? I had no problem in so-cal. I tried tunnels in NorCal/Oregon/Washington, no problems there either.

amelius 5y ago

Scientists should put Scihub in the acknowledgements section of their papers. As in "this research would not have been possible without Scihub".

failwhaleshark 5y ago
That is a genius hack. ("Genius" might be redundant.)
- kergonath 5y ago
  That is a huge problem if you acknowledge using an illegal platform in your professional work, including for your co-authors. Almost the opposite of genius, actually.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Ah, but Sci-Hub isn't illegal. There's nothing wrong with visiting the Sci-Hub home page, nor with using it as a convenient way to access open-access papers.
    - kergonath 5y ago
      Right* (depending on jurisdiction, ymmv). Getting from it articles that you cannot have otherwise is (except for the vanishingly few articles in the public domain, which are not really likely to be found on Sci-Hub anyway. I tried). Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. It is also against the policy of all the institutions I know, so could be grounds for termination. And again, this could apply to your co-authors as well. I am really not endorsing the subscription model, but putting something like that in your articles' acknowledgments really is not smart.
      - amelius 5y ago
        > Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. Not really. It could also mean: Scihub offers an efficient way to explore scientific articles, and without it, I (the scientist) wouldn't have bothered with all the different paywalls to even check if papers were worth reading. And as such, I would not have reached the same results.
        kergonath 5y ago
        It does not make the work possible, though. Just more convenient.
        amelius 5y ago
        No because a scientist can only deal with so much bureaucracy. After a certain limit, they will go into "I will invent it myself" mode. And here is a different argument. Scientists often have brilliant moments while e.g. showering. So they could have written: "this work would not have been possible without showers". The statement itself does not imply anything about whether they paid for the water or not. Or even if they took a shower. Perhaps the thought of a shower triggered the eureka moment.
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        > Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. Isn’t that exactly the point? How is it not hindering scientific progress if you do not have access to research that you don’t pay for. It’s not like the journals themselves fund the research, they’re just getting a free ride.
        amelius 5y ago
        > if you do not have access to research that you don’t pay for. The situation is worse as most of the research is already paid for by tax money.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    How so? Might not want to mention it in the same footnote as the grant number.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    That reminds me of a phrase I've heard in relation to file sharing and such: "if everyone runs the red light together, there is nothing to be afraid of".
    - kergonath 5y ago
      Doing it and claiming to have done it in a professional setting are quite different though. I am perfectly willing to believe that a lot of researchers use Sci-Hub (though from my experience they tend to use Researchgate more); I am certain that the number of people who would shout about doing it on the rooftops is nowhere near even a small minority.
      - enriquto 5y ago
        What you say does not correspond to my personal experience. As a single data point, in my research group all twelve phd students and five postdocs use SciHub regularly. Some of the faculty don't know it even exists, others do.
    - kzrdude 5y ago
      That metaphor backfirews pretty hard IMO, is that intentional?
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        How so? Everyone running a light together is the expected behavior if you change the color of the light. In other words, it describes nothing that isn't occurring constantly everywhere. Where does the metaphor backfire?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        mb7733 5y ago
        The metaphor backfires because if everyone runs red lights they will collide with one another, as well as with those going through green lights.
  - breck 5y ago
    Courageous, I would say. More important than genius.
    - kergonath 5y ago
      Yes, that would fit better.
    - amelius 5y ago
      If you don't have the courage, you can also do it indirectly: simply reference a paper that states that it would not be possible without Scihub. Then, your paper would not be possible without Scihub either :)
  - jfoutz 5y ago
    I had a snarky remark about Galileo and Copernicus, but it’s probably not relevant.
breck 5y ago
I did this! I encourage everyone to do it! Include the Sci hub link with the DOI.
thrdbndndn 5y ago
Interestingly, when I was still in university, I never used Sci-hub at all. I can download almost any paper using school's network (or VPN) since the library have subscriptions for basically all the major publishers. I only started to use it occasionally once I've graduated (but I didn't really do any formal research any more.)
- VortexDream 5y ago
  Interestingly, every student I know uses sci-hub.
  - chakkepolja 5y ago
    Interestingly it's almost necessary in third world.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  perhaps you're aware of this but sci-hub solves a second problem in addition to simply access - ease of use. Using a library's system requires a proxy or VPN or a credential verification of some sort. Sci-hub requires the title of the paper. that's it.
  - thrdbndndn 5y ago
    You do need to enable VPN if you're off campus, yes, but that's it. It's super simple, you don't need to go though library's website or anything. I use Google Scholar search exclusively to find papers and you can directly click the link to open the paper (and then download). Constantly copying pasting title, URL or DOI into sci-hub is actually a hassle in this respect when you're just browsing around (I guess there must be extensions or userscripts to make it better, though).

failwhaleshark 5y ago

Publishing papers in journals isn't about scientific development, it's about publish-persish. The issue is the journals suck-in the papers and then walled-garden them like they were their original research when they are simply the publisher. Academia needs to throw away for-profit journal publishers and leave it with social co-ops and nonprofits.

refurb 5y ago
No. This is an example of “have your cake and eat it too”. Scientists want to publicize in a prestigious journal. Elsevier is prestigious. Elsevier charges a subscription fee. Other scientists can’t access it. So what scientists want is to be able to publish in the most prestigious journals and have free access to them. It’s like if I said “i want to be able to attend the most prestigious school but I don’t want to pay for it”.
- tbabej 5y ago
  Except in this case, what makes a journal prestigious is not the subscription fees that the school has to pay, but the free work of editors and peer reviewers that perform selection from the submitted papers. There are free-access journals out there that charge virtually no fees, and still have excellent quality / reputation. One such example is Quantum: https://quantum-journal.org/ https://quantum-journal.org/
  - refurb 5y ago
    Then maybe scientists should stop donating their time? Or do they get something out of it? And it's certainly not the peer review that makes it prestigious since those are anonymous.
    - krastanov 5y ago
      Scientists are indeed moving slowly in that direction. It seems you are under the mistaken belief that they complain without doing anything about it. The fact that someone is vocally unhappy with a flawed status quo, does not mean they are not doing something about it. However, the issue with status quos is that it takes time to change them. Why are you ranting even after being shown examples of scientists doing exactly what you want them to do? Also, it is indeed the presence of very selective peer review that is a big part of "prestige". This is why free community driven open access journals are slowly overtaking the old journals. The price of a journal publication does not correlate much with the prestige. There are even examples of reverse correlation.

easytiger 5y ago

> Britain Not blocked for me at the the original domain

throwaway3699 5y ago
It used to be, but recently I've been able to view Sci Hub again.

enriquto 5y ago

> I'm deeply ashamed that my country would block sci-hub given that the current system is preventing scientific development. Are you in France? In that case you'll find that french academic librarians are extremely open to this stuff. I have participated in some proposals to cancel all elsevier+other library subscriptions and give all that money directly to SciHub, and the librarians were always very receptive to the idea. Unfortunately, this sort of initiative inevitably gets stuck in the upper echelons of some administrative procedure and never materializes. I guess predatory editors have a deeply entrenched influence within the academic institutions, otherwise I don't understand how that happens...

easton 5y ago
It probably eventually reaches the ears of someone who's heard of the concept of a lawsuit, and is deeply afraid of Elsevier making an example of a school by suing it into the stone-age, something they desperately want to do to scare every other school away from Sci-Hub.

mrleinad 5y ago

Libgen seems to be blocked in at least some parts of the US as well. I tried to access it while reading this thread, and couldn't. Then I remembered I had activated my VPN and I was tunnelling through the US.

serf 5y ago
> Libgen seems to be blocked in at least some parts of the US as well. maybe an ISP or VPN service thing? I had no problem in so-cal. I tried tunnels in NorCal/Oregon/Washington, no problems there either.