9 ms·

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia and the industry, I can only support Sci-Hub. Publishing as it works currently is an incredibly time consu

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia and the industry, I can only support Sci-Hub. Publishing as it works currently is an incredibly time consuming and expensive process funneling tremendous amounts of tax money into the pocḱets of publishers. To some extent the whole situation reminds me of the video and music content piracy era in the early 2000s. I hope there will be an equivalent of Apple Music/Spotify/Netflix for scientific papers in the near future.

Tepix 5y ago
These papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally There is a legitimate argument in the value added of curating research into journals. The publishers don’t do this. But simply eliminating that curation mode is unlikely to be feasible.
  - Tepix 5y ago
    Sure, I'm not saying these journals should be abolished, i merely want the papers to be available for free. You might still want to browse the journal to see what is hot right now.
- rjmunro 5y ago
  I hear they generally are "freely" available, just email the authors and ask.
  - subroutine 5y ago
    Having to wait for an author to email you a copy isn't a viable solution. Even getting authors to post a free copy, which is NIH mandate is often overlooked... https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm
    - Someone 5y ago
      That’s not something you can blame the publishers for.
      - subroutine 5y ago
        Not saying it is.
  - BelenusMordred 5y ago
    You're not wrong but that system only works on a very small scale. Do you really think the authors would be amenable to answering 10000 emails with the exact same request?
    - pmyteh 5y ago
      Fortunately(?) most of us will never be in a position where even 10 people ask to do that...
    - ebiester 5y ago
      In general, an averagely successful paper in most disciplines will get 200-250 readers. It’s only when there is outsized media attention that there is any issue. And luckily, for those cases today, sci-hub is available.
      - worik 5y ago
        A lot more readers than that, surely? In most disciplines there are a lot of, er, disciples. What is the definition of "moderately successful?" Perhaps you mean citations?
        pmyteh 5y ago
        The modal number of citations for an academic paper is ~0. 200 citations is a very successful paper in any discipline.
  - omega3 5y ago
    Out of my small sample of three, one author sent me a journal, one ignored the request and another told me to pay him for it.
  - jasode 5y ago
    >I hear they generally are "freely" available, just email the authors and ask. I didn't downvote you but the way contracts work, the researchers are not allowed to share the final published article that was professionally edited and typeset by the journal. What they can legally share are the preprints and manuscripts.[1] Yes, some researchers may ignore the contract they signed (wink wink) and share the final published pdf. IME whenever I asked for a paper, I got the preprint -- which means the author honored their publishing contract. The preprint is fine in most cases because it will have the main idea of the research. However, it's often missing the pretty graphs and illustrations that the journal adds. [1] https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing
- Someone 5y ago
  Authors are to blame, too. They can put their publications on arXiv. https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing: “Authors can share their preprint anywhere at any time. If accepted for publication, we encourage authors to link from the preprint to their formal publication via its Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Millions of researchers have access to the formal publications on ScienceDirect, and so links will help your users to find, access, cite, and use the best available version. Authors can update their preprints on arXiv or RePEc with their accepted manuscript.” there still is an issue with older articles that authors don’t have PDFs of, or whose authors aren’t in the field anymore (or even died). That problem will stay, but _if_ authors start putting their publications on arXiv, their university server, etc. en masse, also will get smaller over time.
  - stared 5y ago
    Leading journals allow publishing preprints on arXiv only as there was considerable pressure. In the quantum physics community (where it was expected to post results on arXiv), a journal not allowing arXiv was not considered. So either their de facto allowed, or even started officially to do so. I don't remember the exact dates, but Nature (who had been hesitant for a long time) gave in as well. They resisted a long time as they were (and are) considered a badge of honor.
- majormajor 5y ago
  > These papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally. I strongly disagree with this. Labor has value, and we shouldn't let capital alone dictate ownership. The people who do the research are more important than the bureaucrats who signed the checks.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    The people doing the research don't get paid for publications. At all. Ever. It's just part of their job.
j-pb 5y ago
I hope that there will never be a "legal-streaming" equivalent. These papers have been paid for already, through the salary of the people that wrote and peer reviewed them. There is a theft happening, but it's not the way commonly portrayed. It's the publishers stealing from the scientific community, universities and tax payers, and the politicians and bureaucrats are complicit. The only reason why people publish with these journals is so that they can get funding for their projects, because the people in charge of distributing these funds are using "most prestigious papers" as the only metric and often have a revolving door relationship with publishers. The university library of my alma mater used to pay 15 Million Euros a year for online licenses. That is three large multi-institutional EU projects worth of money, equivalent to 200 PhD student positions. We need to build a better research system, that cuts out the leaches, and distributes money to researchers more fairly. And as a bonus we'd also get rid of the paper mills.
- indigochill 5y ago
  I'm of a separatist mindset in situations like these where the entire ecosystem has turned corrupt. It can't be legislated because legislators are part of the problem as you say. So you need an independent organization that can fund and provide the resources needed by researchers, and which disregards publication in the corrupt publications. You also need a publication that can support free access. Something like a hackerspace on steroids, perhaps. In theory, if you can get enough momentum behind this sort of project, then libraries can turn that license money towards this project and accelerate the research that can be done, where rather than padding publisher's pockets the fees are going directly towards supporting research.
- 08-15 5y ago
  > It's the publishers stealing from the scientific community, universities and tax payers, and the politicians and bureaucrats are complicit. Not really. The publishers provide hardly any value, definitely not commensurate with their prices. So why don't the scientists simply walk away? Why not publish on the internet, why not simply upload to arxiv.org? It's because funding through quasi government agencies (NSF, NIH, etc.) is tied to your publication record, which is evaluated in "impact points", and those are actually tied not to your own publications, but to the journals they appear in. So your funding as a scientist depends on you publishing in these expensive journals. It's actually the politicians and bureaucrats stealing from the tax payers, funneling the money to the publishers, all the while claiming they are funding science. As a scientist, you have little leverage in this fouled up system, but it is your civic duty to use it: Please refuse to review papers for commercial journals without appropriate payment. You owe it to your fellow scientists to not subsidize predatory business models.
uniqueid 5y ago
Sci-Hub is probably the best thing on the internet, but the fact that some rando had to create it doesn't speak well for the state of our world. If humanity weren't dysfunctional, academic institutions would have beaten Elbakyan to the punch back in the 1990s.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Sci-Hub is not especially legal so an actual institution isn't really able to create it instead.
  - uniqueid 5y ago
    I expressed myself poorly. The fact that aspects of Sci-Hub are illegal is the reason I wrote the comment. In a perfect world, academic institutions would have combined their efforts to provide a viable equivalent to Sci-Hub legally. Whether that means buying out publishers, or making do with a small selection of existing papers and focusing on future publications, I don't know.
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    That "not being legal" is a corruption, a continued acceptance of lobby dollar bribes to maintain the situation. Or the lawmakers are so capitalistically corrupted they do not see the problem and think paying multiple times for publicly funded research's information is acceptable.
  - stared 5y ago
    Atheism was illegal. Homosexual acts were illegal. Democrasy was illegal. Studying and voting for women was illegal. (And actually all of these are in some places in the world.) Very often to progress, as a civilization, we need to change what is legal and what is not.
kleiba 5y ago
Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia (but not in the industry), I can not support Sci-Hub. I know it's an unpopular opinion but I think it's the wrong approach. As scientists, I think we should be held to especially high moral standards. And there are two questions one should be allowed to ask: 1. Is is right to publish research results funded by tax money behind a paywall? 2. Is it right to circumvent a paywall to access publicly funded research results? And to me, the answer to 2. is imply 'no'. I know that most people, especially here on HN, do not agree with that view. Perhaps they might think that a 'yes' would immediately follow from a 'no' to question 1. But I don't think it does, and I'm not even sure my answer to question 1 would be a 'no'. Perhaps one could think about another question first: should researchers turn to a professional publisher to get their research published, and I think at least some years ago there wasn't much else you could do. Now, of course, there are digital platforms such as arxiv but their acceptance also depends vastly on your field. In any event, such platforms can also be thought of as a publisher, anyway. The main service provided is organizational: publishers don't review the research contents (they're not qualified for that) but they organize external reviewers; publishers provide discoverability because they are a well-defined source known to the community. Are there alternatives to that type of work? Sure! But there is an added value in what a publisher does. So then in a follow-up question, we can ask whether a publisher should be compensated for their work. And to me, it is pretty clear that they should be. Of course, there are different ways this could be implemented but that decision is up to the one running the business, ie., the publisher. I can think of more customer-friendly ways than to make me pay for every single download of a paper. On the other hand, there are lots of other businesses where I don't like the way they make money - tough luck for me, I guess. Now, I think this last point is very important, especially before you go and hit that downvote button (unless you already have): I can think of better ways (for me!) how research publishing should be realized. But I don't think that from that it follows that I should be able to or even have the moral right to circumvent publisher paywalls. Perhaps it's wrong to charge for access to publicly funded research results but I don't think the second wrong of circumventing publisher paywalls makes that right. Oh, and here's a little subtlety I don't see discussed very often: if I do research funded by UK tax money and publish it, should that paper be freely available to Americans too, or only to UK tax payers?
- 5y ago
ineedasername 5y ago
I hope there will be an equivalent of Apple Music/Spotify/Netflix for scientific papers in the near future. There is: You can pay Elsevier for an unlimited access subscription to ScienceDirect journals. The only problem is that it costs about $1700 and you have to buy for a minimum of 3 people. [0] [0] https://www.ncbiotech.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/2018_ElsevierScienceDirect-NC%20Biotech%20Pricing_FINAL.pdf https://www.ncbiotech.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/2...

Tepix 5y ago

These papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally There is a legitimate argument in the value added of curating research into journals. The publishers don’t do this. But simply eliminating that curation mode is unlikely to be feasible.
- Tepix 5y ago
  Sure, I'm not saying these journals should be abolished, i merely want the papers to be available for free. You might still want to browse the journal to see what is hot right now.
rjmunro 5y ago
I hear they generally are "freely" available, just email the authors and ask.
- subroutine 5y ago
  Having to wait for an author to email you a copy isn't a viable solution. Even getting authors to post a free copy, which is NIH mandate is often overlooked... https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm
  - Someone 5y ago
    That’s not something you can blame the publishers for.
    - subroutine 5y ago
      Not saying it is.
- BelenusMordred 5y ago
  You're not wrong but that system only works on a very small scale. Do you really think the authors would be amenable to answering 10000 emails with the exact same request?
  - pmyteh 5y ago
    Fortunately(?) most of us will never be in a position where even 10 people ask to do that...
  - ebiester 5y ago
    In general, an averagely successful paper in most disciplines will get 200-250 readers. It’s only when there is outsized media attention that there is any issue. And luckily, for those cases today, sci-hub is available.
    - worik 5y ago
      A lot more readers than that, surely? In most disciplines there are a lot of, er, disciples. What is the definition of "moderately successful?" Perhaps you mean citations?
      - pmyteh 5y ago
        The modal number of citations for an academic paper is ~0. 200 citations is a very successful paper in any discipline.
- omega3 5y ago
  Out of my small sample of three, one author sent me a journal, one ignored the request and another told me to pay him for it.
- jasode 5y ago
  >I hear they generally are "freely" available, just email the authors and ask. I didn't downvote you but the way contracts work, the researchers are not allowed to share the final published article that was professionally edited and typeset by the journal. What they can legally share are the preprints and manuscripts.[1] Yes, some researchers may ignore the contract they signed (wink wink) and share the final published pdf. IME whenever I asked for a paper, I got the preprint -- which means the author honored their publishing contract. The preprint is fine in most cases because it will have the main idea of the research. However, it's often missing the pretty graphs and illustrations that the journal adds. [1] https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing
Someone 5y ago
Authors are to blame, too. They can put their publications on arXiv. https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing: “Authors can share their preprint anywhere at any time. If accepted for publication, we encourage authors to link from the preprint to their formal publication via its Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Millions of researchers have access to the formal publications on ScienceDirect, and so links will help your users to find, access, cite, and use the best available version. Authors can update their preprints on arXiv or RePEc with their accepted manuscript.” there still is an issue with older articles that authors don’t have PDFs of, or whose authors aren’t in the field anymore (or even died). That problem will stay, but _if_ authors start putting their publications on arXiv, their university server, etc. en masse, also will get smaller over time.
- stared 5y ago
  Leading journals allow publishing preprints on arXiv only as there was considerable pressure. In the quantum physics community (where it was expected to post results on arXiv), a journal not allowing arXiv was not considered. So either their de facto allowed, or even started officially to do so. I don't remember the exact dates, but Nature (who had been hesitant for a long time) gave in as well. They resisted a long time as they were (and are) considered a badge of honor.
majormajor 5y ago
> These papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally. I strongly disagree with this. Labor has value, and we shouldn't let capital alone dictate ownership. The people who do the research are more important than the bureaucrats who signed the checks.
- mcguire 5y ago
  The people doing the research don't get paid for publications. At all. Ever. It's just part of their job.

j-pb 5y ago

I hope that there will never be a "legal-streaming" equivalent. These papers have been paid for already, through the salary of the people that wrote and peer reviewed them. There is a theft happening, but it's not the way commonly portrayed. It's the publishers stealing from the scientific community, universities and tax payers, and the politicians and bureaucrats are complicit. The only reason why people publish with these journals is so that they can get funding for their projects, because the people in charge of distributing these funds are using "most prestigious papers" as the only metric and often have a revolving door relationship with publishers. The university library of my alma mater used to pay 15 Million Euros a year for online licenses. That is three large multi-institutional EU projects worth of money, equivalent to 200 PhD student positions. We need to build a better research system, that cuts out the leaches, and distributes money to researchers more fairly. And as a bonus we'd also get rid of the paper mills.

indigochill 5y ago
I'm of a separatist mindset in situations like these where the entire ecosystem has turned corrupt. It can't be legislated because legislators are part of the problem as you say. So you need an independent organization that can fund and provide the resources needed by researchers, and which disregards publication in the corrupt publications. You also need a publication that can support free access. Something like a hackerspace on steroids, perhaps. In theory, if you can get enough momentum behind this sort of project, then libraries can turn that license money towards this project and accelerate the research that can be done, where rather than padding publisher's pockets the fees are going directly towards supporting research.
08-15 5y ago
> It's the publishers stealing from the scientific community, universities and tax payers, and the politicians and bureaucrats are complicit. Not really. The publishers provide hardly any value, definitely not commensurate with their prices. So why don't the scientists simply walk away? Why not publish on the internet, why not simply upload to arxiv.org? It's because funding through quasi government agencies (NSF, NIH, etc.) is tied to your publication record, which is evaluated in "impact points", and those are actually tied not to your own publications, but to the journals they appear in. So your funding as a scientist depends on you publishing in these expensive journals. It's actually the politicians and bureaucrats stealing from the tax payers, funneling the money to the publishers, all the while claiming they are funding science. As a scientist, you have little leverage in this fouled up system, but it is your civic duty to use it: Please refuse to review papers for commercial journals without appropriate payment. You owe it to your fellow scientists to not subsidize predatory business models.

uniqueid 5y ago

Sci-Hub is probably the best thing on the internet, but the fact that some rando had to create it doesn't speak well for the state of our world. If humanity weren't dysfunctional, academic institutions would have beaten Elbakyan to the punch back in the 1990s.

Tenoke 5y ago
Sci-Hub is not especially legal so an actual institution isn't really able to create it instead.
- uniqueid 5y ago
  I expressed myself poorly. The fact that aspects of Sci-Hub are illegal is the reason I wrote the comment. In a perfect world, academic institutions would have combined their efforts to provide a viable equivalent to Sci-Hub legally. Whether that means buying out publishers, or making do with a small selection of existing papers and focusing on future publications, I don't know.
- bsenftner 5y ago
  That "not being legal" is a corruption, a continued acceptance of lobby dollar bribes to maintain the situation. Or the lawmakers are so capitalistically corrupted they do not see the problem and think paying multiple times for publicly funded research's information is acceptable.
- stared 5y ago
  Atheism was illegal. Homosexual acts were illegal. Democrasy was illegal. Studying and voting for women was illegal. (And actually all of these are in some places in the world.) Very often to progress, as a civilization, we need to change what is legal and what is not.

kleiba 5y ago

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia (but not in the industry), I can not support Sci-Hub. I know it's an unpopular opinion but I think it's the wrong approach. As scientists, I think we should be held to especially high moral standards. And there are two questions one should be allowed to ask: 1. Is is right to publish research results funded by tax money behind a paywall? 2. Is it right to circumvent a paywall to access publicly funded research results? And to me, the answer to 2. is imply 'no'. I know that most people, especially here on HN, do not agree with that view. Perhaps they might think that a 'yes' would immediately follow from a 'no' to question 1. But I don't think it does, and I'm not even sure my answer to question 1 would be a 'no'. Perhaps one could think about another question first: should researchers turn to a professional publisher to get their research published, and I think at least some years ago there wasn't much else you could do. Now, of course, there are digital platforms such as arxiv but their acceptance also depends vastly on your field. In any event, such platforms can also be thought of as a publisher, anyway. The main service provided is organizational: publishers don't review the research contents (they're not qualified for that) but they organize external reviewers; publishers provide discoverability because they are a well-defined source known to the community. Are there alternatives to that type of work? Sure! But there is an added value in what a publisher does. So then in a follow-up question, we can ask whether a publisher should be compensated for their work. And to me, it is pretty clear that they should be. Of course, there are different ways this could be implemented but that decision is up to the one running the business, ie., the publisher. I can think of more customer-friendly ways than to make me pay for every single download of a paper. On the other hand, there are lots of other businesses where I don't like the way they make money - tough luck for me, I guess. Now, I think this last point is very important, especially before you go and hit that downvote button (unless you already have): I can think of better ways (for me!) how research publishing should be realized. But I don't think that from that it follows that I should be able to or even have the moral right to circumvent publisher paywalls. Perhaps it's wrong to charge for access to publicly funded research results but I don't think the second wrong of circumventing publisher paywalls makes that right. Oh, and here's a little subtlety I don't see discussed very often: if I do research funded by UK tax money and publish it, should that paper be freely available to Americans too, or only to UK tax payers?

5y ago

ineedasername 5y ago

I hope there will be an equivalent of Apple Music/Spotify/Netflix for scientific papers in the near future. There is: You can pay Elsevier for an unlimited access subscription to ScienceDirect journals. The only problem is that it costs about $1700 and you have to buy for a minimum of 3 people. [0] [0] https://www.ncbiotech.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/2018_ElsevierScienceDirect-NC%20Biotech%20Pricing_FINAL.pdf https://www.ncbiotech.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/2...