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Today Sci-Hub is 10 years old. I'll publish 2M new articles to celebrate
- DominikPeters 5y agoContext: Sci-Hub stopped uploading new papers in December 2020, after being ordered to do so by an Indian court. There was (is?) some hope of winning the case which could make Sci-Hub legal in India. https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/mk46x4/scihub_v_elsevier_wiley_acs_can_scihub_be_shut/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/mk46x4/scihub_v_els... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26264378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26264378
- folli 5y agoIs there actually any update on the case?
- Stupulous 5y agoWikipedia says the restriction was only for a couple weeks: >In December 2020, Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Sci-Hub and Library Genesis in the Delhi High Court... >...The high court restricted the sites from uploading, publishing or making any article available until 6 January 2021. But it's very strange to me that that could go by unnoticed.
- jacobolus 5y agoCourts are slow. The court date kept getting pushed back (now scheduled in October) and so Sci-hub paused new papers for several months. But apparently Elbakyan’s lawyers have determined that the temporary restriction on uploading new materials has expired.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- b215826 5y agoSci-Hub and LibGen have contributed more to my PhD than my so-called advisers. So thank you Alexandra for your unselfish efforts to make science accessible to all!
- hirako2000 5y agoAnd it has contributed to the majority of the knowledge I've gained from its published documents than I could have ever afforded. Makes me realise I never donated. They have the pudic courtesy to never even prompt for support.
- logicchains 5y ago>They have the pudic courtesy to never even prompt for support. Thank you, I learned a new word today.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lcvw 5y agoI really hope sci-hub survives this. Sci-hub and libgen are like an entirely different internet, one allowing you to dive as deep as you wish into any technical subject. There’s really no comparison I have found anywhere for the depth of material available. People always point to Wikipedia, but all of that is surface level. If you to build something, research something, or just really delve into it, there’s no substitute for having access to all of the latest textbooks, manuals, and papers. I’ve never found any source paid or otherwise that comes even close.
- londons_explore 5y agoI really wish someone could build a better UI for this research internet. Hyperlinks for all references would be a good start. Finding some way to make some automatic glossary of definitions of technical terms would make scientific papers substantially more accessible too.
- elcritch 5y agoDOI URIs work great and sci-hub understands them. Figuring out the DOI from the citations section is a bit more annoying still. A meta glossary would be fantastic. 80% of learning a new field is figuring out the jargon.
- goodmachine 5y ago> A meta glossary would be fantastic. 80% of learning a new field is figuring out the jargon. True!
- IshKebab 5y agoYeah it's called Web of Science. It's very good but it's not free unfortunately. And it doesn't go as far as hyperlinking references in PDFs or defining terms. I agree those would be great, but unfortunately there's not much incentive for paper authors to do that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_Science
- dredmorbius 5y agohttps://nitter.eu/ringo_ring/status/1434356217208623106 https://nitter.eu/ringo_ring/status/1434356217208623106
- aaron695 5y agoWhat Aaron Swartz did in the 2010's was what we all talked about around that time. It was everything we read about as hackers in the 90's The Phrack stories for instance about missions to steal (liberate) hardware PABX's from offices. Swartz literally went into a library to break out info, fucking Gibson. Alexandra Elbakyan and crew beat that. And bent history. If you think history is a line, Sci-hub (Which is a little different to Libgen) changed that.
- btilly 5y agoIn https://twitter.com/ringo_ring/status/1414342378765307907 https://twitter.com/ringo_ring/status/1414342378765307907 she jokingly asks where her Nobel Peace Prize is. Given how often that prize is given out as a bully pulpit to advance a cause, and given the global debt that science owes to her, I think she really does deserve one.
- nivenkos 5y agoIt's become a prize of the political establishment though (why did Kissenger and Obama get one?) - there is no way they'd give out such a controversial one these days.
- londons_explore 5y agoStart nominating...
- vasco 5y agoShe needs to step it up by killing thousands of innocent people from drone strikes to increase her chances.
- foepys 5y agoOr start a war with her own citizens and use hunger as a weapon by destroying infrastructure, farming equipment and blocking foreign aid, creating a famine among millions.
- NmAmDa 5y agoEthiopian PM choice was really the most stupid thinf they did with the peace prize.
- vxNsr 5y agoOnce they started using it as a political tool to say “we support this persons policies”. I’m happy that they continue to have a near perfect record of terrible winners. It makes it clear if you win the Nobel Peace Prize you’re likely not as good as you thought.
- Santosh83 5y agoThere is no absolute guarantee that SciHub or any other site will always manage to survive the impressive array of forces against it. As far as I can see, the most robust fallback has to be some kind of distributed data store that can mirror humanity's vital information on the widest possible array of computer/storage systems, and which would literally take an apocalypse to wipe out. Depending on one brave person to fight what should be our common battles (and we do that everywhere, the heroes are always lonely at the top while their actions benefit all of us) is disappointing. Data has to be duplicated massively or it is always extremely vulnerable. DNA figured this out billions of years ago.
- andyxor 5y agoall Sci-hub articles are duplicated via torrents, you can help by seeding the torrents https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_scihub_and_open_science_we_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_... there is also some ongoing work moving to IPFS that could use help, see https://freeread.org/ipfs/ https://freeread.org/ipfs/ and https://github.com/sci-hub-p2p/sci-hub-p2p/ https://github.com/sci-hub-p2p/sci-hub-p2p/ , it seems to have IPFS support https://sci-hub-p2p.readthedocs.io/_en/ipfs.html https://sci-hub-p2p.readthedocs.io/_en/ipfs.html
- intunderflow 5y agoRemember that if Sci-Hub helps you and you can afford it, a donation to them would go a long way to helping keep them afloat.
- cblconfederate 5y agoIt's kind of whimsical to read the praise of sci-hub and fear about its future here. Tech people have access to pools of billions and billions of dollars that are casually being thrown on mindless minor addictions that offer nothing to humanity. Can't someone make an initiative or startup that disintermediates those very old publishers who are trolling science?
- namdnay 5y agoThey have access to poils of billions of dollars because they are expected to aim to return multiples of those billions. How would a startup reach unicorn valuation based on publishing scientific papers? By making people pay. So we’re back to square one No, for some problems private enterprise is not necessarily the best solution
- cblconfederate 5y agoIt would obviously not be for-profit. But it would benefit them indirectly. For investors who invest in biotech, they need to realize that open access is as important as open source is to software. Scientists have failed to overcome the collective action problem
- TeMPOraL 5y ago> For investors who invest in biotech, they need to realize that open access is as important as open source is to software. Open Source is important to software companies only because it lets them build new products cheaply. Most companies don't care, unless they can use it for cheap publicity, or to hurt their competition by making an open-source version of their proprietary product. OSS definitely did shift the landscape - it almost killed desktop software! There's a reason why technology business love SaaS business model - it's not just the recurring revenue, it's also because it's immune from being killed by open source. You can create a free alternative to any software running on end user's machine, but you can't do that to proprietary code running on servers the service provider owns. Open access doesn't bring such immediate, direct benefits to research companies - so investors will be less keen to sponsor it. There's just no business model here.
- jacquesm 5y agoI just noticed something funny: The library of Alexandria was accidentally burned in 48 BC by Julius Ceasar. Here we are in 2021, we now have Alexandra's library, which rivals the first in size and scope, and there are at least as many forces trying to burn it. But fortunately this one is digital and you too can have a copy in your hallway closet for the price of some harddrives and bandwidth. Go make a backup, if you can afford it, and let's make sure that this one sticks around.
- mmiliauskas 5y agoI always wondered if for knowledge as for ecosystems fire is an important part. Basically, is there a point where the amount of knowledge is so wast that it becomes impossible to reach the edge and come up with something novel.
- google234123 5y agoNah, ideas becomes simplified and refined overtime. E.g. quantum mechanics was the bleeding edge of physics at one time and now it’s taught to undergraduates. Some university even have classes in string theory for undergrads (not that this is a good idea).
- AmericanChopper 5y agoI personally see it as an essential element of preserving democracy going forward. As science becomes a more influential component in public policy (it has arguably become the most influential component over the past 18 months), you end up with a governance style of “the law is whatever science says it should be”. If that science is not available for public scrutiny, then you have the added dynamic of “…and the science is whatever we say it is”.
- rsfern 5y agoI think open and transparent science is really important if we want to adopt evidence based policies in a democratic society. However, when it comes to law I don’t think there really is a “what science says it should be”. We can use the scientific method and evidence based reasoning to assess the likely outcome of any law or policy change, but figuring out what outcomes were as society are willing to accept given all the reasons trade offs is not a scientific question. Unfortunately I’m not sure just having open and transparent science will be enough when so many seem uninterested in having a good faith conversation about the evidence and its implications
- nullifidian 5y agoYes, let's publicize it more so it would die faster. /s
- sixtyfourbits 5y agoTorrent seeding effort: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_scihub_and_open_science_we_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_... All papers on sci-hub are available as torrents from library genesis. The full collection contains 85 million articles (before this announcement), and is about 80TB. If anything ever happens to sci-hub or library genesis, there's enough people out there with backups that a replacement can be set up fairly quickly, albeit without the proxy functionality to obtain new papers. However, the more the merrier, so if you've got some spare hardware and bandwidth to share, I'd encourage you to contribute to the seeding effort if you're able. At current market prices of ~$30/TB, it costs ~$2400 to have a copy of the full collection sitting on your desk.
- animex 5y agoIs there any legal risk to users in North America that do this? Is this copyrighted material?
- sixtyfourbits 5y agoProbably; use a VPN. Yes they're copyrighted - albeit not by the authors who actually wrote them, but by the publishers who require copyright assignment for the privilege of having your work hosted on their website.
- blueblisters 5y agoSo when academics casually share papers with their collaborators, are they technically exposing themselves to lawsuits? Or is being part of a research organization/university with subscriptions to these services enough to mitigate that risk?
- goodcanadian 5y agoThat is an interesting question without a good answer. As I understand it (I am far from being an expert), there are sometimes specific exemptions to allow that sharing. However, generally speaking, I think it is a gray area. The journals would surely be shooting themselves in the foot, though, if they tried to sue their contributors. Academics would bring down hell on any journal that tried that. Moreover, it is not clear to me that they would win as it seems to be a customary practice even if it is not an explicitly allowed one. Finally, sharing a single paper might get research or academic exemptions as you aren't copying the whole journal issue. I doubt any publisher wants to go down that road. They are probably better off with the law remaining vague.
- anyfactor 5y agoSciHub is the greatest achievement in academia, research or anything that is knowledge. The truest form of accessibility of knowledge. In those 10 years, all the students you see or saw in your campus coming from second or third world countries, most of them have used scihub to research and publish papers that enabled them to pursuit higher studies. Taking this right (not a privilege) away will mean the second burning of Alexandria. If anyone really cared about education or knowledge in general they will advocate scibub and libgen to survive.
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoI find it fascinating that SciHub seems to be highlighting two large issues. - Globalisation and the rule of law. Mostly that's a good thing. But SciHub would unlikely survive if Russia was unable to give US courts the middle finger regularly over the last decade. I am not convinced that the benefits of totalitarian regime outweighs the downsides but it is a thing - copyright law is not patent law, science is not patents So patents do seem to provide a way for inventors to protect a revenue stream. But the model of science is not one person or org does all the research and then exploits it for profit. So patents don't really seem to support science. And copyright has nothing to do with either. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub Edit: one way of looking at it is that Science has socialism built in. Patents are a means of encouraging innovation by arranging that revenue flows back to the innovator, as long as the whole market obeys the patent law and licensing conditions. But apart from "bad" actors, the amount of licensing is vast and probably impossible to track back (you would need point of sale, bill of materials, supply chain data etc) Science has a simpler answer - publish the innovation openly and assume that the growth in wealth will feed back into general wealth growth. Which is kinda looking like "everyone shares". So it suggests a singularity style step function - when / if something like UBI works, science will have a massive boost as the feedback loop is not mediated through university grants etc.
- ncphil 5y agoThe main flaw in both patent and copyright law is that the terms of protection are entirely too long. It's now over a century for some corporate owned copyrights. That directly contradicts the goal of copyright: to advance science and the arts by encouraging the building of a commons. The terms of exclusivity were meant as incentives to that end, not personal or institutional rewards. Lately I've been thinking that those terms should have been gradually shortened as the pace of change and speed of communications (including opportunities for sales) increased. At this point IP law is actively hindering the advance of science and art. Projects like Sci-Hub are restoring sanity to a system that lawmakers have for various reasons sold out to the barbarians. Two years, non-renewable, for any invention or work that had absolutely no public funding. Anything with direct public funding goes immediately into the public domain.
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- makapuf 5y agoTrue question: is there a value that elsevier&co are providing? Proofreading or Selecting the articles, by example? If so, even if their price reflect more their de facto monopoly than this value, if we want to replace them we need to also find a way to replace it. Could we outcompete them?
- azalemeth 5y agoNominally, publishers proof read, copyedit, format and publicise my articles after they've been through peer review. Occasionally the editors -- inevitably based in Chennai -- spot a typo that the reviewers missed. Sometimes they cock things up massively, especially equations -- I had a big argument about a tickz-based scheme once. The formatting is done automatically and for me as a latex author I really think we could do that very easily. Colleagues who use word see the text transfer to something better as a major value add. The publicity the journal adds is a strong function of how "good" it is. Science and Nature effectively exist because they are Science and Nature.
- avnigo 5y agoDo journals coordinate the peer review, or does that happen prior to the submission to the journal? I was under the impression it's journals that get the peer review process going.
- azalemeth 5y agoYes, they do. And editors -- academics, sometimes paid, usually not -- are the ones who do it. There's a lot of "old boy's network" involved there too, as although each author "suggests" a referee usually the editors submit it to someone not suggested by the authors as well. I didn't include that in the list because it's not really a skill done by the journal, more, as they would say, facilitated by it. Frankly, they profit from: academics writing articles (funded by someone else); academics editing a journal deciding who should review articles (usually, but not always, for free); academics reviewing articles (always for free); and academics citing articles in subsequent ones. The whole system is a house of cards, and a relatively immutable one.
- stereoradonc 5y agohttps://radoncnotes.com/scihub-its-back/ https://radoncnotes.com/scihub-its-back/ Here's a quick recap and reaction on the blog.
- type0 5y agoIf authors kept their copyrights and submitted the articles to the likes of sci-hub themselves, they would enjoy higher citations and virtually everyone would do this and all this would be legal. But now journals are keeping uncountable number of articles as hostage in order to parasitize on publicly funded institutions and universities. Higher education places in Africa and other poor parts of the world that don't have resources are unable to lawfully access the papers, it's not just morally wrong, the current system is throttling the progress of science and harms the research in important subjects.
- asimpletune 5y agoShe should get the Nobel peace prize some day
- zapataband1 5y agoAaron Schwartz would be so proud and so am I. You are a hero!
- stavros 5y agoI love Sci-Hub, even though I never use it. I just really like what it's doing for science. However, the law has failed us. It's very clear that Sci-Hub is overwhelmingly a Good Thing, yet governments want to tear it down because it's threatening companies' revenue streams too much. Given how important it is, and how at risk it is, I think it's very important to find a technological solution to keep it up. We have the technology to distribute the papers (torrents) as well as a search index. I really hope that either Alexandra starts using these technologies more, or the technologies mature enough to be usable. Then Sci-Hub would be unkillable.
- lifeplusplus 5y agoYou can bet there is hidden effort being led by multiple departments and multiple govts to take down this shining beacon of knowledge. Something that embodies what the best of internet has to offer.
- lifeplusplus 5y agoTheoretically speaking what would it take to assure that sci-hub survives. From what I understand it'd be like moving mountains to make it legal in US.