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It'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 a

It'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 ago
They 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 ago
  It 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.
Santosh83 5y ago
There is no profit in it. Of course someone like Gates or Bezos could support a SciHub hundreds of years into the future, but they will avoid the inevitable controversy that will come attached. Rich people will play it safe. The poor can't afford the pennies. So ultimately it falls on to a few middle-class activists and concerned people all over the world. Ethically SciHub (or the idea behind it) is on much firmer ground than say PirateBay, but investors want no controversy, unless it is religious or political. I bet a "SciHub" devoted to political or religious articles will find backers despite being more controversial. People can be worked into passion for lots of things but not science and abstract philosophical ideas. That is largely why the FSF continues to barely cling to life.
- rsfern 5y ago
  > There is no profit in it I don’t know that I’m 100% convinced by this. Elsevier makes like 40% profit margins, and their primary contribution to researchers is prestige lock-in, basically. Scientific publishing is in many ways stuck in the previous century. There are plenty of interesting opportunities to build technology to make that entire ecosystem more awesome, especially as funding agencies increasingly require open access publication. Maybe there’s still not enough to build a stable company, but I took your reaction as a bit fatalistic
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> 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. I feel the same way... It's always some new surveillance capitalism nightmare, endless advertising for garbage nobody really needs, addictive games with the win button hooked up to the player's credit card. And whenever someone makes something truly world-changing like Sci-Hub all these people start coming after them because they're hurting their "interests". Who cares about their interests?

namdnay 5y ago

They 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 ago
It 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.

Santosh83 5y ago

There is no profit in it. Of course someone like Gates or Bezos could support a SciHub hundreds of years into the future, but they will avoid the inevitable controversy that will come attached. Rich people will play it safe. The poor can't afford the pennies. So ultimately it falls on to a few middle-class activists and concerned people all over the world. Ethically SciHub (or the idea behind it) is on much firmer ground than say PirateBay, but investors want no controversy, unless it is religious or political. I bet a "SciHub" devoted to political or religious articles will find backers despite being more controversial. People can be worked into passion for lots of things but not science and abstract philosophical ideas. That is largely why the FSF continues to barely cling to life.

rsfern 5y ago
> There is no profit in it I don’t know that I’m 100% convinced by this. Elsevier makes like 40% profit margins, and their primary contribution to researchers is prestige lock-in, basically. Scientific publishing is in many ways stuck in the previous century. There are plenty of interesting opportunities to build technology to make that entire ecosystem more awesome, especially as funding agencies increasingly require open access publication. Maybe there’s still not enough to build a stable company, but I took your reaction as a bit fatalistic

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> 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. I feel the same way... It's always some new surveillance capitalism nightmare, endless advertising for garbage nobody really needs, addictive games with the win button hooked up to the player's credit card. And whenever someone makes something truly world-changing like Sci-Hub all these people start coming after them because they're hurting their "interests". Who cares about their interests?