Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Despite two lost legal battles in the US, domain name seizures, and millions of dollars in damage claims, Sci-Hub continues to offer unauthorized access to academic papers. The site's founder says that she would rather operate legally, but copyright gets in the way. Sci-Hub is not the problem she argues, it's a solution, something many academics appear to agree with.
Sci-Hub has often been referred to as "The Pirate Bay of Science," but that description really sells the site short.
While both sites are helping the public to access copyrighted content without permission, Sci-Hub has also become a crucial tool that arguably helps the progress of science.
The site allows researchers to bypass expensive paywalls so they can read articles written by their fellow colleagues. The information in these 'pirated' articles is then used to provide the foundation for future research.
What the site does is illegal, according to the law, but Sci-Hub is praised by thousands of researchers and academics around the world. In particular, those who don't have direct access to the expensive journals but aspire to excel in their academic field.
Source: https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-proves-that-piracy-can-be-dangerously-useful-180804/
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @01:25PM (6 children)
The best type of scientific paper is the "literature review" which is the science equivalent of what middle schoolers call a "book report." A literature review contains no original research whatsoever, but it fulfills the requirement of attracting sweet sweet attention toward the author. Scientists are retards who have the maturity of a middle schooler screaming, "Look at me! I got my name in print!!"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @01:43PM (4 children)
A literature review also summarizes the current state of the literature on a particular topic. So rather than a thousand scientists each grinding through reading five hundred papers each, one (or a few) scientists prepare an article which summarizes those five hundred articles.
Or, put another way, you don't know much, do you?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @01:45PM
Literature reviews are a valuable tool for the lazy aka people with better things to do with their time than run down every last detail of every claim.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @01:55PM (2 children)
Found the butthurt academic. Let me tell you what I know of your kind, professor. I have worked in academia alongside you willfully ignorant types. I have seen the high flyers who refuse to do any of their own research, who instead literally wallpaper their office doors with all the literature review papers to their names. Their unoriginal papers earn them their tenure because quantity is all that matters. The rest of us ordinary folk do actual innovative work that requires practical knowledge and skill while you ivory tower eggheads perpetuate your unearned existence by regurgitating each other's excrement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:14PM (1 child)
Were you so crotchety before you became a post-doc?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @08:49PM
Um, the AC reads more like a failed Bachelor's candidate. Hell hath no idiot like a scholar who fails.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 14 2018, @01:48PM
Lmao, did someone own you in an online debate with a metaanalysis that showed you were full of shit about something?
Kinda want to keep this post on my dining room table so I have an unlimited supply of salt at hand.