The New York Times has an opinion piece about Open Access publishing. It starts with the case of Alexandra Elbakyan a guerilla open access activist who is on the lam from the US government acting on behalf of the copyright cartel. Pricing and other restrictions put many journals out of reach of all but the few researchers at major, well-funded universities in developed nations. The large publishing companies usually have profit margins over 30% and subscription prices have been rising twice as fast as the price of health care, which itself is priced insanely, over the past two decades, so there appears to be a real scandal there. Several options are available including pre-print repositories and various open access journals. The latter require the author to pay up front for publishing. However, the real onus lies on the communities' leaders, like heads of institutions and presidents of universities, who are in a position to change which journals are perceived as high-impact.
Edit: Alexandra Elbakyan founded Sci-Hub in 2011.
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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Two years ago, academic publisher Elsevier filed a complaint against Sci-Hub, Libgen and several related "pirate" sites.
The publisher accused the websites of making academic papers widely available to the public, without permission.
While Sci-Hub and Libgen are nothing like the average pirate site, they are just as illegal according to Elsevier's legal team, which swiftly obtained a preliminary injunction from a New York District Court.
The injunction ordered Sci-Hub's founder Alexandra Elbakyan, who is the only named defendant, to quit offering access to any Elsevier content. This didn't happen, however.
Sci-Hub and the other websites lost control over several domain names, but were quick to bounce back. They remain operational today and have no intention of shutting down, despite pressure from the Court.
This prompted Elsevier to request a default judgment and a permanent injunction against the Sci-Hub and Libgen defendants. In a motion filed this week, Elsevier's legal team describes the sites as pirate havens.
Source: https://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-wants-15-million-piracy-damages-from-sci-hub-and-libgen-170518/
Previously:
The Research Pirates of the Dark Web
New York Times Opinion Piece on Open Access Publishing
A Spiritual Successor to Aaron Swartz is Angering Publishers All Over Again
In the ongoing open access debate, which oldmedia publishers have been able to drag out for decades, oldmedia publishers have repeatedly made the assertion that articles in their very expensive journals are greatly improved during the publication process. Glyn Moody, writing at Techdirt, discusses the lack of value added by expensive, subscription-only journals over the original, freely-available pre-prints of the very same papers, thus negating the claims from the oldmedia publishers.
Such caveats aside, this is an important result that has not received the attention it deserves. It provides hard evidence of something that many have long felt: that academic publishers add almost nothing during the process of disseminating research in their high-profile products. The implications are that libraries should not be paying for expensive subscriptions to academic journals, but simply providing access to the equivalent preprints, which offer almost identical texts free of charge, and that researchers should concentrate on preprints, and forget about journals. Of course, that means that academic institutions must do the same when it comes to evaluating the publications of scholars applying for posts.
Scientific method requires that hypotheses be testable, and that means publishing anything necessary for a third party to reproduce an experiment. So some might even say that if your research ends up behind a paywall, then what you are doing is not even science in the formal sense of the concept.
Previously on SN :
New York Times Opinion Piece on Open Access Publishing (2016)
India's Ministry of Science & Technology Join Open-Access Push
(2015)
Open Access Papers Read and Cited More (2014)
(Score: 1) by devlux on Monday March 14 2016, @11:57PM
Information wants to be free.
If only there was a "pirate bay" for this stuff.
Perhaps something like this???
https://sci-hub.io/ [sci-hub.io]
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:21AM
Alexandra Elbakyan is the creator of Sci-Hub...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by devlux on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:25AM
Thank you. I did not know that.
I want to mod you up, I have the karma to do it, but I don't see the option anywhere.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:26AM
Don't worry about it. I've put that fact in the summary.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:34AM
Mind you, RTFA is a no-no if you want to avoid the risk of posting something relevant.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday March 15 2016, @11:11PM
NYT is paywalled. I wouldn't give those bums a penny.
But just from the summary the stupid shines out. Just take their facts at face value and it makes no sense. The journals make 30% profit. Oh the horror, they almost make Apple level profit margins! Burn them at the stake!
Now lets really get to the heart of it. Assume they cut their prices in half, operating as a non-profit AND cutting costs without impacting quality. Like I said, ASSUME it for purposes of debate. Raise your hand if you think more than 1% of the people currently going on all butthurt about this would suddenly say "Oh, that is now a reasonable price." and shut up. Now raise your hand if you think these thieves would continue trying to convince themselves they are the good guys until the price was zero. Ok, so shut up about the prices because that distraction isn't fooling anyone.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday March 16 2016, @06:39AM
It's not about getting "stuff for free" or not. It's about how researchers can communicate with each other. Every year the publishers have been more of an impediment, and the problem has been growing for decades.
You've missed the point and assume the wrong thieves. The journals provide almost no value added, maybe a little branding and the distribution but that's about it. The distribution is easy in the digital age and any one else could do it instead. The branding comes more or less automatically as a consequence from the selection of content. The actual research, analysis, review and (usually) editing are all paid for by others not the journal. The journal just comes in and takes the work that has been provided them and puts a very high price tag on it. In other words, the researchers are in a situation of having to buy back their own work which they've already paid dearly for.
By price gouging on the essential titles, the journal publishers are becoming bottlenecks in what is supposed to be scholarly communication across distance and time. They're preventing rather than facilitating communication. The whole point of a researcher publishing is to get the word out to their peers. When fewer and fewer institutions can afford the titles, fewer peers have access. It looks like a model designed to implode eventually anyway.
There is a lot written up on Open Access, here's one in French Un guide de l'Open Access à destination du grand public [actualitte.com] , which translates quite well with an automated translator to A Guide to Open Access for the general public [google.com]. The NYT opinion piece only covers one aspect. The paywall must be selective because I have not seen it for so long I thought it was gone, I would not have linked to a paywalled site.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:23AM
Oh, wow! That's informative...
One can only wish there'd be someone to tell the sci-hub story and contextualize it... perhaps it would even worth submitting that to Soylentnews [soylentnews.org]. Something like the following would be great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by devlux on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:32AM
I see, so what you're really saying is that I should have read the article before posting?
In retrospect, I agree but reading the article is a really kind of going against the spirit and tradition of the site.
Also I think it speaks volumes when someone posts a link to the site in question completely blind, not having read the article, based solely on gut reaction.
To my mind that means that Ms. Elbakyan has at least in part achieved her mission. "open access to paywalled research" sci-hub, check!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:37AM
Someone said it better [soylentnews.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:31AM
So, if someone gets busted for identity theft, or stealing or buying credit card info, they should go scott free because it costs virtually zero dollars to transfer that information and, in 2016, it's time for banks and merchants to adapt their business models to the changing times.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by devlux on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:45AM
If all they do is steal and copy the information then yes, let them go. No harm, no foul. Next time secure your systems better.
In fact I would go so far as to say that the organization from which the data "leaked", should be held criminally liable for usage of that data as though they were a co-conspirator.
If the consequences were real, I can promise that security would suddenly get very real as well.
But the hacker, cracker whatever? Leave him/her/it be. There is no damage from having "information" out there.
The damage is when that information is utilized without the subject's consent and it causes them debt, or damages them in some fashion.
We already have laws on the books dealing with illicit gain. But information is not something that can be "stolen" by the act of copying. It does not deprive the original owner of the use of that data. However if that data is used to masquerade as the original owner causing them some nonconsented to consequence then hell ya, sue, punish, toss in jail and throw away the key.
My thoughts on the matter.
Alexandra Elbakyan has made it to my very short list of personal heros.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:50AM
It does not deprive the original owner of the use of that data.
It certainly does in some cases (including this one, with the scientific journals), because it reduces the potential pool of people willing to pay full price to buy that item. You can't tell me with a straight face that this type of piracy doesn't cost the publishers significant money.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:16AM
(sudden attack of pedantry)
Look at my face: ⚅ - is as straight as a dice face can be and it's mine.
Now, read my lips: this type of piracy does not cost the publishers significant money.
There's a difference between cost and potential income.
The first one can be quantified and demonstrated, the second doesn't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:29AM
Why have so many daily newspapers across the US either gone under, or experienced hard times and multiple downsizings, over the past 15 years? Obviously, it's because of the competition for information from the Internet.
Now, I'm asking you to use your imagination here. Suppose the competition came not from public web sites, but from pirate sites illegally giving away the stuff that you produced and curated. That could still pack a big financial punch, couldn't it?
I think the reason you don't see it is because you don't want to see it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:54AM
Sorry, I don't have any, all I have it's a straight face.
You mean... like Google? I seem to remember some attempts to extract a potential income from Google, the judges recently have said "Naah, mate" [reuters.com]. Pretty unimaginative folks, those judges.
--
And this is related with costs exactly how?
Ah, are you backpedalling on the unfortunate choice of words, and you agree we are discussing about potential (but unrealized) income?
Then I'll ask you to categorically demonstrate (with as straight a face as mine), that you are entitled to realize that income you pretend you lost, in other words that every pirated download is a loss - you simply just don't believe you on your word, don't come to me with "because I say so".
What is the benefit for other members of the society that you bring in? Especially how the researchers that produced the articles and the citizens which paid for a great deal of them (grant from budgets) are benefiting?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:56AM
...from pirate sites illegally giving away the stuff that you produced and curated.
"Extorting" is not the same as "producing and curating".
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:03AM
(mmm... in the context of "daily newspapers across the US", extorting seems to be a quite strong term.
Or... do you imply US is using its military to extract the news from those unwilling to part with them? I'm intrigued...)
(peace, bro. I'm just clowning to the left)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday March 15 2016, @04:15AM
mmm... in the context of "daily newspapers across the US", extorting seems to be a quite strong term.
Yes, it is, and I really didn't mean newspapers.
My bad, I should have specified the science journal publishing bad guys.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @06:03AM
Obviously it is because paper is a vastly inferior medium to digital methods. It is far more costly, and much more limited. Paper simply isn't searchable and copyable like digital data is, taking many orders of magnitude more time to do. Paper really is obsolete for delivery of news.
The tragedy is that publishers have not responded to this reality in a constructive fashion. Instead they have been extremely reactionary. They don't believe they can earn a living in a digital world, and instead of listening to evidence that they can, they've enshrined copyright as the one and only means to flourish. They play upon public sympathy, inertia, nostalgia, and even the whiff of wealth in a meritocratic possibility that anyone could get published if only their work is good enough, and then they too could become wealthy off of copyright. When that hasn't worked, they've resorted to the desperation measures of propaganda, force, and fear.
They ask way too much of us when they want everyone to go on acting as if the Internet does not exist, and keep buying books and audio CDs. The "problem" of piracy is best resolved by admitting it is not an immoral, reprehensible activity that causes artists to starve, it is instead a natural right, and should be fully legalized.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by devlux on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:17AM
It's about making the access available to those who otherwise couldn't pay.
Sure it might deprive the publishers of money.
For the researcher who is trying to "get published", the publisher is acting as a barrier by only allowing access to those with the not inconsequential sums of money required to purchase a full subscription.
However they are not providing anything of value in this transaction.
The cost to society from even allowing this paywall behavior especially on research that is primarily funded by government grants is enormous.
I would argue with a straight face that the only way this could actually cost the "publisher" money is if the publisher paid for the research. Otherwise they are just using their position as a "journal of note", to abuse the researcher into signing away their rights to publish wherever the heck they want, in favor of exclusivity to that single publisher. This actually blocks most of the rest of the world from being able to freely fact check and ensure that the science was performed correctly. In other-words one of the fundamental cornerstones of good science "peer review" is very much harmed by this exclusivity.
As for actual ownership.
If it was paid for by public grant money then the results of said research belongs to the public. If it was paid for by private grant money then of course it belongs to the private institution. But simply having copies circulating does not deprive the author of funds, the author isn't getting anything from the publisher and the only thing the publisher brought to the table was a place of notoriety in which to publish. In many cases the publisher doesn't even fact check or edit. Here is a citation http://www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666 [nature.com]
The author, who is the only party for whom deprivation of income could really be argued was already paid via the grant. They are not harmed are in fact helped by having their research circulating as widely as possible.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:50AM
You can't tell me with a straight face that this type of piracy doesn't cost the publishers significant money.
Well... yes, I can. Those publishers are abusing their monopoly (you don't have to be the only player to be a monopolist) in order to profiteer. Not being able to extort as much money as they'd like is not the same as losing money.
Just my carefully considered opinion as a retired scientist, YMMV.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by devlux on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:08AM
The issue of making research available to the masses was solved in 1993 by Tim Berners Lee while at CERN.
He had this really crazy idea, that never really took off but it went something like this.
You create your documents using markup, similar to SGML, but more of a subset really. Then you store them on a server somewhere and you announce their location over in usenet or some other popular place.
What made this system really neat is that you can reference the work of others by including an anchor tag and "linking" to the document you are referencing. This is really handy for researchers especially when you need to make a citation.
Something like this...
According to Tim Lee ".. is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents." http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html [info.cern.ch]
As you can see above, the location of your document just needed to be encoded in a special way, they called it a uniform resource locator or URL. It included the protocol, server and document name.
If enough pages linked together, it would form a sort of web pattern. And if enough researchers participated, then this web would be world wide. So the default recommendation was to have a server which identified itself as www.
I think the idea was a brilliant way of opening access to research. Pity it never took off.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:29AM
It did, we just decided to research boobies instead of getting any work done. Thankfully, it's been wildly, wildly, successful.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:46AM
Yo [wikipedia.org], cow clicker [wikipedia.org].
(are today's kids still interested in boobs?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Informative) by devlux on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:01AM
Survey says...
http://www.usatoday.com/videos/life/people/2016/03/10/81575400/ [usatoday.com]
Yes!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:12AM
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:59PM
Would you be more interested if it were Cardassian related [cheezburger.com]?
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:30AM
What is it with this obsession with... *enhanced* (ie: fake) breasts?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:18AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @06:58AM
plastic is fantastic
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:18PM
Cow Clicker is dead [wikipedia.org]; long live Cookie Clicker [dashnet.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:26AM
The scientific community collectively decides which journals are the prestigious ones. It is remarkably naive to think a university presidents can simply bestow prestige on a journal. And it is awfully hypocritical for the "freedom fighters" to tell heads of institutions and presidents that they should decide where it is ok to publish. Political correctness comes to scientific publishing!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:40AM
It seems to be all politics and marketing at this point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:42AM
Political correctness comes to scientific publishing!
You're just ignorant, and foolish for pontificating on that which you know nothing about. The problem is that Political Correctness [youtube.com] is already rife in academia. [thefire.org] For instance: In order to prop up their bogus narrative that women and men are exactly the same SJWs have positioned themselves to decide acceptance of papers to medical journals and have been censoring anything that talks about "sex differences" for decades. [youtube.com]
Now, with your foolish and ignorant naiveté out of the way, what are your plans for reforming the absolutely broken publishing system?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:56AM
I have an idea. It starts with broad perhaps even world wide implementation of RFC 1945 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1945 [ietf.org]
Researchers could publish using that standard or whatever replaces it.
Then someone could create a system that gathers documents published utilizing RFC 1945, parses the full text into individual terms and then ranks their quality based on how many others have cited them using similar terms.
We could call such a ranking system a "page rank" and the tool to crawl this "web" of links, a spider.
Or since it's really just vacuuming up the pages and their links like a pig we could call it a "spider pig!".
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:26PM
It starts with broad perhaps even world wide implementation of RFC 1945
Let me know when they get around to actually specifying how 402 Payment Required is supposed to work. Otherwise, how will the infrastructure of organizing peer review be funded?
We could call such a ranking system a "page rank"
You propose a method of ranking articles' impact by the likelihood that following citations randomly will end up on a particular document. Trouble is that Stanford owns a patent on that method and licenses it exclusively to Google, which is part of the multinational Alphabet conglomerate. Any idea when U.S. Patent 6,285,999 [google.com] expires?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:00AM
Why, by simply decreeing where one is allowed to publish, of course. It is all about freedom! My freedom; not anyone else's. If I don't like something, then we shall force others to our ways, not with incentives or reason, but force them, for we are on the side of righteousness.
We can have the university presidents dressed up, say, in 15th century garb, with an Elsevier journal in one hand and a big, roasted turkey leg in the other, and loudly announce:
By what by-paths and indirect crook’d ways I met this journal;
And I myself know well how troublesome it sat upon my head:
To thee it shall descend with better quiet . . .
. . . For all my reign hath been but a scene acting that argument; and now its death
Changes the mode: for what in it was purchas’d,
Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;
So thou the PLOS One wear’st successively.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:29AM
Minor correction, as the bard intended.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:41AM
But... magister!... turkeys were only brought into Europe one century later [wikipedia.org].
Did you want to say: roasted Kuzu Tandır [about.com]?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:56AM
SJWs have positioned themselves to decide [youtube.com] acceptance of papers to medical journals and have been censoring anything that talks about "sex differences" for decades. [youtube.com]
So either there are censors on the journal from the movement or the journal is simple bowing to external pressure (or else..). Time to put some pressure on the journal?
Either way the journal(s) have exposed themselves to have an attack surface. So perhaps another location for publishing can fill the gap or opportunity? (like Sci-Hub [wikipedia.org] or ArXiv [wikipedia.org])
Let's hope this is another real good nail in this non-scientific garbage arbitrators existence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:51AM
As it cums on anything else.
You're welcome
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:03AM
The scientific community collectively decided some time ago which journals were the prestigious ones.
FTFY.
And it is entirely appropriate for the researchers to tell heads of institutions and presidents that they [the researchers] should decide where it is ok to publish.
FTFY as well.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:46AM
> The scientific community collectively decides which journals are the prestigious ones.
Not really. Hiring has been turned on its head in the last 50 or more years. It is now the administrators who hire the faculty members not the other way around. As such they are the ones that decide which journals weigh more in the hiring process.
In day to day use, maybe faculty members have more say in which journals to use, but the reality is that they will publish in the ones that the administrators use when selecting candidates for a position. Given the excessive number of candidates per available tenure-track positions, the administrators have a surprising amount of pull in the area of making a journal important or not. If, for example, the majority of them decided that candidates must have at least one article in a PLoS journal, we'd see a tipping point crossed and open access being established as the norm. It's moving that direction slowly and with a lot of push-back from the big publishers, but if the publishers were removed or made constructive instead of obstructive, we could see the change completed in an academic generation instead of having to wait decades more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @12:29PM
Postdocs and junior faculty shooting for tenure try to publish in the journals with the highest impact factor, which is a factor that is largely set by the scientific community. Any weight put in by the "bean counters" on impact factors is still the result of what the community decides are the prestigious journals. Admin can't determine what are high impact journals unless they band together and collude.
If you want to change which journals are high-impact, you need to change the attitudes of those publishing, which starts at the top of the scientific community. Get them to publish their works in open-access journals, which will raise their impact ratings, which will draw in the junior members.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday March 15 2016, @01:42PM
Admin can't determine what are high impact journals unless they band together and collude.
Which is another way of saying that they could agree on a policy. Some individual universities are moving that direction, Harvard's Faculty of Arts & Sciences [harvard.edu] and UC Berkeley [berkeley.edu], to name two, publish or encourage open access. They have a lot to gain by working together nationally or internationally.
The postdocs and junior faculty are in the middle of the rat race and unable to affect the rules. Only those that have come out the other side and, maybe, those just starting can shift the market. The former have the status, connections and experience to influence progress, especially tenured, university executives, or even retired faculty. An extreme example would be Randy Schekman mentioned below by purpleland [soylentnews.org]. Those just starting, such as graduate students can affect the situation to a lesser extent, but at a higher risk because they are just entering what might be a career.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by purpleland on Tuesday March 15 2016, @05:45AM
Nobel prize winner Randy Schekman started his own open access journal eLife after being disillusioned by all the big publishers.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/how-journals-nature-science-cell-damage-science/ [theguardian.com]