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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: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @02:31PM (4 children)
People actually do this, at least in some fields. The problem is that journals have a reputation, based on their decisions what to publish and what not to publish, and the reputation of a scientist in turn depends on the reputation of the journals they manage to get their publications in. New journals don't yet have any reputation, which means that publishing in them also means not much reputation building for those sending the papers in, which means people have incentive to continue sending their papers to the existing journals.
Moreover, not all scientists feel the problem, as the journal is paid for by their institution, and thus the cost does not show up in their own research budget.
And of course preprint archives like arXiv also help. If the paper is on arXiv, then it can be freely obtained from there, and the journal reference can be seen as just a mark of approval.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by eravnrekaree on Tuesday August 14 2018, @02:53PM (2 children)
It sounds like some of the costs of the journals are passed onto the students (via tuition) or to the taxpayer if the universities are public subsidized. Nice.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:49PM
Considering that journals don't review shit anymore, and even journals with a supposedly "high reputation" simply rubber stamp approve any paper that pays the fee... it is no wonder the journals are simply leeches of public money.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday August 15 2018, @04:59AM
Research is financed by grants and universities take a sizable chunk of it for the "services". That's where money come from. BTW, scientists have no word whatsoever in determining how much they have to "share". However, they are expected to find the grants themselves and may be punished for under-performance.
So, to answer your concerns, the "institutions" screw everybody.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:10PM
It think it's worth pointing out that the reputation you speak of is with the tenure committee members and the granting agencies. The scientists I know would be happy to publish anywhere if it carried equal weight with their tenure committee and the grant submissions.
I'm no longer a scientist, but I hope my papers are available in Sci-Hub for any and all to read. I did the science to advance our collective knowledge, not line the pockets of a publishing company. That was a rude awakening when I entered grad school.