
Websites offering pirated papers are shaking up science - doener
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21724381-musicians-and-moviemakers-are-not-only-ones-suffer-internet?fsrc=scn%2Ftw%2Fte%2Fbl%2Fed%2Fwebsitesofferingpiratedpapersareshakingupscience
======
fazkan
I dont get it, how is it shaking up science.

The heading is illogical. The article starts with how the film industry is
being affected by piracy. Then it says that a court has granted a publishing
platform damages from sci hub. Then in the next few paragraphs it lists the
countries with the most users of the sci hub websites. Then it ends with how
the creator of sci hub will be awarded a Disobedience award by MIT, which she
likely wont attend...

I was expecting a detailed analysis of how something like sci hub affects
research and science, not the middleman companies that earns from the
research.

~~~
simias
>An analysis of Sci-Hub’s server logs, published in Science in 2016, found its
biggest users were people in Iran, India and China. Such middle-income
countries do not qualify for the subsidies big publishers provide to users in
the poorest nations, but their universities nevertheless may not be able to
afford subscriptions.

That alone could potentially have far reaching consequences. I agree that the
article is a bit light on details though.

~~~
kefka
Yeah, that may be true.. But Scihub is an onion site. That means there's not
much in the way of "who", but in the way of last hop before hitting the
onionsite.

And I would daresay that one should probably not trust logs when going through
Tor.

~~~
IanCal
I expect _very_ few people visit scihub on Tor. The logs may be for scihub.cc,
then?

------
skywhopper
Elsevier and others represent a massive and punishing private tax on the basic
operation of science and academia. It's a scam but it's so ingrained in
academic culture that very few groups of scholars seem willing or able to
break away from it. They basically steal copyright from the authors of these
papers, they don't compensate the authors or the peer reviewers, but they
collect outrageous prices from libraries and individuals for access to
already-publically-subsidized research. It's utterly depressing that they
continue to exist.

~~~
Jugurtha
> they don't compensate the authors or the peer reviewers,

I suffered reading peer reviewed articles on Elsevier or IEEE with
unremarkable results at best, irreproducible results at worst.

The title goes "Novel Way of Breaking a Glass", an abstract that describes the
methodology as "dropping a file cabinet on it", and the _talent_ (yes, talent)
to come to the conclusion that "file cabinets could prove useful in breaking
trees or pierce underground bunkers in the future". Are you kidding me, Dr
Bozo et al?

I've had to wade through hundreds of insipid articles which made my feeling of
being stupid more bearable but diminished my respect for many things shrouded
with a veneer that come at $35 a pop.

------
SeanDav
Not many people would mind a company making a small profit from tax-funded
research, if they are offering a value-added service, but the scale of
Elsevier profits is ludicrous. It is one of the most profitable large
companies on the planet.

Clearly Elsevier are profiting from their near monopoly in this area and
something really needs to be done about them.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-
business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)

------
dredmorbius
"Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, described knowl-
edge in the following way: “he who receives an idea from me,receives instruc-
tion himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me”. In doing so, Jefferson anticipated the
modern concept of a public good. Today we recognize that knowledge is not only
a public good but also a global or international public good.We have also come
to recognize that knowledge is central to successful development. The
international community,through institutions like the World Bank, has a
collective responsibility for the creation and dissemination of one global
public good—knowledge for development."

Joseph Stiglitz, "Knowledge as a Public Good"

[http://s1.downloadmienphi.net/file/downloadfile6/151/1384343...](http://s1.downloadmienphi.net/file/downloadfile6/151/1384343.pdf)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz)

------
shock
> Elsevier argues that there is more to publishing than simply shovelling
> papers online and that work such as editing and arranging for reviews has to
> be paid for.

It's funny how _arranging_ for reviews _has_ to be paid for, but the work of
reviewing doesn't.

~~~
ocschwar
That really infuriates me.

In the fields where I worked, I've had to read dozens of papers by teams from
Turkey, China, the Slavic countries, and other places. People whose command of
their field was far ahead of their command of English. People who submitted to
Elsevier. And whose papers received no amount of copy-editing whatsoever. It
was so bad, you could tell the authors' nationality by their grammar errors.
Slavs would drop the definite and indefinite articles. Turks would refer to
people as "it." Chinese authors would mix plural and singular inappropriately.

If they just spent a minimum on copy editing, I would pay the fees on every
paper I needed. But they didn't even have the decency to do that.

------
watermanio
There was a good article on the vast money charged by these journals in the
Guardian last week. Although the publishers business does seem pretty robust,
there are at least winds of change from universities and governments who fund
this research that are finally saying enough is enough...

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-
business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)

~~~
HarryHirsch
Hopefully something charges this time. Last time (i.e. around 2010) the
publicity campaign failed. Back then university librarians managed to create
some awareness about the extortionate price of journal subscriptions, but
that's all they did, prices didn't decrease.

The trouble is, there are certain core journals that are really needed and
many crap journals. Subscriptions come in packages, i.e. a library can't
choose to keep _Cell_ and get rid of _Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry_ ,
they can only cancel Elsevier altogether. That's why the campaign failed last
time, there wasn't a critical mass ready to unsubscribe from everything to
convince the publishers to get their act together. Maybe this time, with
Scihub, things improve.

I predict that Elsevier & friends are going to use their influence on Congress
to implement internet filtering at universities to keep Scihub out. It worked
for the music/film industry.

------
Robotbeat
Super misleading Economist headline and subheading: "Websites offering pirated
papers are shaking up science: Musicians and moviemakers are not the only ones
to suffer from internet piracy"

If you come to this topic from an essentially blank slate, the headline and
subheading would make you think that /science/ and /scientists/ are suffering
from piracy (in analogy to the claim that musicians and moviemakers are).

Except very likely the opposite is true: this piracy offers much greater
exposure to scientific literature and enables access to otherwise-inaccessible
scientific knowledge for scientists in poorer nations.

Unlike musicians and moviemakers, scientists make ZERO money from publication
royalties of journal articles but they (or their institutions) have to /pay/
for access to these journals. The only ones making money are the publishers.

~~~
elif
Well, in deference to the dramatic title, there are also negative consequences
and not only those positive ones.

For instance: It seems logical that the average quality of science goes down
when peer-reviewing is optional. Likewise, corrections and redactions are not
guaranteed to take place.

The real game change will be if/when pirate publishers force traditional
publishers to drop their profit models, and the best of both worlds can be
achieved.

~~~
kbutler
You also need to show that current peer review is happening and is effective
at identifying bad science, and that corrections and redactions are currently
guaranteed to take place.

Both of those are questionable.

------
dreen
Send them bitcoin if you wish to support them:

SciHub: 1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM LibGen:
1Gz3SZniRo8isQzgPiuovr11n3s75zecg2

~~~
simlevesque
> 1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM

I don't know where you got that, but it's not the actual bitcoin address of
SciHub. [http://www.sci-hub.cc/donate](http://www.sci-hub.cc/donate)

edit: It's the one on their home page: [http://sci-hub.cc/](http://sci-
hub.cc/)

~~~
dreen
Looks like they have two? On the front page, when you scroll down "support the
project" they display the one I pasted.

------
api
I don't universally support this kind of thing but in this case I do. Nearly
all of this research is directly or indirectly taxpayer funded. All taxpayer
funded research should be freely available to us since we paid for it.

That and these gatekeepers are just bridge trolls that add zero value. It made
sense back when journals were physically printed but today the distribution
cost is zero.

~~~
threepipeproblm
That most of this research taxpayer funded is indeed a good argument.

Beyond that, people criticized other disrupted industries for continuing to
provide poor customer service -- seemingly unable to fight back after decades
of treating customers as captive audiences, and taking them for granted. Well
if you think the music industry was bad at that, the academic publishing
industry is way worse. These guys typically provide no significant value add,
yet they want large economic rewards. Meanwhile, journal after journal has
been shown incompetent to keep garbage papers -- even papers generated by
Markov chains -- out.

My impression is that they also discriminate heavily against individual
researchers, many of whom cannot afford exorbitant per-per paper fees, while
large (typically subsidized) institutions get much better deals when they are
able to afford bulk access.

~~~
rocqua
> many of whom cannot afford exorbitant per-per paper fees

Whilst the publishers are certainly not pulling their weight, I don't think
the biggest offenders have per-paper fees. The biggest offender is probably
Elsevier, and as far as I know they make their money from selling
subscriptions to research institutions and universities.

~~~
threepipeproblm
I don't have any real data on this... my comment was based on my own
experience of not being able to afford per-paper fees and certainly not being
able to afford subscriptions, whilst observing that the academic institutions
seem to have no trouble maintaining access. No idea what the per paper fees
would actually work out to for universities (say, the ones actually
downloaded/accessed).

As someone who reads a fair number of papers, I definitely feel like the
publishers' days are numbered, and not just because of Sci-Hub and LibGen.
More and more often now, I can find papers that I want, legally, on the first
try. Even more encouraging, I find that when I can't find a paper I often just
have to wait a few months and try again to find an open Internet source.

Case in point: a few months ago I wanted this paper --
[http://bit.ly/2tE4O4K](http://bit.ly/2tE4O4K) \-- but all the CiteSeerX links
were broken and apparently had been for a long while. About two months later
it's back. This is just one example, but I find this increasingly works with
many papers.

There is also ResearchGate, which is a social network to get papers from an
authors, which is legal if they are alive. But their sign-up process is also
much harder for independent researchers. You have to "prove you are a
researcher," as though attempting to get access to research papers weren't
_prima facie_ evidence of that.

In CS the worst paywaller is consistently the ACM.

~~~
rocqua
Ah, my bad I understood you wrong. I thought you meant per-paper fees for
people submitting papers. Indeed many journals still have a paywall for
papers.

~~~
threepipeproblm
Lol they charge to receive the papers, too?

~~~
rocqua
Some very sleazy open papers do.

------
dagenleg
I think the big publishers are not behaving rationally here, trying to fight a
library based in Russia via American courts.

A much cheaper and effective alternative would be to simply bribe some Russian
officials. If the bribe is big enough the websites will be gone in a week,
owners arrested.

~~~
conanbatt
I'm pretty sure that is criminal.

~~~
matz1
Of course you would do it secretly.

~~~
conanbatt
Still, i would never recommend a big institucion to engage in criminal
activities for its own benefit :)

------
themind
Economist paywalls are easily circumvented: a) Delete the element covering the
content b) Disable or delete cookies

~~~
Nacraile
Economist also lets you a few articles per week for free. If you find yourself
bumping against their paywall with any regularity, perhaps you should actually
pay for the content? Or, would you like to live on an internet where the only
content that can pay for itself is clickbait?

~~~
kuschku
Economist only lets US citizen read a few articles per week for free.

I get on the first visit with a clean browser already that message.

------
sleepless
University research is funded by the state in germany. Research results should
thus live in the public domain.

I have no pity for those artificial paywall companies, benefiting from
research funded with tax money. This model needs to change - fast. And the
change should be supported by legislation.

~~~
mvitorino
This. A lot of long term research worldwide is publicly funded and the status
quo of the scientific journals (that once had their place in a world with high
communication barriers and costs) needs to be seriously shaken up. That plus
the huge business around scientific conferences with most speakers having to
pay to be able to present their findings.

But I guess the whole model in the scientific community might need rethinking.
Most people are only worried publishing because that is the only measure that
matters at the moment...

------
libeclipse
The irony of this article being behind a paywall.

~~~
hd4
Pastebin (or one of the many variants) should be put to use with anything like
this.

------
ezequiel-garzon
I can't access the article, but in any event I wonder: doesn't it feel like
this is actually being allowed? We're talking about hosted content, not
torrents. Of course, many (including me) feel that this sharing of information
can only advance society, but I'm surprised to sense that the establishment
agrees.

~~~
reacweb
The society as a whole has to accept small violations of laws. Otherwise, it
would be very difficult to improve laws. IMHO, it is a temporary tolerance
because the correct final stance is not obvious.

------
nickysielicki
> An analysis of Sci-Hub’s server logs, published in Science in 2016, found
> its biggest users were people in Iran, India and China. Such middle-income
> countries do not qualify for the subsidies big publishers provide to users
> in the poorest nations, but their universities nevertheless may not be able
> to afford subscriptions. Not every downloader was cash-strapped, though.
> Americans were the fifth-biggest users.

Let's be frank here, the people pirating these papers are capable of
understanding them (to some extent or another), and being educated to the
point of understanding new-ish papers necessarily implies that a relatively
large amount of money is being spent on their education. This isn't
entirely/primarily about money.

If the main users of this site are using it to get around sanctions placed
against their country, the site becomes far less sympathetic in my eyes.

~~~
tonyarkles
> If the main users of this site are using it to get around sanctions placed
> against their country, the site becomes far less sympathetic in my eyes.

I struggle with this. An opposing perspective is that there's a bunch of
students who are trying to do their research and push science forward, but a
country (or group of) half-way around the world has decided that they'd rather
the student not have access to the world's body of research. I can see merits
in both angles...

