
ScienceLeaks - kilian
http://scienceleaks.blogspot.com/
======
roadnottaken
This is plain-old piracy and I'm a little surprised to see it getting up-voted
on HN. There are plenty of open-access journals, but most scientists choose to
publish in closed journals instead for a variety of reasons. I think the
results of research funded by taxpayers should be free and, indeed, that is
now required by the NIH and there's a huge resource available here:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/>

However some of the research published in traditional journals is funded from
elsewhere and, as such, I can't think of any reason why we "deserve" free
access to it.

~~~
forkandwait
For the most part, scientists publish in the highest prestige journal
possible, because that counts the most toward tenure/ pay raises/ grant
application chances; the most prestigous journals are -- for historical
reasons -- still closed since they are profit centers for big for-profit
publishing houses like Wiley.

On the other hand, all the scientists I know wish they could give their papers
away for free because it builds their reputation to have people use and cite
them, even undergrads at state colleges that can't afford the bigger database
subscriptions.

Except for textbooks, scholars almost never make royalties, so the profit
incentive isn't what you might think. A scholar makes more money by getting
raises from the university, speaking and consulting fees, and publishing
undergrad textbooks (sometimes). All of these are increased if their is a
wider dissemination of their work.

Finally, .... in the US, almost all research is funded by taxpayers, directly
or indirectly, it's just NIH funded stuff that must be free.

Finally, finally .... if it weren't for the fact that the prestigious journals
are a ticket to tenure and promotion, there would be no reason to publish
anywhere except for Arxiv: so called "peer review", to be honest, is a broken
system...

~~~
roadnottaken
_"so called "peer review", to be honest, is a broken system..._ "

To misquote Churchill:

Peer review is the worst system for scientific publishing... except for all
the others.

~~~
zeteo
It's not misquote, it's paraphrase.

~~~
roadnottaken
No, to paraphrase is to summarize or re-word [1]. I changed the meaning (from
_democracy_ to _peer-review_ [2]). I'm not sure misquote was the best word-
choice, but I definitely wasn't paraphrasing.

[1] <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/paraphrase>

[2] "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except
all the others that have been tried.”" -- Winston Churchill

~~~
zeteo
If you google "to paraphrase Winston Churchill", you hit the figure of speech
that you've used. It's a pretty common turn of (para)phrase.

PS: Don't rely too much on dictionary.com, it's not the best. E.g. the New
Oxford American Dictionary correctly gives the second meaning of "paraphrase:
a rewording of something written or spoken by someone else".

~~~
eli
It's a common phrase because it's meant to be funny. The word "paraphrase" is
being used ironically

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pornel
Isn't this copyright violation? It might be difficult to defend publication of
entire papers as freedom of speech.

Also it's hosted on Google Blogger which will respond to DMCA complaints and
enforce their TOS ("Google may, in its sole discretion, at any time and for
any reason, terminate the Service"), so it won't last long anyway.

It should be ScienceTorrents.

~~~
dmix
If you're going to do something like this at least put some effort into not
getting shutdown.

Buy your own domain with private whois, servers in europe, etc.

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ajays
The intention is noble, but the implementation is horribly broken.

I agree with Rosie that the current system of paywalls is horribly broken. (I
spent 10 years in academia, so I have some idea about the system). The example
cited (the "arsenic life" paper) happens all the time: you hear about some
exciting new discovery, only to find that the paper is locked behind a
paywall. This is NOT how it should be!

With the Internet, there is no reason for most (any?) of these pay journals to
exist in their current form. The research is typically funded by the
government (like the NASA "arsenic life" research), so why should its findings
be closed?

We (in the CS/EE field) should be taking the lead here and getting rid of ACM
and IEEE journals. After many years as a member, I cancelled my ACM and IEEE
memberships because it was clear that these organizations existed solely to
support themselves.

There are some courageous authors out there who will put up copies of their
papers for public access. I even know of one author who put up a PDF of a book
that he published. We need more such authors!

------
aedocw
On the topic of journals, and what gets published, "Wrong" by David H.
Freedman should be required reading. Fascinating book, he documents how hard
it is for researches to get negative results published (i.e. 10 studies on a
new drug, 9 studies show it does nothing, 1 study finds there might be
something positive - only the positive study will be accepted.)

~~~
jls11
Huge problem. It affects more than just medicine. Negative results are not
collected or disseminated in many fields. They never show the "messy kitchen."
Succinct lists of failed paths would be more useful than a lot of positive
results that get published.

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Alex3917
For what it's worth, reddit.com/r/scholar is a much better resource for
exactly the same purpose.

~~~
Geee
Also if somebody isn't aware, Google Scholar finds all sources of articles and
there's usually a PDF available somewhere.

~~~
djacobs
Mm... I'm not sure about that. Google Scholar is a good resource, that's true.
But there are hundreds of papers I've looked for that are simply not
accessible without proper access.

That said, I don't support this site.

~~~
btmorex
Are you clicking through the "All x versions" link? There are often pdf
versions that are mistakenly out in the open (i.e. on some random university
web server).

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Bud
How is this site planning to stay in existence for longer than about an hour
after it costs some organization a significant amount of money? Does Blogger
just ignore takedown requests?

~~~
hugh3
It isn't, but if you read down it's described as a stop-gap solution. If
people are actually using it by the time it gets taken down then it will get
resurrected elsewhere.

Here's my question: suppose I, as a kind-hearted university-based individual
who respects the needs of the journals to make money but is also interested in
making sure that the general public can read important scientific research,
decide to upload some papers to this site. How can I be sure that it'll never
be traced back to me?

~~~
pornel
Make sure documents you're uploading don't contain any of your personal
metadata.

Ensure that you're not the only person who owns the copy you're uploading (it
could be watermarked or be a unique revision of the document).

Upload via TOR or similar.

~~~
Bud
The second requirement seems like it will be especially difficult to fulfill,
especially if the document in question is legitimately available only from a
journal. Most users will not be able to reliably spot any and all kinds of
watermarks or embedded invisible metadata.

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dnautics
I wanted to start a 'scienceleaks' site that was actually a site that
facilitated the whistleblowing on scientific fraud. A small raffle for a cash
prize can be a huge incentive for underpaid grad students.

~~~
natnat
I don't think a financial incentive for leakers would be a good thing.
Wikileaks works fine without offering anyone money.

------
dxjones
Prediction: ScienceLeaks will be taken down within 1 week. The only reason it
wouldn't be shut down is if nobody uses it.

The copyright holders for academic journals have a huge financial incentive to
crush ScienceLeaks. The law is on their side, right? ... and why would Google
Blogger defend ScienceLeaks? They prefer people to use Google Scholar instead.

------
elvirs
Most of the university students have to almost all scientific documents thanks
to the library subscriptions of their universities. It will be really easy to
fill the website with thousands of papers but is it worth it? is it right to
do so? If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to
any of those libraries and get access to any paper you need without violating
copyright.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of
those libraries_

Warning: _Pet peeve alert_.

Scientists routinely complain that the public unfairly brands them as isolated
ivory-tower eggheads whose work is too insular and rarefied to have any
relevance to the real world. They also complain that the general public has a
poor idea of how science actually works: People often view it as some kind of
alternative religion in which the priests stand in front of documentary
cameras wearing white coats and handing down dogma.

Then these scientists turn around and publish most of their actual writing and
almost one hundred percent of their data, data-driven reasoning, and detailed
experimental design in journals which are prohibitively expensive to read
unless you're currently affiliated with a university. Which is, in turn,
exorbitantly expensive, either in cash or in opportunity cost.

Trying to understand science without reading the primary literature is like
trying to understand jazz by reading the _New York Times_ and watching the
occasional Ken Burns documentary. Reviewers do _write_ a lot about jazz, and
they go on an on about how important and highbrow it all is, but if you
haven't actually listened to a jazz piece for more than two minutes you're
never going to get the point. Jazz is about the music. Science is about the
detailed methods and the data and the literature.

~~~
elvirs
you don't have to be a student or pay the university to use the library.

~~~
mechanical_fish
You have obviously never been to Harvard, where in fact you do.

(You can also _work_ at Harvard and get a library card as a perk. I often
contemplate this fact.)

The good news is that MIT has a much more awesome library and you can, in
fact, turn up in person at MIT as a civilian and read copies of _Nature_. Of
course, you have to make the time to do that. The parking is tricky, so you'd
best ride the train.

Even in the Boston area I have yet to find a neighborhood library with a
_Nature_ subscription.

If, in fact, you know where I can legally get access to, say, the _Nature_ and
_Science_ journals without either paying hundreds of dollars a year or
physically traveling to the local college library please, please paste the
instructions here.

~~~
elvirs
ok this is what you do: you go to the library only once, get a membership card
and a username/password for electronic use. and use that username/password to
access electronic resources of that library from anywhere. i hope this helps.
edit:grammar.

~~~
djacobs
Harvard, for one, doesn't let you do that. You can't even get into most of
their library buildings without an ID.

------
zzzeek
DMCA in 3..2...1...

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eplanit
The new Misguided Morality: Theft = Liberation.

~~~
flipbrad
unless, of course, it plays a useful role. an ecosystem can thrive with both
predator and prey - even with paratism. Point here, expressed more eloquently
above, is that free and unrestricted knowledge can be a tremendously
beneficial thing to society. You lock it up for good cause. Do Nature et al
provide a useful service, the value of which is commensurate to the fees they
charge? I'd argue that they don't: the fees they charge for access are because
they have the best papers. One does not submit to Nature on strength of
service, but on strength of the goodwill attached to the Nature brand,
nurtured mostly through exclusivity. Besides some possible but implausible
effect as an effective signal-to-noise filter (which I would argue it isn't,
given that it is so exclusive, being largely faithful to a print format which
has limited capacity), that's not a very good reason to prevent those with
curiosity about the world - but who don't have $32 per article they want to
read.

Piracy of this sort, if it could be kept to those that would not otherwise
purchase this article at any profitable price point for the journal, could
actually be economically/education-optimal, perhaps?

Also, the last time I checked, copyright had exceptions for academic use.
Although I think these are usually limited to copying/reproduction, not the
right of publication/distribution, I find these to be distinctions that just
aren't warranted in the digital era.

