
In rich and poor countries, researchers turn to Sci-Hub - guiambros
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated-papers-everyone
======
a3_nm
The comparison with Napster is troubling, because it gives the impression that
the balance of right and wrong is the same for science and for music.

The main difference with Napster is that, in the case of music, there was some
argument to be made that piracy was harmful to music, because some (tiny) part
of music sales benefited the artists (and, as we all know, every pirate
download was a lost sale...).

In the case of science publishers, the money simply never goes from publishers
to researchers. Scientists are paid by entirely different actors (who
ironically also end up paying publishers, for subscription fees to access
papers). So the only possible argument left is that publishers are somehow
beneficial to the science publishing process, which is a much weaker argument.

Imagine if music sales did not bring any money to artists at all, but the
music industry argued: "sure, music would get composed and recorded without
us, but how could it be distributed without us?" This is the situation science
is currently into. The only explanation to the current state of affairs is
history (pre-Internet science distribution was complicated) and the
unimaginable inertia of prestige.

~~~
bloaf
The other difference is that you can make a much better argument that free and
open access to the scientific literature is a _public good._ Music piracy
could be argued to be obtaining a luxury item for free, and that people have
no right to do this. However, you _can_ make a case that the public has some
right to access the scientific literature, especially when that literature is
funded in part by their tax dollars.

~~~
ChristianBundy
> Music piracy could be argued to be obtaining a luxury item for free, and
> that people have no right to do this.

The obvious counter-argument being that there's absolutely no moral or
philosophical justification for the ownership of information. Intellectual
property is nothing but a racket.

~~~
tashi
One moral justification is that the ability to own and profit from
intellectual property gives people a powerful incentive to create and share
new things.

You seem to be making a statement from first principles: ownership of ideas is
absurd. Which, of course, it is. But on the same level of abstraction, who can
own land or water or sky? No one.

But of course, to "own" these things is an abstraction for a contract created
by the societies we're born into, about what you're permitted to do and what
happens to people who break the contract. And in that sense, the argument
needs to be about what costs and benefits to society, collectively and
individually, come with that contract.

~~~
nerdponx
I would tack onto this argument that, in the case of scientific research, the
assignment of research intellectual property to journal publishers is a
backwards and inappropriate use of intellectual property anyway.

~~~
a3_nm
Exactly. Research articles are produced with public money, and scientists do
not profit financially from their sale, in fact both scientists and the public
want scientific articles to be as widely circulated as possible.

It then seems completely backwards to use intellectual property to limit
"unauthorized" redistribution of articles, in the hope that this would help
the "authorized" publisher to circulate the articles...

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It's worse than that. The sole contribution of the "publishers" is to make
content hard to access - both practically, because you need a university
library or a private login, and financially, because either your library has
to pay a _lot_ of money, or you do. ($45 for a three page PDF? Please...)

While some people try to conflate this with other kinds of IP, this is a
completely different process, because research already funded by public money
is being kept from the public.

Which means anyone who may be interested in research outside of academia -
including startups, corporations, and private entrepreneurs - has to pay
through the nose for official access.

And that simply removes money from the ecosystem and puts it in the pocket of
the publishers. It doesn't fund new research, it doesn't increase publishing
standards, it doesn't keep food on the table for struggling researchers.

It costs a fortune, but adds no social or scientific value at all.

------
mrb
You won't find Sci-Hub on Google, so for those unfamiliar with it: the site is
[http://sci-hub.cc](http://sci-hub.cc)

I remember being confused last year when I tried to find this "Sci-Hub thing".
I stumbled on various sites that seemed to be it, except they were not. For
example [http://scihub.org/](http://scihub.org/) describes itself as a "global
science and technology publisher and provides free access to research
articles" except I couldn't actually find any research papers on their site.
They are just some scamming company usurping Sci-Hub's brand.

~~~
yladiz
Maybe it's because I saw it when I searched for it before, but when I searched
"Scihub" on Google (without quotes) it was the first result.

~~~
wongarsu
searching right now from germany: scihub has sci-hub.cc as first result, the
wikipedia article second (wikipedia has the link ofc). The search term sci-hub
has sci-hub.io as first result (which is down) and wikipedia as second result.

DDG features the real sci-hub (with various domains, including onion proxies),
wikipedia, sci-hub.org and sci-hub.com equally prominently depending on the
exact search term.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Searching google for "scihub" (no quotes) from California has sci-hub.cc as
the first result and the wikipedia article second. I don't know where this
complaint came from.

~~~
mrb
I was searching for "sci-hub". For some reason it never crossed my mind to
search for "scihub" as I had always seen it spelled with the hyphen...

------
mordae
At work at the National Library of Technology, Prague, Czech Republic and
although this is in no way the opinion of my employer, I believe that I what I
say represents the opinion of most of my colleagues in the actual library
business:

"Just give us the papers, we will make them available."

The trouble here is that authors choose to pay Elsevier for publishing and
libraries buy the papers back. In the end, it's all about "impact factor".
They have to pay to publish in Nature because that's the only way for them to
prove that they have, in fact, deserved the grant money and that they will get
some more.

------
frayesto
I'm a young graduate student and face this on a continual basis.

Articles are difficult to find because our university does not pay the
subscription charges.

I need to publish my work in quality journals, all of which charge high
publication charges. Some are even higher if you want a 'public access'
option.

Luckily, there is a growing movement for open research and open publication.
Many researchers, myself included, will publish pre-prints and papers to arxiv
or self-host them on personal websites.

I'm extremely grateful for sci-hub and just hope I can help end this stifling
of scientific research in my own way. All of my work ends up on github/arxiv
for anyone to use.

------
Houshalter
Copyright law is ridiculous and needs to be reformed immediately.

We should give up the battle with Disney. They have billions of dollars to
throw at politicians and lobbyists to ensure the Mouse never goes out of
copyright (even though they treat it more as a trademark, and couldn't care
less whether people watch the original steamboat willy cartoons on youtube.)

But scientific research is different. Nonfiction work in general is different.
Why should vastly different categories of works, with different values to
society, economics, etc, be treated the same by copyright law?

I propose we vastly decrease the restrictions of copyright on at least
nonfiction works. Make them enter the public domain sooner, make it more
difficult to register for copyright, perhaps require renewal half way through
to prove the work is still economical, etc.

It's just obscene that the vast majority of humanity's knowledge is locked
away behind copyright ridiculousness. Journals charge _obscene_ prices to
access papers, which were often funded with public money. Works sit behind
copyright barriers long after the author's death and they fall out of print.

The internet could be much greater than it is. I mean sure there is a ton of
content on the internet already, and wikipedia has been fantastic and
collecting the world's knowledge. But there is so much stuff that only exists
in books and papers, that should be publicly accessible.

See also the science section on Public Domain Day:
[https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2015/pre-1976](https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2015/pre-1976)
and
[https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976](https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976)

~~~
zyxley
> perhaps require renewal half way through to prove the work is still
> economical, etc.

This reminds me of one of the copyright reform ideas I've seen that has a
tremendously practical approach to the power of the Mouse: an initial 20- or
40-year term, with an indefinite number of renewals of the same length
allowed, but each renewal requiring filing with the Library of Congress and a
substantial fee.

~~~
userbinator
_but each renewal requiring filing with the Library of Congress and a
substantial fee._

I believe the idea was to make the fee increase exponentially too.

~~~
imtringued
I think the idea of renewing individual works indefinitively for a flat fee is
good enough. If Disney really wants to keep Mickey Mouse and has enough money
then let them keep him. But please don't forcibly delay the copyright
expiration of everything else.

------
fernly
Just imagine an alternate world in which Elsevier et.al. used common sense,
and offered all papers for a reasonable fee, like 1 euro per download, with a
fraction paid to the authors. They could be generating 50 million euros a
month and be regarded as good guys.

~~~
lukaslalinsky
I don't think 1 euro or 30 euro per download would make much difference. When
you are downloading a paper, you don't know if it's going to be useful to you
at all. If you work for a company/university, a bulk subscription makes more
sense. If you are a student or hobyist, paying 1 euro every time you want to
check out a paper is a good enough reason to download it from sci-hub instead.

------
kam
> The site had its original URL removed, but you can still find it easily.

Why isn't this a link? Why isn't there a link to [http://sci-
hub.cc/](http://sci-hub.cc/) anywhere in this article? Linking isn't illegal.

------
todd8
Right now there is a paper I'd like to read from a journal that I used to
enjoy as a grad student, Software Practice & Experience. It's $38 dollars to
download a PDF of a 7 page article from 1991. It probably doesn't contain
information that I need so I guess I'll skip it--too bad.

I do want to point out to HN readers that an ACM professional membership costs
around $100/year. I think this is a deal because for $100/year more you get
access to essentially all of articles published in all of the very numerous
past and present journals. Student memberships are much much cheaper. I have
also had IEEE memberships to order to get access to their online library of
IEEE publications. For some jobs, these memberships are worth it.

All other journals, like Software Practice and Experience, are just too
expensive for me to access on-line. Fortunately, some of these are available
in large university library systems.

~~~
tzs
"Software Practice and Experience" is available on Deepdyve.com, a service
that is more obscure than it should be. A quick summary would be Spotify for
journal articles.

With a free account you can view articles online, but only for 5 minutes each
(I'm not sure if that is 5 minutes once, or 5 minutes per day). That should be
enough to let you determine whether or not that 7 page article you are
interested in has the information that you need.

If it does have the information you want, there are two options to purchase
online access to the article without the 5 minute time limit. You can use an
access token, which are sold in 5 packs for $20. Or you can purchase a
subscription, with is $40/month ($30/month if you buy 12 months worth at
once), which gives unlimited access to all the journal articles they have, and
20 pages per month for printing.

If all you will ever need is that one particle, then Deepdyve is still
expensive: it will cost you $20 for online access assuming you buy the access
token pack and only use one token. But if you are going to need more articles
now and then, then the access token approach works out to $4 per article. If
you will need several a month, the subscription can be a good deal.

Of course, open access would be better, but if what you want is not available
that way, Deepdyve can be a good way to get articles without going broke in
the process.

------
phantom_oracle
Give it time...

Elsevier and co. will unite in a final push and buy the packaged-software that
Hollywood uses for DMCAs to any sites that host these papers.

Sci-Hub is just phase 1 of data liberation. Phase 2 is P2P, if it's not
already there.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
The issue is that unlike music, the market for research papers isn't anywhere
nearly as widespread, so average people don't have any incentive to seed
research papers, whereas they do have an incentive to share blockbuster movies
and music albums.

~~~
hueving
What incentive do people have to share?

~~~
zyxley
"I'll get kicked off the private tracker with all the good stuff if my seed
ratio drops too low."

~~~
lukaslalinsky
I don't think the average person would be using a private tracker.

------
sergiotapia
Isn't scientific research paid for by tax payers? Isn't most of content on Sci
hub of this nature?

Who is profiting from selling this content?

~~~
colejohnson66
Elsevier and friends. There's a difference between _funded_ by the government
and _made_ by the government. Things made by the government are public domain.
However, things funded by the government are usually the property of the
fundee(?). It's how SpaceX can have company secrets it doesn't have to release
to the public domain.

~~~
tgokh
Thank you, Bayh-Dole Act
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh–Dole_Act)

------
matchagaucho
Government funded research should be public domain.

Not really 'piracy' if taxes paid for it.

~~~
avs733
This, to me, is not dissimilar from the argument HN had over copyrighting law
a little while back.

~~~
matchagaucho
Distribution and ownership of intellectual property are really 2 separate
issues.

Researchers absolutely must _own_ their IP as an incentive to advance and
commercialize their work.

But if the work is funded by taxes, then _distribution_ should somehow flow
back to the public (DoD classified works aside).

~~~
avs733
I think that your separation is probably a useful framework for discussing it.
However, I disagree with your conclusion. Work funded by the people should be
owned by the people. That funding includes the payment of salaries which are
the incentivization. Their role is to advance their fields, it is what they
are paid to do, reviewed on, promoted by, etc.. I would see no bigger problem
in requiring researchers to sign over rights than others do in asking
employees to sign over rights to their employers. It is/should be an
expectation of the role.

------
ef4
Surprised nobody has already pointed out why the high traffic from Ashburn, VA
is "hard to interpret".

That is the home of one of the biggest AWS data centers. It would be an
obvious place to run bulk downloading of sci-hub content. It's also an easy
place to host a VPN server, which users may be motivated to do if their ISPs
are blocking sci-hub.

------
ska
There are two really compelling arguments for Sci-Hub, regardless of the
arguments against. Firstly, the usability is far, far better than almost all
publishing industry offerings. Secondly, there has never been a realistic
general pricing model for individual (or small companies, which amounts to the
same thing) use of individual papers. There are some orgs (e.g. IEEE) which
make this reasonable for an individual who primarily need access to core
journals they produce, but even that is unrealistic for individuals with
broader needs.

The problem is that the industry was built around, and remains focused on,
broad access licensing to large scale organizations (universities, government
agencies, large corporations). There is no concept of "retail" access. That is
a different business than they are in, and mostly they don't show any real
interest in learning it.

------
woodandsteel
I hope this is backed up in case Elbakyan isn't able to run it anymore. Sounds
like a case for IPFS, though I don't know if it is up to it yet. Maybe she
should just pass around some HD's.

~~~
lucb1e
Beware my faulty RAM from '93, but I think I remember reading there are
various people mirroring it for various reasons (archiving but also to take it
to places where the site, or the Internet, is unavailable).

------
eecc
Wow, this article hits so close to what annoys me the most of the whole issue
about access. But the comments about peer review are even more interesting, so
I'm chiming in with the hope of finding some people willing to contribute :)

For the past couple years I've been hacking at
[https://github.com/ecausarano/heron/](https://github.com/ecausarano/heron/)
(caveat: pet project, no code reviews, buggy and incomplete, I'm not the best
developer you've ever met.)

The main idea is to bundle a P2P Kademlia based redundant storage and index
with PGP signing. Users sign and publish their papers on the network, build
their academic WOT and filter out crackpots and other rubbish by ignoring
query results originating outside their peer circle. In their role of peers,
users "review and endorse" papers by signing them with their individual key.
Over time you get a globally distributed repository where everybody chips in
some CPU, network and storage, cannot go down unless the internet implodes,
and is legal. At that point journals become pointless and we win! ;)

Contributors very welcome

------
grkvlt
I used to lament the loss of access to journals when our company moved out of
its offices in the University, where we were on the UK academic network JANET.
However, I then discovered that as a graduate of the University of Edinburgh I
had alumnus access to many publishers. There include Springer (where I can
download papers, journal articles, chapters and even eBooks as epub or PDF)
and also JSTOR, Sage, T&F and many others. I have a library account as an
alumnus that gives me access through the UK access management federation
Shibboleth system, which you can usually find as a login option on the paywall
page trying to get you to purchase the full text for thirty dollars. I
recommend that University graduates check to see if their libraries order a
similar system?

Of course, not all publishers offer this access, the University library only
had deals with some of them, so I do find myself using sci-hub as well; but I
try and access things legally first, so that the University and the publisher
can see that there is demand for the alumnus access option, and it is being
actively used...

------
wsha
The current system of journal publication has odd incentives -- paying to be
published and doing peer review for free -- and should be revised in some way.
Unfortunately though the journals provide the metric by which basically all
researchers are judged.

I agree that the world would be a better place if research were freely
available, but the way Sci-Hub is doing this does not help the process, unless
it stresses the system so bad financially that it breaks and is replaced by
something else.

I have wondered about the possibility of all articles being hosted freely on
sites like arxiv.org with some kind of web of trust rating system: anyone
could vote up an article but people in specific fields could choose to view
the aggregate rating of respected researchers in their field.

In any case, until a better rating system for researchers emerges, we can't
get rid of the journal publishers.

------
tajen
How do they source papers? I can't find this detail neither in the article nor
in Sci-Hub's "about" page. Do they install a peer-to-peer client on the
machines of volunteers, so that Elsevier can't make the difference between a
scientist and a pirate scientist? Why then Elsevier doesn't tag each paper
with spelling mistakes so that they can trace the researcher who pirated the
paper?

And, last point, ...should we just give up about copyright protection? Any
country who wants to advance (Russia, now China) needs to cheat on the WTO, it
makes everyone less free and it doesn't work. Even software companies don't
rely on copyright anymore - Microsoft sells to OEMs, not to end-users, and
selling SAAS helps prevent the code from being published because the BSA
approach dosn't work.

~~~
cooper12
I've used it and it seems to use a proxy connection to computers that have
appropriate access to download the paper, and then it caches it server-side
for any future requests. And many journals actually have prominent lines on
the side of every page saying "Downloaded by [name] on [date]"; I'm guessing
it doesn't deter them for whatever reason though.

------
larrypress
I wrote a positive review of Sci-Hub in February
([http://cis471.blogspot.com/2016/02/sci-hub-site-with-open-
an...](http://cis471.blogspot.com/2016/02/sci-hub-site-with-open-and-
pirated.html) ), but just retried it and it failed. I tried retrieving a
couple of my old articles from the Communications of the ACM as well as one
from the current issue and got nothing but error messages -- "too many
redirects" and "500 Internal Server Error." Perhaps they are just having
temporary problems.

------
Frogolocalypse
It was the reason I installed TOR on my computer the other day. All of the
sci-hub mirrors seem to have been shut-down, but the onion site is still up,
and there's little chance that one is going to get closed down.

------
lintiwen
science papers should be free to the public, at least the money should go to
the researchers, not publishers.

~~~
sndean
As a researcher, I don't think the money should go to the researchers. Mostly
because I'd be scared to see what'd happen when research (and wanting to
publish in high impact journals) is completely money-driven.

Simply, the papers should be made immediately free to the public.

------
S_Daedalus
Hopefully there's a better outcome than just lowering prices per unit though.

~~~
bitJericho
Lowering prices? Did music prices actually get lower? I recall always being
able to buy a cd for 10-20 bucks. Prices are only marginally cheaper and only
for digital.

~~~
fwn
With Spotify et al., prices for access to music settled on a low monthly rate.
You get all the music for the price of half a CD a month.

~~~
bitJericho
I'm finding I could have bought 90 percent of the music I've listened to on
Spotify 3x over had I just bought the CDs and not used spotify. (not giving up
spotify, it's just too nice for finding good music)

------
dang
We changed the URL from [https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/29/sci-hub-is-
providing-scien...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/29/sci-hub-is-providing-
science-publishers-with-their-napster-moment/), which points to this.

------
red_blobs
This will only hurt the science community. You need money to fund these
publications and the scientists that are leaking the publications aren't
actually funding the research with their own money.

A better idea would be to fund publications yourself (with your own money) and
release all of the information for free.

But it takes much more talent, intelligence, and discipline to do something
like this, which most people don't have.

~~~
dlgeek
The money to/from the publication doesn't fund the research or the author, or
even the peer reviewers, just the journal itself.

~~~
titanomachy
Yeah, the peer reviewers work for free and the authors actually pay to be in
the journal. It's a deeply broken system.

