
Science’s Pirate Queen - IntronExon
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16985666/alexandra-elbakyan-sci-hub-open-access-science-papers-lawsuit
======
afpx
To me, Alexandra Elbakyan is kind of like a Martin Luther of science. That is,
she enables the lay public to read and interpret science rather than awaiting
the interpretation and approval of academics from high-status institutions.
That may be a ‘sacrilege’ view here, given the audience of HN. And, in a way,
I do feel somewhat nervous of people making decisions based on papers they
read without understanding of the philosophy and practice of science. Yet,
it’s unavoidable and already being done through popular journalism.

With sci-hub (and with some reference books obtained via libgen), science
becomes accessible to everyone with basic scientific literacy - a surprising
large number of people. I see these two tools together as enablers of a new
generation of scientists. For instance, recently I have seen many of my
collegues and friends sending me direct links to research papers. That’s crazy
and would have never happened just a few years ago. These tools will drive the
democratization of science. Just as I now see the religious kids at the coffee
shop discussing their scripture, I hope to soon see science kids there
discussing classic science papers - doing it not for economic or career
reasons, but simply to understand and discover.

To me, that’s not an economic issue but one of morality.

~~~
andrepd
>she enables the lay public to read and interpret science rather than awaiting
the interpretation and approval of academics from high-status institutions

>science becomes accessible to everyone with basic scientific literacy

The thing is most research papers are simply not accessible to neophytes; you
often need to dedicate a significant portion of your life to the study of a
given field in order to understand and critically evaluate the latest research
in that field. It's not that academics are sitting in a high throne, dictating
what is truth and what is not, its that you _need_ to be an academic with many
years of formation in order to understand, let alone improve, the research
that is being undertaken. A "basic science literacy" isn't enough.

Still, it's very positive that, in principle, anyone can grab a book or three
of libgen, study hard, become knowledgeable in the field, then grab as many
papers as they want off libgen and read and interpret them. That's undoubtedly
very positive.

~~~
totalZero
I would argue that most people who studied an empirical discipline in college
and did ok (good school and/or good grades) can pick up a paper and, using the
internet, understand and critique it creatively within three weeks. The basic
idea of science (minus a little nuance) is "I'll believe it when I see it, and
I can show that it can't be explained otherwise." This isn't too much to think
about.

If a paper doesn't link back to its foundations directly (citations) and
clarify its assumptions, that isn't the fault of the reader.

One really dumb thing that many academics do is, in an effort to be respected
in their field or accepted to a solid paper or a good conference, they write
obscurely. With very few exceptions, this results in bad science writing
because the point of science writing is to express clearly and precisely the
steps and formulations that lead to an ideological or project accomplishment.
But that bad writing doesn't make the paper less intelligible for normal
people. It simply makes it take longer to read, for a typical person.

One of the reasons it's easier to understand research than to do it, is that
it's easier to verify a solution than to create it. This is the famous
Columbus' Egg, and it is a principle that should be well known to computer
scientists who understand the time complexity of verification versus solution.

So, I argue that basic science literacy is enough to understand and critique.
Verification of an idea is different than creating it. Papers that don't
reference how they fit into their field are flawed in a way that can't be
blamed on the reader. Obscure, bad writing doesn't change the meaning of a
paper, even if it hides it. And the basic tool of science is a pretty
accessible idea.

~~~
eesmith
Would you care to put that argument to a test?

Because it appear to me that papers like (picking one from the front page of
cell.com) [http://www.cell.com/molecular-
cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(18)30...](http://www.cell.com/molecular-
cell/fulltext/S1097-2765\(18\)30039-X) "A Metabolic Basis for Endothelial-to-
Mesenchymal Transition" require a lot of specialized knowledge to understand.

The same for
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.02935](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.02935)
"Suppression and revival of long-range ferromagnetic order in the multiorbital
Fermi-Hubbard model", picked from a recent arxiv.org preprint in condensed
matter physics.

Or "High-Content Surface and Total Expression siRNA Kinase Library Screen with
VX-809 Treatment Reveals Kinase Targets that Enhance F508del-CFTR Rescue" from
[https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.7b00928](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.7b00928)
.

What does "critique it creatively" mean?

I remember how long it took me, as a young smithling in graduate school, to
read a scientific paper, in the field I was entering, where I had several
years of education. It took a while to understand the literature, and even
longer to be able to critique the literature in any more than superficial way.

I don't follow your comment "If a paper doesn't link back to its foundations
directly". Papers are often like a skyscraper. The 50th floor links back to
the 49th, which links back to the 48th. There are support structures which
might span a few dozen floors, and (to stretch the analogy), express elevators
connecting it to the ground floor.

But few papers really reference the foundations, because the audience is
expected to know the foundations.

~~~
pessimizer
Are these characteristic papers, or the densest ones you could find? I submit
that the vast majority of papers can be understood by people who have had
about 4 years of university, and another 3-4 years of post-graduate education.
Do you really believe that cobbling some portion of this study together over a
lifetime is not even possible, or maybe even something that would be
increasingly common, with access to the literature?

People have endless time to become experts on quackery and pop science;
wouldn't it be nice to start seeing people who have taken up actual science as
a hobby, and take it seriously enough to hold themselves to the same standards
as professionals - or as seriously as the 20-somethings that are often writing
these things?

Also, plenty of people get professional training, and end up working outside
of the field. What if they want to continue learning? Is it somehow physically
impossible for them to understand journal articles if they are not connected
to an institution with journal subscriptions, even with training?

~~~
eesmith
They were not the densest ones I could find. Not by far. I'm surprised you
even thought of it. How many science articles not in your field have you read?

Take a look at the other articles in the current issue of Cell, at
[http://www.cell.com/cell/current](http://www.cell.com/cell/current) . (This
is one of the journals with the highest impact factors, so is less likely to
consider the deliberately opaque language you mention.) You'll see the one I
gave was not even the densest in that issue. Here are the titles to some of
the others:

"Fast-Spiking Interneurons Supply Feedforward Control of Bursting, Calcium,
and Plasticity for Efficient Learning", "In Situ Structure of Neuronal C9orf72
Poly-GA Aggregates Reveals Proteasome Recruitment", "5-HT2C Receptor
Structures Reveal the Structural Basis of GPCR Polypharmacology", "Abstract
Image Multiscale Structuring of the E. coli Chromosome by Nucleoid-Associated
and Condensin Proteins", or "KRAS Dimerization Impacts MEK Inhibitor
Sensitivity and Oncogenic Activity of Mutant KRAS".

I submit that your original statement, that "most people who studied an
empirical discipline in college and did ok (good school and/or good grades)
can pick up a paper and, using the internet, understand and critique it
creatively within three weeks." is woefully undervaluing the expertise needed
for each field.

I have 3 years of post-graduate education in physics. I can't read a chemistry
paper for the life of me. I never even took organic chemistry. I find the idea
that I can critique a paper on, say, some new reaction, with only a few weeks
of internet-based research, to be ludicrous.

I note that you appear to have changed your statement. Originally it was just
college, and now it's "another 3-4 years of post-graduate education."
Originally it was "creatively within three weeks" and now it's "understand
journal articles" with no time limit.

It feels like you think my objection to your original claim is representative
of some absolute stance of mine against amateurism. As an amateur historian, I
do not see how you have made that shift, nor do hold that opinion.

I don't understand the relevancy of your second paragraph at all. People get
into quackery and pop science because it seems easy, and it comes with the
built-in belief that experts are wrong and can be ignored.

If anything, it is the quacks and fringe science people who believe that three
weeks of research is enough for them to be able to critique the standard views
on evolution, global warming, chemtrails, pyramid construction, shape of the
earth, etc., and critique to such a level that they should be listened to.

Nor do I understand the relevancy of your third paragraph. Could you clarify
how you drew that inference from what I wrote? I am not connected to an
institution with journal subscriptions yet I read and understand journal
articles (acquired through ILL, links from Google Scholar, and yes, even Sci-
Hub), so obviously I think it's physically possible for that to happen.

Are you sure you haven't just misunderstood my previous comment?

~~~
sitkack
You aren't wrong, but I am not sure where you are going with this?

~~~
eesmith
I was expressing a disagreement with the argument originaly made by totalZero
and expanded upon by pessimizer.

I'm pretty much going where most HN comment threads go - nowhere.

Where are you going by making a metacomment?

------
namelost
_That same year, the AAP and Elsevier also supported and lobbied in favor of a
bill that would have prevented the government from requiring agencies to make
research published through a journal Open Access at any point_

I realize I shouldn't be surprised, but that shocked me. God forbid taxpayers
should have access to the research they paid for. How these organizations
expect any public sympathy is beyond me.

~~~
spystath
In comparison several European countries are increasingly mandating that
publicly funded research should be open access. Why this simple concept would
elude the US government is beyond me.

However Open Access is not panacea. Most of the times it just moves the cost
from the subscriber to the author. The open access costs are equally
extortionate for several journals in the ballpark of £2000 for a single
article. As a result publicly funded grants must also include a quite
significant budget for publishing costs further inflating the already bloated
administrative overhead of research programmes. So you either pay the journals
to open up your article or pay for a subscription. It does increase visibility
and accessibility of research but, still, we are not quite there yet.

~~~
gowld
There's no need to pay a publisher £2000. The authors can self-publish.

~~~
probably_wrong
Self-publishing is not without its problems.

Peer review, while not perfect, guarantees that the text has been reviewed by
quality researchers. Journals have an interest in filtering bad publications,
if only to keep their reputation.

In contrast, a self-published paper has no guarantee of quality, simply
because everyone can do it. An author's reputation is often a proxy to assess
a publication's quality, but this is clearly bad for new researchers.

I think there are good alternatives - my last publication costed around $300,
which were used to pay for the conference where I presented it.

~~~
daddosi
Ah, so we simply create a protocol that transparantly breaks down the peer
review process into a rainbow of gradients thereby allowing the desired
process of review by what you call quality reseachers. Such protocol could
allow a review-for-free mechanism that could be time consuming and it could
build a fund for the review process. Arguably the review process needs not to
be finished at any time. It is probably big fun to revisit the process in the
licht of later findings. Lastly but not least the protocol could help
establish a name for reviewing scientists who just happen to do a lot of
reading. A (large) bit like github does for programmers.

------
ggm
We are all interacting with this HN website over technology whose very
underpinnings was the assumption _its freely available_ -The protocol stack,
the application-to-protocol bindings, the definitions which a program source
code represents, the compiler tools..

Am I alone in seeing the contradictions, of people defending for-profit
science publishing, using a vehicle whose very existence is predicated on
government funded science and technology coming with 'its free' as a
requirement?

~~~
aaron-lebo
Do you believe the tech industry is so different with its walled gardens,
proprietary software, and closed protocols built off of decades of publicly
funded research and infrastructure? Why?

Is it contradictory to support an industry which does that while supporting
this? Would you be for the liberation of Google's property?

~~~
dnautics
It's categorically different. The arrow is in the opposite direction. The tech
industry's private siloed stacks are built on top of that public
infrastructure and are an elaboration of it. Whereas the publishing industry's
walled gardens are the foundation upon which public research is built.

~~~
amelius
It's the same.

Publishers are the "gateway" to science, and they have cornered that market,
using publicly funded science.

Google is the "gateway" to search, built largely using publicly funded
science. Facebook is the gateway to online social interaction, and is again
built largely using publicly funded science. Et cetera.

~~~
dnautics
"built using publicly funded..." Is not the relevant direction. You'll come to
absurd conclusions. A building in San Francisco is literally built using
publicly funded safety science, and materials science, etc. Should we then
force it to be free to access?

~~~
amelius
A building is not information, in the sense that you cannot freely copy it.

------
degenerate
@Sci_Hub twitter:

"Unfortunately, the Verge article about Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan has
many inaccuracies"

"I'm going to publish a separate blog post explaining the inaccuracies later"

[https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961829490803449856](https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961829490803449856)

[https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961836113731072003](https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961836113731072003)

------
Finnucane
"Publishing powerhouses like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
have estimated its internal cost per-article to be around $3,700. Nature,
meanwhile, says that each article sets it back around $30,000 to $40,000"

I work in book publishing, not journals, so I may be missing something in
Nature's internal structure, but that seems like a lot to spend on one
article. As in I think we spend less than that to do a whole book.

~~~
IanCal
[disclaimer, work for Digital Science, whose parent company owns the parent
(or just merged?) company that produces Nature, my own thoughts etc.]

Nature have paid editors who also review articles before they go out for peer
review, which means they have fairly obvious costs per article _submitted_ (on
top of other things like organising peer review). However, you don't pay to
submit, you only pay if you're accepted. Nature accepts, I think, about 5% of
the articles submitted to them. That means that for every fixed cost per
submission the cost per paper published is 20x higher.

~~~
remus
Is paying editors typical for a journal? Id guess Nature is comparatively well
off financially, so would smaller journals be able to afford to pay editors in
the same way?

~~~
IanCal
In general (as far as I'm aware), no, it's not usually the case.

------
wasx
> But if America’s access were further restricted, it would be a blow to the
> site, and to many of the “capitalists” that use it.

The Verge are definitely misunderstanding Elbakyan when she says this:

>"the capitalists have started blocking Sci-Hub domains, so the site may not
be accessible at the regular addresses."

Elbakyan is referring to Elsevier and the ACS and the other major publishes
putting pressure on SciHub and making it inaccessible. No capitalists are
using the service in the Marxist sense of the word "capitalist" which is
definitely what Elbakyan was going for.

The Verge's writing here misrepresents what she's saying, and truly does
change the message of what she has said. I think they need to edit and fix
that.

~~~
Vinnl
Elbakyan says so herself as well:
[https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961829490803449856](https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961829490803449856)

And she'll go into more detail later:
[https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961836113731072003](https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961836113731072003)

------
killjoywashere
First it was music, then it was movies, Google took books off the table by
accident, now journal articles. You can see where this is going: small
subscriptions for millions of subscribers world-wide. Amazon Prime, YouTube
Red, or Spotify for scientists. My questions: 1) can I as an author get 30%
like musicians on iTunes?, 2) will this make science more attractive as a
career?

~~~
Fomite
1) Probably not. People want to _produce_ papers more than people want to
_consume_ papers.

2) Also probably not. Because most papers aren't read widely. The folks I know
who have things that generate a small drip of royalties (usually licenses from
patents) treat it as a nice little bit of fun-money, but it's nowhere near
enough to either fund a lab or really change the calculus of "Is this job
worth doing" from a monetary perspective.

Especially when compared to "Fuck it, I'll go work for industry."

~~~
jobigoud
Based on bibliographic notes alone we can say that for each produced paper, a
lot more are consumed.

~~~
gus_massa
Most of the references were also in the last paper of the authors, and will
almost surreally be in the next paper. (And there are also self citations ...)

I'd probably divide the number of citation in math by 3 and in physics by 5 to
discount repetitions.

------
michaelbuckbee
The article (and the discussion here) seems very focused on the legalities of
Sci-Hub. But this misses the real question:

Has there been a noticeable impact on general scientific progress as a result?

I feel like there must at least be anecdotal stories of people reading,
exploring and making connections they otherwise would not have been able to
because free > $35/paper.

~~~
tzs
> I feel like there must at least be anecdotal stories of people reading,
> exploring and making connections they otherwise would not have been able to
> because free > $35/paper.

And I wonder how many of those people don't know about DeepDyve.com? It's
essentially Spotify for journals. The $49/month ($30/month if you buy a yearly
subscription) plan gives unlimited online access to most papers from a huge
list of journals [1] from a huge list of publishers [2]. (There are also group
plans available, but they don't list the prices for those on their website, as
far as I can see).

You can also buy 5 packs of rental tokens for $20. A rental token gives you
access to an article for 30 days. People on the free plan get 5-minute full
text previews, so you can at least skim an article to get a better idea if you
want to consume a token to rent it.

Open access is much nicer, of course, but most cases I've seen where someone
says that the cost of non-open access, such as the $35/paper so many
publishers charge if you buy directly through them, was a serious issue to
their research would have been able to get those papers through DeepDyve at a
cost well within their budget, but for some reason very few people in the wild
seem to have heard of it even though it has been around for quite a while.

[1]
[https://www.deepdyve.com/browse/journals?page=all](https://www.deepdyve.com/browse/journals?page=all)

[2]
[https://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers](https://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers)

~~~
icelancer
Hadn't heard of DeepDyve and I'm always willing to look into paying for
something using that type of model.

Out of five major journals in my discipline, four are "Preview Only."

What a surprise. "Huge list," indeed.

~~~
tzs
> Out of five major journals in my discipline, four are "Preview Only."

What discipline?

> What a surprise. "Huge list," indeed.

The journal list there lists ~13100 journals, of which ~9200 are available and
~3900 are preview only. Seems reasonable huge to me.

~~~
noddy1
Just as spotify for music has almost everything, "spotify for journals" needs
to have 80-90%+ coverage or it is an annoying waste of time.

------
lambdadmitry
Finally an article that dips into Elbakyan's worldview and motivations. I
_hate_ the typical lazy coverage which projects American "civil rights hero"
stereotype on her. She isn't, she is borderline crazy person (that is, self-
proclaimed "communist" supporting Putin's crony capitalism) with no fear of
consequences and with incentives aligned with the majority of scientific
community. It can be made into a _much_ richer and personal story than your
typical "fight the man" trope, but most journalists can't be bothered.

~~~
jcloud_dev
I wish your comment was higher. You describe her personality quite accurately,
based on what I know. That being said, "borderline crazy person with no fear
of consequences" is the exactly the type of people that can push humanity
forward.

Richard Stallman is another example of such a person, I think. You have to be
an extremist to make other players in the field to yield.

~~~
lambdadmitry
Yes, I guess you can do that comparison with Richard Stallman if you are
willing to disregard what they stand for ("free as in freedom" vs "glory to
Motherland").

~~~
bitwize
What about "¡Viva la Revolución!"? Stallman was an ardent supporter of the
Chávez regime in Venezuela. It took him some years to realize that Chávez was,
to put it mildly, kind of a dick.

------
icelancer
Sci-Hub's Twitter says there are "many inaccuracies" regarding the Verge
article.

[https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961829490803449856](https://twitter.com/Sci_Hub/status/961829490803449856)

------
philonoist
In good old days, there used to be DC++. Currently I use what is touted as the
best client for it AirDC++.

Why can't peer to peer file sharing like Direct Connect be used for such
purposes? People have successfully used i2p, torrents, emule,etc.?

Can they be tracked and shut down?

~~~
romwell
LibGen's contents can be donwloaded/distributed over torrents. Participate!

------
romwell
Knew from the title it's going to be about SciHub.

As someone who is just out of a grad programme and no longer has access to the
university network, I'm incredibly thankful to her.

I wish putting papers on ArXiV were the norm in all disciplines, not just
math/physics/cs, but until that happens, this is the answer (and when it does,
SciHub will essentially become a mirror). The licensing deals that the
publishers have made with countries like Germany are still extortion, and
aren't a solution.

You can learn more about SciHub, and LibGin (a similar project for science
books which mirrors SciHub articles) from Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub)

The Wiki page also lists mirrors, in case any of the domains are blocked.

If you have some bitcoin to spare, SciHub is donation-supported, and you can
help the fight to make science available to the people that do it - and
everyone else.

\----------------------------

For those out of the loop: currently, access to papers done by scientists
(paid for by government/their home institution), typeset by the same
scientists, reviewed by their peers (for free) and distributed electronically
costs bug bucks to access.

The publishers still cite hosting/maintenance costs as a justification, and
yet when someone manages to do the same for free (e.g. SciHub), the publishers
go to war.

SciHub demonstrates that hosting costs are not a justification for atrocious
access fees (to the tune of $30 to see one paper!), and yet the racketeering
scheme (a relic from the days of Guttenberg's press) still, somehow, persists.

To address this problem, people in certain disciplines (math, physics)
currently publish their pre-prints online on sites like ArXiV and their own
university pages. However, these self-publication methods are not peer-
reviewed, and so are not a direct solution to the problem. Some big-name
scientists have started open-access online journals, but it's hard to get
everyone on board, as academic performance evaluations are based on
publications in well-established journals -- so only established academics can
afford to be published in new journals when more established alternatives are
present, but have little motivation to do so, since the university pays the
access fee anyway.

SciHub is the interim solution to this chicken-and-egg problem. The long-term
solution is still SciHub, but legal. Alexandra Elbakyan has done the footwork
on the implementation side, the rest of the battle is going to be social
(getting the academics on board) and legal (preventing the publishers like
Elsevier from crushing the initiative, and, in the long run, destroying their
monopoly on providing access to government-funded research altogether -- which
means, effectively, wiping them out altogether).

All of this is talked about in the article in more detail.

~~~
Cyph0n
It's LibGen, not LibGin.

~~~
userbinator
In another era, LibGin is a library about illicit alcoholic beverage
production.

~~~
romwell
This would be ginious!

------
ohum
Sci-hub, and the availability of research, have been and is, something to be
grateful for.

It seems like fear is the motivating function for restriction of knowledge,
and that is understandable.

"Science's...Queen"

------
mirimir
Requisite: [http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion](http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion)

------
aaavl2821
The academic publishing model, and academic research in general, will be
dramatically different in 15 years, maybe fewer

In california, venture capital already funds more research than the NIH ($5B
vs $1.5-2B). Much of this is one step later stage than academic research but
increasingly they overlap directly. VC funding for life science research is
skyrocketing, and NIH funding is declining. In January 2018 alone there was
$1B invested in seed or series a biotech deals which is more than Stanford
gets from the NIH in two years

The fact is that the publication bias is ruining scientific quality. Anywhere
from 40-75% of academic science isn't reproducible, either because of chance,
poor quality control / documentation, cherry picking data or outright fraud.
The list of researchers and universities that VCs and pharma will work with is
quite small, and many VCs are just funding the basic science themselves rather
than invest in stuff that just doesn't work half the time
[https://lifescivc.com/2011/03/academic-bias-biotech-
failures...](https://lifescivc.com/2011/03/academic-bias-biotech-failures/)

Young scientists are treated horribly by the academic world, with brilliant
PhDs and postdocs with 15 years of research experience in top labs making
barely minimum wage with no hope of tenure. Many universities make it very
hard for students to explore non academic jobs because they realize they have
the most highly educated captive workforce the world has ever seen

If a good alternative to working in academia opens up, things will change fast

~~~
breck
NIH puts over $30B into research annually. ([https://www.nih.gov/about-
nih/what-we-do/budget](https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget))

~~~
aaavl2821
I was referring to CA funding not total budget. VC funds $15B / year; top 15
pharma funds $75B. VC and NIh funding are closer when you consider overhead
and non-life sci research

------
wiz21c
What is an "open" paper ? I mean, the paper is a very succinct description of
the research done. For example, if one demonstrates how one builds a CNN but
at the same time, doesn't provide the data set used to build it, then it's
worthless. In the same vein, if one provides explanations on how to detect
motion in a picture but doesn't provide the full source code of its detection
pipeline, then it may be super tough to rebuild that code (because it assumes
the paper actually gives all the _necessary_ information, not the "general
idea"))

So, how open is open ?

~~~
kuschku
This is why about 90% of the papers Google publishes are useless.

They describe deep learning successes, with datasets that aren't public, on
hardware that isn't public, with software that isn't public.

They describe technologies, be it spanner, borg, flumejava or others, relying
on closed hard- and software.

If an average university professor can't replicate research 1:1 based solely
on existing, open technology and the paper, the paper should not be accepted
by any journal. In fact, it shouldn't even be accepted on conferences, or be
able to get a doi code. That's not worthy of being called science.

~~~
dagw
While I obviously agree that fully reproducible results is the ideal, just
knowing that something is possible and having some idea where to start is
often valuable in itself.

~~~
kuschku
First of all, if it’s not reproducible, it’s not science. The entire point of
science is getting results that give insight to others.

Second, often the papers set prerequisites that are not available to anyone
else, because these, too, are undocumented.

This is cool if you want an inspiration, but large parts of these papers are
as useful as watching Star Trek for actual science. They can serve as
inspiration, but they can’t tell you how to replicate something, or give you
possible leads to expand on it.

And this issue gets even worse – if I’m writing an undergrad thesis on a tech
that Google has several years lead on, my thesis won’t be able to produce
anything new. I can’t expand on the state of the art, because the state of the
art isn’t even available to me.

------
MaysonL
I wonder what would happen if Apple bought Elsevier, and made all of its
journals available on any Apple device for $100/yr? A reasonable thing to do
with its cash hoard, no? Amazon, or Bezos, could probably raise the money to
swing a hostile takeover.

~~~
jacquesm
> I wonder what would happen if Apple bought Elsevier

I'd much rather see them go down than be bought out.

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znpy
I wonder if she needs financial support for lawyers and stuff. I would gladly
make a donation.

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daddosi
Dumb question:

How make a free high impact journal?

~~~
grzm
Rather than answer this outright (as I don't have a complete answer), I'd
encourage you to imagine what some of the things that would make a high impact
journal, one that you'd find useful. Even if you don't have all of the
answers, that would move the ball forward a bit, and put some skin in the
game/conversation, as it were. What would make the journal high impact? Would
there be costs associated with that? If so, how would you fund it?

------
frankzander
Modern heros

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fwdpropaganda
What's the reason this entire thing isn't already entirely over torrent?

~~~
icelancer
It is. LibGen is available via torrent.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
But no search function, is that it?

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M_Bakhtiari
Considering that scientific publishing is a racket[1], I find it very hard to
have any sympathy whatsoever for the likes of Elsevier

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15993603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15993603)

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ybrah
I like to see this for what it is, piracy. If I want access to a paper, I have
sci-hub and that's beneficial to me. I'm saying its a good thing.

Sidenote: those pictures are creepy.

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incompatible
It's interesting how Elbakyan generally receives only praise in discussions
like this. Do no supporters of capitalism want to denounce this self-styled
communist and complain about the harm done to the profits of law-abiding
businesses like Elsevier?

~~~
jiggunjer
A capitalist would only complain if a government was the pirate. An individual
pirate (group) is just a disrupting competitor to one type of business.

~~~
incompatible
Not really, since the system has been set up with the journal articles
designated as intellectual property, unauthorised access to that property is
treated as theft, regardless who is doing it.

~~~
gowld
That's orthogonal to capitalism, which is simply the economic activity of
extracting rent from a resource ("capital") the capitalist controls.

~~~
incompatible
If articles weren't treated as capital, there'd be no place for capitalism as
far as I can see. The articles would just be hosted on an archive.org /
Wikimedia / arXiv - style website, and Sci-Hub already shows it can be done on
a shoestring budget.

But that would be communism (I suppose) and I was asking if anyone was
defending capitalism in this instance.

~~~
icelancer
Styles of economic structure have nothing to do with how research is
disseminated.

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rasengan0
Who's the thief? and who are they hurting?

I have a response but that comment reply will cost 0.000000001BTC

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indubitable
Can somebody explain the exact process for free access that people would
propose? Most options seem to come with significant and foreseeable
'unforeseen consequences.'

For instance if the idea is that research is submitted to a private journal,
as typical, but then the journal is not allowed to charge a fee then that is
going to rather lower their prioritization of submissions from public
research.

A far worse idea would be government covering the journal fees which would do
the exact opposite and overly incentivize public research as companies could
send their publication fees through the roof and still have them paid due to
government price insensitivity.

Maybe another idea would to have a public government research journal where
all research that received public funding is freely available. But this also
runs into many problems. One would be that the fundamental point of a journal
is to work as a filtering mechanism. We might argue that a lot of mediocre
science gets published today, even in more reputable journals. And that's
after some odd 80%+ of papers, for those more reputable journals, is rejected.
A government clearing house would lose its purpose as a quality filter. And it
would also run into the same problems as #1 if we then have the authors submit
it in the private industry, where publishing rights/exclusivity are typically
part of the model.

So what's the idea?

~~~
gowld
The problem is solved, save for entrenched incumbents.

Open Access: PLoS [https://www.plos.org/](https://www.plos.org/)

Closed Access: (P)PNAS
[https://www.google.com/search?q=ppnas](https://www.google.com/search?q=ppnas)
[http://andrewgelman.com/2017/10/04/breaking-pnas-changes-
slo...](http://andrewgelman.com/2017/10/04/breaking-pnas-changes-slogan/)

Closed Access journals DO NOT serve as a quality filter. The unpaid peer-
reviewers serve as a quality filter (and often a poot one anyway).

~~~
Fomite
Despite publishing in PLoS journals a fair amount, I'm not a huge fan of the
actual customer experience of publishing on their platform. I once seriously
gave up first authorship on a paper in exchange for not having to deal with
PLoS Currents' submission system.

Similarly, the BMC-system appears to be having serious issues with turning
around papers swiftly enough.

------
meri_dian
Here's one thing I don't understand about the call for open access.

Academic papers are not read by the general public because they are dense and
usually very technical, accessible to researchers in that field but not really
to many others.

Given this, the subtext to arguments for open access that journal fees are
stifling scientific awareness or potential research by depriving the public
seems incorrect.

Because a relatively small specialist community actually consumes scientific
literature, I don't see paid journals as some egregious societal inefficiency.

Universities make so much money nowadays that it's certainly a travesty if
researchers have to pay for access to these journals themselves, but the point
remains that it just doesn't seem like that big of a deal that the public
doesn't have free access to scientific journals.

~~~
aaron-lebo
There is a realist argument and the argument that wins support.

Realistically, most people won't touch scientific papers. You might get a few
people who can wrangle up incredible things from them, but those people would
have succeeded in any environment. Most research will continue to be done at
major institutions like companies and universities.

But that appeal to the heart is a winning argument, and it's not wrong. Open
access in the end is a good thing, even if the arguments for it are stretched,
and they are stretched. I don't trust a lot of my own colleagues to
bulletproof their papers (get in a graduate course, you'll see how many holes
are in most research), the general public with no scientific training is at
best limited and at worst dangerous.

It is a natural step, though. Your's won't be a popular question (do we really
have to downvote the guy for asking a question, even if you don't like that
question?), but it's a good one.

~~~
meri_dian
Thanks for the understanding. I just wonder sometimes, if open everything is
always good. I get that complete openness is part of the zeitgeist on this
site and within the dominant liberal western social and political philosophy,
but openness can sometimes lead to unintended negative consequences.

I believe that specialists in a field are the ones who will actually make use
papers. Specialists should have access, that's something I can get behind, but
the general public as you say won't make use of research.

I understand what you're saying about appealing to emotion though.

~~~
gowld
Closedness usually leads to unintended negative consequences, as well-
evidenced throughout history. Openness sometimes leads to unintended negative
consequences.

