Their behavior over the last two decades has been little more than reprehensible rent-seeking. Whatever goodwill they had disappeared as they sapped with increasing ruthlessness the dollars of students and non-profits. See, e.g., one of many such figures: http://www.lib.washington.edu/scholpub/images/economics_grap...
It is absurd and dishonest to call Sci-Hub "piracy", given that all of its contents were originally created and given away with the express goal of wide dissemination.
Totally agree. I have gone through academia and am now in industry; the other day I wanted to read and browse basic papers in IEEE Explore for basic knowledge on new topics. Since I am no longer a student, I am willing to pay money - as much as hundreds to get unlimited access. Instead, for hundreds, IEEE explore offers a measly ("generous") 25 downloads a month or some such non-sense It just seemed so miserly of them. We researchers had formerly given them pretty much free research to publish, and they turn their back on even legitimate paid avenues for us to get the papers. We are willing to pay; but where is the option?
Anyone that has gone through research and academia knows that you often need to browse many papers to even find the ones worth reading. 25 paper cap includes browsing PDFs; you will easily hit that cap in a single day simply through browsing.
IEEE and IEEE Explore can go something themselves. This is coming from a published IEEE author and academic researcher.
I am with you, since pretty much any scientist would love to be cited by another's research, any scientist will send you a copy of their paper if you ask them for it. And since the creator of the work is willing to give it away to you for free, it cannot possibly be "piracy".
Has anyone got a breakdown of actual costs incurred by Elsevier? Note I don't include marketing their journals, I mean a breakdown labour costs, rent for buildings (where the building are located) and other production costs.
I'd like to know their revenue, and a full price list per journal they publish.
I very much believe that if we looked at what they make in profits, we'll see that they can't justify how much they charge. I, for one, have no sympathy for them.
This is an interesting point: if the law allows rent-seeking, people will correct it by breaking the law, at enormous personal risk (for real, it's riskier than selling heroin in terms of prison time). Obviously, the best solution would be to change the law, but good luck with that, given the influence of corporate money.
I'v got a hard time calling this piracy when the "owners" have next to nothing invested in the material's production, and provide even less in return to those who do. What Elsevier is doing is more like kidnapping.
If anyone is having trouble accessing https://scihub.io (the site providing the papers) you can find the site directly at the ip address: https://31.184.194.81/ ... Apparently the domain name was seized. The certificate is for sci-hub.io (safe to accept). Or you can just connect to http://31.184.194.81/ if you don't want to bother with the warnings (and are ok with DOIs and papers being transmitted without encryption).
Have there been attempts at dispersing the whole collection of papers through torrents or IPFS? The goal here is not to have a central location with a pretty web page but to make the content freely accessibly everywhere by anyone. Distributing it over thousands of nodes would achieve that goal.
I was at a conference with a number representatives from various publishers. During a discussion about access control I was basically told that publishers want to enforce specific spatio-temporal constraints on who can view (as in read with human eyeballs) their content based on whether a library or individual paid for it. They make the other content industries look positively benign.
That reminds me of the whole talk around "open standards" that you have to pay for to legally acquire (ANSI, ISO, IEEE, etc.), although in that case the situation is slightly different. Also, the "free software" vs "open source" distinction.
The publishers are either given the material for free and readers have to pay, or the researchers pay the publishers on the order of $2k per page to have their research published as open access. Not great in either case.
Actually, the material wasn't given for free. In many cases you have to pay to get your articles published. There are fees for color figures, for example. All in all, you end up paying significant money to get published. And later people pay to access your articles.
> “Graduate students who want to access an article from the Elsevier system should work with their department chair, professor of the class, or their faculty thesis adviser for assistance.”
Elsevier believes they have United States law on their side. And they're right; they do have US law on their side. That just doesn't mean much anymore; it's been worn away by decades of conspicuous corruption, and lost most of its respect. In principle, this should be addressed by the US legislature. In practice, academia has effectively voted no-confidence and bypassed the legal system entirely.
> In practice, academia has effectively voted no-confidence and bypassed the legal system entirely.
Yup. Seems like civil disobedience from the research community. Pretty interesting to see a civil rights movement happening online. Who says you can't sit at home and be an activist? ;-)
I recently wanted to read a five page paper on graph theory from 1977. The company entrusted with it 40 years ago is charging $38 for it. It is just absurd. I can't imagine that the author, now long dead, would have wanted his work to be so difficult to read.
Yes, it's sad that he would be put in jail for such a "crime" whereas the likes of the CEO of Volkswagen are actually being rewarded millions for much severe crimes in the name of punishment.
It looks like this is EXACTLY what is needed to distrupt this abusive industry. There have been numerous attempts of enforcing a change in positive ways - open access journals, campaigns by researchers and so on. But none of these had any effect.
Let Elsevier go down in flames. I have published more than 50 academic papers and have actively avoided Elsevier. To be honest, this was not too difficult, as they have a lot of journals addressing specialized subtopics that rather seem to appeal to manuscripts that were rejected in first tier journals.
The first three paragraphs of the article clearly tells what is wrong with the system - "Publishers are overcharging for content".
Basically, they just continued their business model from the printed-book era to the e-book era without much change.
The publishers should think of allowing individuals to subscribe to the content and charge them (nominally) for what they use, rather than putting the load on the Universities and making them subscribe the entire spectrum of journals.
The Pay-per-view model of Elsevier currently charges an individual researcher (a staggering) "$31.50 per article or chapter for most Elsevier content. Select titles are priced between $19.95 and $41.95 (subject to change)." [0]
The median wage in Afghanistan is 50,000 AHD per year. Currently the exchange rate for USD to AHD is about 68.3 AHD to 1 USD. So basically, for one article it is about 2,150 AHD, or half the monthly wage of someone with s median income.
I don't feel wrong pirating music or movies (especially considering it's legal in my country). I think trying to apply laws of limited amounts of goods (physical objects) to unlimited amount of goods (digital files) is silly.
So one commenter said that "Journals are used as a proxy for quality", another that they loose so much time browsing through low-quality papers. Isn't the root issue that we need an open and standard way to review, sort and rate all those academics papers ?
Developing voting, flagging, moderating mechanisms, that's what many developers have done for years now on the web. Obviously you wouldn't rate papers like reddit comments but plug arxiv/sci-hub to a system allowing researchers to say what papers they reviewed, what their degree of approval is, eventually where it's been published, who references this paper etc. Seems like Arxiv has an endorsement system but as they say "The endorsement process is not peer review", just a way to reduce spam. Isn't there anything done on this subject ?
I was interviewed for this article though not mentioned in it. My use case isn't mentioned: unaffiliated researchers with limited access to journals doing our own exploration of areas. I've compiled a library of several thousand articles (and via other sources, books) which for both access and portability I prefer electronic versions. My 10" tablet is almost perfect for reading printed material, and functions as a small research library on its own. (Organising this content is another headache -- Android and apps are sadly lacking in this area, one of the few options being Mendalay, owned by, you guessed it, Elsevier. Burn it with fire.)
While I can and do access materials from libraries, including online access, Sci-Hub is both more complete and far more reliable and convenient. Find a resource, plug in the URL or DOI, and I've got it. Versus locating the same reference independently through one of several distinct libraries, each with their own multiple subsystems, authenticating, and sometimes, sometimes not, securing the material.
Another point Bohannon failed to address, which is covered in the discussion here, is the role of journal publishers as gatekeepers not only to content but to careers. Academics, increasingly squeezed by budget retrenchments and awful working conditions[1], must publish through prestige journals in order to establish and advance their careers.
Journal publishers are rent-seeking at both ends of this channel.
Sci-Hub, or as I like to call it, the Library of Alexandra, hs a tour de force demonstration that information is a public good, and that information access wants, and needs to be free. Sci-Hub isn't a complete answer to the problems of current academic publishing (again: publish or perish), but it's a relief valve for many, and an absolute and irrefutable proof of the pressing demands for access.
________________________________
Notes:
1. See the amazingly awful story of a young newlywed biology postdoc who lost her arm in a lab explosion involving an improperly instrumented gas cylinder in which oxygen and hydrogen were being mixed under pressure. This after repeatedly reporting short circuits and electric shocks from the equipment.
I was disappointed the article didn't mention individuals unaffiliated with institutions. What fraction of PhD's have a university job? 20%? These are people who devoted years of their life to reading others' research and doing their own. But if you aren't any more at a university you don't count.
Just as an aside, you could try Zotero - I use it on my laptop and phone and it works pretty well for me. There is a dedicated app as well. https://www.zotero.org/
One of the reasons the deep learning field is moving so fast is that everything is open access. Generally, it's considered prestigious to present at a conference, and not much gets published in journals. The major conferences have been adopting a model of posting first on arxiv and then submitting to the conference, so the reviewers see the paper at the same time as the general public.
The amazing thing is that weeks after the paper hits arxiv, new papers are coming out, improving on the previous one. By the time the paper is accepted and the conference rolls around, it's actually almost old-hat.
Researchers have been (illegally) helping each other out with paper access for years. I used to hang out in the neuroscience group on livejournal years ago, and about half the posts were people asking "Does anyone have access to Foo et al 2012?" and then having it passed along to them by email.
Many years ago, when there was lots more slack, we would request reprints by snail mail. Authors would typically get a few hundred free reprints, and either buy more or have them printed privately.
They may have started servicing a need in the beginning as simply setting up some servers, and serving as a central repository, which I do not understand why this wasn't just setup by some other part like a university or research foundation for public use, but Elsevier have turned that into holding publicly-funded research hostage. You know when you are debating with somebody, and their logic runs out, they start floundering and emoting? That's what the comments from Elsevier are starting to sound like.
I have no problem with them making some money from Ads to help their monthly server hosting and maintenance costs, but they have a weird, self-strangulating business model that is headed nowhere real fast.
I don't get it - some commenters are suggesting that the authors of those papers aren't paid, but the publisher is. Why would the author want to limit the spread and accessibility of his work in such a way?
As an outsider who doesn't have any experience with scientific papers and how to get them, it seems very obvious to me that there should be a huge demand for an open platform to publish and read those papers - from authors and readers alike. Why does this role need to be filled by an at best semi-legal party like SciHub?
The fact that users with legitimate access to those papers actually opt for SciHub to get them confirms that the current solutions just aren't working for their users. So why would authors rely on them?
If the business model of Elsevier/etc somehow collapses, I wonder how universities will make hiring decisions? They high fees of their journals are effectively a recruitment or candidate selection service paid by university libraries and serving departments when they hire faculty. Perhaps they'll have to revert to assessing applicants on their merits instead of such arbitrary metrics as the impact factor of a journal that they published their work in.
[+] [-] leot|10 years ago|reply
Their behavior over the last two decades has been little more than reprehensible rent-seeking. Whatever goodwill they had disappeared as they sapped with increasing ruthlessness the dollars of students and non-profits. See, e.g., one of many such figures: http://www.lib.washington.edu/scholpub/images/economics_grap...
It is absurd and dishonest to call Sci-Hub "piracy", given that all of its contents were originally created and given away with the express goal of wide dissemination.
[+] [-] finfet1|10 years ago|reply
Anyone that has gone through research and academia knows that you often need to browse many papers to even find the ones worth reading. 25 paper cap includes browsing PDFs; you will easily hit that cap in a single day simply through browsing.
IEEE and IEEE Explore can go something themselves. This is coming from a published IEEE author and academic researcher.
[+] [-] nailer|10 years ago|reply
Couldn't the researchers simply publish their own papers? Make torrents etc? Or are they prevented from doing that somehow?
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|10 years ago|reply
I'd like to know their revenue, and a full price list per journal they publish.
I very much believe that if we looked at what they make in profits, we'll see that they can't justify how much they charge. I, for one, have no sympathy for them.
[+] [-] onetwotree|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexqgb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daveguy|10 years ago|reply
EDIT:
Their other domains:
https://sci-hub.cc (uses sci-hub.io certificate)
https://sci-hub.bz (uses a separate certificate and ip address -- 104.28.20.155)
And a tor site: scihub22266oqcxt.onion
[+] [-] alco|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s4chin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majewsky|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taneq|10 years ago|reply
You want everybody to have access, but you don't want them to get it for free.
Wow, so you want the entire world to all pay for the material you were given for free. Hmmmm.
[+] [-] hyperion2010|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zbjornson|10 years ago|reply
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Publication_fees
[+] [-] jwr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joelthelion|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperion2010|10 years ago|reply
Now THAT is chuckle worthy.
[+] [-] Jerry2|10 years ago|reply
The gall of these publishing companies never ceases to amaze.
[+] [-] jimrandomh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] studentrob|10 years ago|reply
Yup. Seems like civil disobedience from the research community. Pretty interesting to see a civil rights movement happening online. Who says you can't sit at home and be an activist? ;-)
[+] [-] bendykstra|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Artoemius|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmptmp|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathancahill|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanlol|10 years ago|reply
For hypothetical crimes he could've committed had he lived? Because he certainly wouldn't be in prison for things he actually did.
[+] [-] kken|10 years ago|reply
Let Elsevier go down in flames. I have published more than 50 academic papers and have actively avoided Elsevier. To be honest, this was not too difficult, as they have a lot of journals addressing specialized subtopics that rather seem to appeal to manuscripts that were rejected in first tier journals.
[+] [-] sachkris|10 years ago|reply
[0] -https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/sciencedirect/content/pay...
[+] [-] chris_wot|10 years ago|reply
That's for one midrange article.
[+] [-] abhi3|10 years ago|reply
This doesn't even feel wrong. These parasites had it coming.
[+] [-] skoczymroczny|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcook|10 years ago|reply
We should strive for a logical explanation that transcends emotional response.
[+] [-] tajen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blaze33|10 years ago|reply
Developing voting, flagging, moderating mechanisms, that's what many developers have done for years now on the web. Obviously you wouldn't rate papers like reddit comments but plug arxiv/sci-hub to a system allowing researchers to say what papers they reviewed, what their degree of approval is, eventually where it's been published, who references this paper etc. Seems like Arxiv has an endorsement system but as they say "The endorsement process is not peer review", just a way to reduce spam. Isn't there anything done on this subject ?
[+] [-] dredmorbius|10 years ago|reply
While I can and do access materials from libraries, including online access, Sci-Hub is both more complete and far more reliable and convenient. Find a resource, plug in the URL or DOI, and I've got it. Versus locating the same reference independently through one of several distinct libraries, each with their own multiple subsystems, authenticating, and sometimes, sometimes not, securing the material.
Another point Bohannon failed to address, which is covered in the discussion here, is the role of journal publishers as gatekeepers not only to content but to careers. Academics, increasingly squeezed by budget retrenchments and awful working conditions[1], must publish through prestige journals in order to establish and advance their careers.
Journal publishers are rent-seeking at both ends of this channel.
Sci-Hub, or as I like to call it, the Library of Alexandra, hs a tour de force demonstration that information is a public good, and that information access wants, and needs to be free. Sci-Hub isn't a complete answer to the problems of current academic publishing (again: publish or perish), but it's a relief valve for many, and an absolute and irrefutable proof of the pressing demands for access.
________________________________
Notes:
1. See the amazingly awful story of a young newlywed biology postdoc who lost her arm in a lab explosion involving an improperly instrumented gas cylinder in which oxygen and hydrogen were being mixed under pressure. This after repeatedly reporting short circuits and electric shocks from the equipment.
http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2016/03/postdoc-loses-arm-in-...
[+] [-] dzdt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sghi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yagyu|10 years ago|reply
http://www.jonaseinarsson.se/2016/only-open-access-peer-revi...
[+] [-] cameldrv|10 years ago|reply
The amazing thing is that weeks after the paper hits arxiv, new papers are coming out, improving on the previous one. By the time the paper is accepted and the conference rolls around, it's actually almost old-hat.
[+] [-] jnsaff2|10 years ago|reply
Am I the only one who thinks this is just the location of AWS us-east-1? People might be using proxies located there or have bulk download jobs.
[+] [-] jmcgough|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maccard|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eggy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thirdsun|10 years ago|reply
As an outsider who doesn't have any experience with scientific papers and how to get them, it seems very obvious to me that there should be a huge demand for an open platform to publish and read those papers - from authors and readers alike. Why does this role need to be filled by an at best semi-legal party like SciHub?
The fact that users with legitimate access to those papers actually opt for SciHub to get them confirms that the current solutions just aren't working for their users. So why would authors rely on them?
[+] [-] Dolores12|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hondor|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|10 years ago|reply