
As Predicted, Elsevier's Attempt To Silence Sci-Hub Has Increased Public Awareness Massively

from the now,-what-do-we-call-that-again? dept

Last month, Techdirt wrote about the growing interest in Sci-Hub, which provides free access to research papers -- more than 47,000,000 of them at the time of writing. As Mike noted then, Elsevier's attempt to make the site go away by suing it has inevitably produced a classic Streisand Effect, whereby many more people know about it as a direct result. That was first pointed out by Mike Taylor in a short post, where he listed a few titles that had written about Sci-Hub. This week, David Rosenthal has produced a kind of update, listing many more posts on the subject that have appeared in the last month alone.

Rosenthal's list includes an article entitled "Should All Research Papers Be Free?" that was published in Sunday's edition of The New York Times. It's probably the most significant contribution to spreading the word about Sci-Hub more widely, but it doesn't really add much to the debate. By contrast, another post mentioned by Rosenthal, found on the Inside Higher Ed's site, and written by the college librarian Barbara Fister, may lack the impact of The New York Times news analysis, but does make some genuinely novel observations about what is going on here.

Fister notes that alongside people who don't have access to the articles they need because they are not affiliated with a well-funded Western library with the right subscriptions, many researchers turn to Sci-Hub because accessing articles has become a complicated and inconvenient process. As she says:

For many folks, Sci-Hub is simply a more convenient library that doesn’t make you mess around with logins and interlibrary loans. Hey, we’re busy. Paywalls are a pain.
Techdirt has written before about this aspect before, and the growing evidence that piracy greatly diminishes once good, easy-to-use legal services become available. However, as Fister rightly says, the current situation is awkward for the people who are supposed to be overseeing those unsatisfactory legal services:
Librarians are in a nasty spot. Sometimes I wonder if we can even call ourselves librarians anymore. We feel we are virtually required to provide access to whatever researchers in our local community ask for while restricting access from anyone outside that narrowly-defined community of users. Instead of curators, we're personal shoppers who moonlight as border guards. This isn’t working out well for anyone. Unaffiliated researchers have to find illegal work-arounds, and faculty who actually have access through libraries are turning to the black market for articles because it seems more efficient than contacting their personal shopper, particularly when the library itself doesn't figure in their work flow. In the meantime, all that money we spend on big bundles of articles (or on purchasing access to articles one at a time when we can't afford the bundle anymore) is just a really high annual rent. We can't preserve what we don't own, and we don't curate because our function is to get what is asked for.
Not only is lack of open access soul-destroying for librarians longing to take a more active and creative role in the provision of information to the academics they support, it comes with a hidden financial cost that has been overlooked:
It is labor -- lots of labor -- to maintain link resolvers, keep [academic journal] license agreements in order, and deal with constant changes in subscription contents. We [librarians] have to work a lot harder to be publishers' border guards than people realize.
That's a hugely important point that I have not seen made elsewhere. Alongside all the other tasks that traditional publishers push onto the academic community -- notably, writing articles and refereeing them for free -- there is another major burden, imposed specifically on librarians, who are forced to spend much of their time acting as the publishers' hated "border guards." That's a tragic waste of their highly-specialized skills, and not what they were employed to do.

This extra cost is yet another reason to move rapidly to open access publishing for all academic work, which would not only legalize Sci-Hub, but make it superfluous.

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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2016 @ 7:56pm

    Not Working

    It seems to have stopped working, if it ever did work. Following the link in the story to Sci-Hub, gets an advertising/explanation page but nothing more. There is a search box that returns a blank page. Anybody know how to make it work?

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Rapnel (profile), 18 Mar 2016 @ 8:36pm

    Just this past week I was thwarted on two attempts trying to access two papers. Cock-blocked by two different angles one a $30 buy in for two days with Elsevier or a $30 dollar download through JSTOR.

    Aaron Swartz was not wrong.

    I can only imagine what libraries have to deal with.

    So many wrongs at so many levels.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2016 @ 8:52am

      Re:

      Wait til you see the 'tweaks' Elsevier puts into some journals it posts.

      They happily change results of studies that go against the people paying them HUGE sums of money (Monsanto etc), then lock the (amended) knowledge behind a huge paywall.

      Not however being stupid, when the original creator of the study goes to download, their account is directed towards the correct versions of the paper, so they don't publicly complain about the small tweaks and adjustments made to their work by paid shills.

      reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        John Fenderson (profile), 20 Mar 2016 @ 11:08am

        Re: Re:

        That doesn't sound right. I'd think that the first time the forged paper were used for any purpose that matters, the original authors sue them for fraud. Or at least make a big stink about it.

        reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Richard Poynder, 19 Mar 2016 @ 12:54am

    Cost of access

    I think it is worth making the point that the costs and management difficulties associated with open access are also very high, not just the costs of paying article-processing charges (gold OA), but also the not insignificant costs of managing these payments *plus* the costs of managing compliance of the growing number of (often incompatible) green OA policies.

    See for instance this: http://bit.ly/1pungH3
    and this: http://bit.ly/1UHtjnD

    The truth is that open access cannot be a solution on its own. Much more will need to be done.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      madasahatter (profile), 19 Mar 2016 @ 8:56am

      Re: Cost of access

      There are several problems with academic publishing. First the publishers often charge the authors a fee to publish. Second the authors are required to surrender their copyright to the publisher. Third the subscriptions and charges per article are unaffordable for most individuals. Fourth, often the research is sponsored by a government agency thus the taxpayers. All are troubling but the last is most.

      Also, the idea of publication and peer review is to get results and theories out to the wider academic community not to make a publishing house rich.

      reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        jul2873 (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 12:08pm

        Re: Re: Cost of access

        Perhaps something could be worked out with Amazon. Even if not, these papers could be self-published very easily and, while Amazon usually won't let anything be free forever, you could price each article at 99 cents. Or, even better, join KindleUnlimited, and then your articles could be downloaded for free, for two weeks, for anyone who joins KindleUnlimited for ten dollars a month.

        Then the article authors would keep complete control and would even get a little money. Plus they could update the article easily, and the comment section that Amazon provides would be a nice discussion vehicle. And a google search will bring up anything in the Amazon databases. It seems like a win/win.

        reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Victor (profile), 19 Mar 2016 @ 1:50am

    Elsevier is winning, at the moment

    There should be free access to scientific research.
    At this moment, Elsevier seems to be winning - if you try to use Sci-Hub, you eventually just get to a page that says:
    The sci-hub.io page isn’t working

    sci-hub.io is currently unable to handle this request.
    However, I think Sci-Hub is making a mistake. Instead of calling for an end to copyright on scientific papers, it should confine itself to providing access for now. The "copyleft" idea applied to software by fsf.org seems applicable to research papers.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Mar 2016 @ 5:06am

    I am wondering if all copyright transfer agreements are valid and enforceable in a court of law, especially those publications sponsored by the government. Authors were not the owners of copyright when they transferred them to publishers. I am sure there are many published articles whose copyright transfer agreements are not enforceable. Let alone those articles that plagiarized other articles. If they can only show some articles infringement of copyright of others' published research, they will prevail. Is the court going to examine each article for content and check the validity of the copyright the publisher is holding? Furthermore, let's not forget the publisher's obligation to disseminate the works of authors and increase their visibility in the digital age.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Mar 2016 @ 5:19am

    First time I've heard of Sci-Hub, so yup - it's working.

    Thanks for the free promotional campaign, Elsevier!

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Binko Barnes (profile), 19 Mar 2016 @ 10:49am

    In a crony capitalist system like we have devolved into organizations will seize lucrative choke points in big systems. They will buy influence with politicians, get beneficial laws passed, place allies on various regulatory agencies, form alliances with other power groups and generally create a fortress where tolls must be paid.

    So far the promise that the digital age would lead to widespread easy access to culture and knowledge is not panning out at all.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      BentFranklin (profile), 19 Mar 2016 @ 1:14pm

      Re:

      Why do people who hate taxes love tolls?

      reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 19 Mar 2016 @ 2:02pm

      Re:

      So far the promise that the digital age would lead to widespread easy access to culture and knowledge is not panning out at all.

      Welcome to the permission society.

      reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2016 @ 7:04am

      Re:

      "So far the promise that the digital age would lead to widespread easy access to culture and knowledge is not panning out at all."

      Or just not fast enough for your liking. It certainly has had many beneficial impacts.

      reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Mar 2016 @ 11:34am

    "So far the promise that the digital age would lead to widespread easy access to culture and knowledge is not panning out at all."

    It's just business as usual, "on the internet."

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 19 Mar 2016 @ 3:35pm

    The Single Biggest Cost ...

    ... of accepting papers for publication is the peer-review process.

    How much do the publishers pay the reviewers for their hard work?

    Not a penny.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Mar 2016 @ 6:09pm

    All publicly funded research results and the papers generated by them - taxpayers footing the bill - should be public domain, not copyrightable by anyone including the researchers themselves as they are works funded primarily, if not entirely by government agencies. No exceptions should be made and no patents should be issued for any such research. Publicly funded means owned by the public not by the universities, not by private corporations, and not by the individuals. Congress needs to grow a pair and stop bowing to corporate interests.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ryunosuke (profile), 19 Mar 2016 @ 6:33pm

    something that hasnt come up

    if the internet is a repository of human knowledge, but if that knowledge is locked up, what then, becomes the Internet? A repository of Dick/cat/meme pictures? Is THAT the end sum of Human Knowledge?

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Mar 2016 @ 6:55pm

    Sci-Hub wouldn't exist if the Open Access movement was successful. The fact that it does demonstrates the utter failure of that movement.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2016 @ 1:49am

      Re:

      It does not indicate a failure of the open access movement, as that movement can only make new papers freely available, but rather a problem with papers from the past nearly two centuries being locked up. Many of those papers are foundational to many areas of research.
      Science really does stand on the shoulders of those who went before, and the Elseviers of the world want to extract a tol from, andlcontrol who can stand on those shoulders.

      reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    tracyanne, 19 Mar 2016 @ 8:10pm

    I'm not having any trouble

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Josh (profile), 21 Mar 2016 @ 7:06am

    Language

    I was able to search for several topics, so I will be looking more into this. My one issue is that the results page is outlined in Russian and there's no way that I am able to change it to something else(English).

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Mar 2016 @ 10:57am

    Thanks for the heads up, ignorance is not bliss.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    michael, 21 Mar 2016 @ 1:30pm

    Price inflation of library databases

    You left out the part where the cost of database access has risen far faster than the rate of inflation, averaging up to 10% per year for the larger academic databases.

    This means that a university library with a stagnant budget (which is unusual, because cuts are the norm lately) is seeing the equivalent of a 10% *decrease* in their collections budget every year. And since they're just renting all this information rather than buying it, failure to pay means that access evaporates.

    As a librarian, I can't help but place a large part of the blame on my librarian colleagues. None of us should EVER have agreed to pay for temporary access to anything. Libraries -- particularly academic libraries -- exist to maintain information forever, yet we've entered into contracts that give away that important role to people who don't care at all about providing access and just want to make a buck.

    reply to this | link to this | view in chronology ]


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