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Comment by jfaucett | Hacker News Reader

"As a result of the legal battle the site (sci-hub.io) just lost one of its latest domain names. However, the site has no intentions of backing down, and will continue its fight to keep access to scientific knowledge free and open."

Does this not enrage people? Elsevier and closed-access journals like them, are doing all they can to impede human progress while leaching off of tax-payer dollars to do so. Something should be done to make what Elsevier and the like do illegal, are there any groups/political parties/etc going after them?

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"Does this not enrage people?"

I think I have rage-fatigue, with all the swindles, con-jobs and injustices I've seen. But I do recognize this as utter bullshit. Though unfortunately every other effort to take from the commons, charge money for it, and build a private fortune, throughout history, has also been bullshit; hence the rage-fatigue.

This and things like it, do enrage people, and that's why in the US they gravitate toward Sanders, Trump, nihilism, and crime.

Rage-fatigue is a fantastic way to describe it. People have so many things to worry about already. Their jobs, their families, their college loans, their retirement... Frankly, some publisher charging for access to scientific papers paid for by taxpayers is going to be pretty low on their list of priorities.

I'm fascinated by this. Because we all feel the same, but no efficient solution emerges from this tensions. Or only rarely. We should study this and learn how to make catalysts to trigger change.

Are you refering to things like change.org? I am not sure what's the success rate of those models but on the surface they seem quite ineffective to bring any substantial change.

change.org is just petitions right ?

I meant something more tangible. A way to assess issues, classify, organize, root them in the economical context and try to find a better organization to resolve tensions.

The problem is that for any such systems to operate, you need experts. If you democratize too much, you end up risking with ignorant and inefficient long term solutions (like Trump). And with experts, there will always be some scope of corruption. Unless we are talking AI experts that are similar to IBM's Watson.

Very good point. I was hoping for a middle ground where people would reach a better understanding and solve their issues by communicating. But maybe that's unnatural and just a pipe dream.

>>Does this not enrage people? Elsevier and closed-access journals like them, are doing all they can to impede human progress while leaching off of tax-payer dollars to do so. Something should be done to make what Elsevier and the like do illegal, are there any groups/political parties/etc going after them?

This does enrage many people, but one feels somewhat helpless here. But we can surely raise a hue and cry over the internet/emails/whatsapp/social media etc. Let more and more of the scientific community know about the existence of sci-hub and let these scum publishers bleed to death. Political parties may not want to disturb their money-givers though.

It is my opinion that any research behind a paywall does not exist. If I told you that I have research that showed some effect X, but there was no way for me to make that accessible to the public, no one would put any weight at all behind it (well except for those who really want X to be true). Does it matter if it is a pay wall or if I promise it exists and my girlfriend up in Canada, the one who only visits when you aren't here, has it? No, not really.

This is a case of badly screwed-up incentives. No individual has incentives to fix the system, so they keep optimizing for how they're actually rewarded [academics --> tenure / prestige, journals --> make money, govt --> get lobbied].

You are missing a case for academics. Even after tenure, we have to continue publishing in these venues or our students wont be able to find work.

So basically the Bystander Effect. Who should be singled out?

The onus is on the scientists. Elsevier does its job. If you were given a golden ring as a gift every day, I bet you would end up opening a jewelry shop as well. Even if scientists want to use alternative open access publishers, it's a game of who blinks first. They won't do it because their colleagues don't.

> The onus is on the scientists. Elsevier does its job. If you were given a golden ring as a gift every day, I bet you would end up opening a jewelry shop as well.

The idea that Elsevier is somehow not responsible for their actions because they're just doing their job is abhorrent, and I entirely reject it. If what you do is actively harmful to society, the onus is on you to fix it. Yes, the onus is also on scientists, too, to not enable Elsevier's bad behavior, but they're not the ones choosing Elsevier's access policies; they only have indirect control.

I disagree. They have a choice, yet they choose them instead of the alternatives, and they knowingly accept all the access policies, even checking the "accept the terms" checkbox. TBH this whole thing seems like a simple problem to me - publishing is not the purpose of science. Elsevier can't fix the problem that scientists don't have a way to assess the quality of other scientists' work.

> Elsevier can't fix the problem that scientists don't have a way to assess the quality of other scientists' work.

You are aware, I hope, that Elsevier curates the content of its journals by literally sending the papers to other scientists and asking their opinion, right? And that the scientists don't get paid for this work, they do it our of goodwill to the scientific community. That's peer-review, and its one of the most preposterous things for any for-profit entity to have a hand in.

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