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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Step one: go to SciHub to ensure that you're not wasting a bunch of $ on something that should have been free in the first place.

Not that you'll read that in Nature.

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> Not that you'll read that in Nature.

They might not do direct advocacy along those lines, but it’s hardly a taboo topic...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-05922-9

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05191-0

http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2017/10/16/remapping-the-...

https://www.nature.com/news/paper-piracy-sparks-online-debat...

https://www.nature.com/news/pirate-research-paper-sites-play...

https://www.nature.com/news/unpaywall-finds-free-versions-of...

https://www.nature.com/news/us-court-grants-elsevier-million...

https://www.nature.com/news/pirate-paper-website-sci-hub-dea...

It's not a taboo topic but quite a few of those read as indictments rather than support. Though some of them are definitely advocating for freely sharing research and using 'piracy' sites.

I'm not sure whether you are joking or not, but how to get paper is never a concern for a PI in academia.

Correction: in rich country academia.

Go check up on how many people credit being able to finish their studies due to SciHub being available to them when the institutions they are affiliated with did not have the funds to be able to stay current.

There is a tendency to conflate 'I don't have this particular problem' to 'This particular problem does not exist'.

No, I don’t mean in rich country.

First, I believe most papers already list coresspoding author’ email, which one can send a request to for a reprint. And most people would be happy to send one, and because citation is one of the important metric for how successful and influential one’s research is. Most people is happy to send one.

Second, PI is different from student for this. As a PI one basically already has some connections with people in the field. It’s likely you already know some of the authors, or your friends in the field could help you get a copy.

I don’t mean PIs would find scihub not useful, but PIs likely have other resources to help get a paper.

Why bother? The only time I have to email other PIs regarding their papers are when protocol steps are missing or when data has not been deposited.

And in about half of those instances, it simply reminds me why I love not relying on the “goodwill” of competitors.

> First, I believe most papers already list coresspoding author’ email, which one can send a request to for a reprint.

Sure. If you have a couple of weeks to spare and you feel that disturbing the author of a paper from whatever they are working on to send you a pdf which you could just as easily fetch for yourself in a few seconds is a good way to spend both your time.

PIs tend to find SciHub very useful, even the ones in rich countries where plenty of universities are cutting costs (so sorry if that means cutting access to a critical journal for your field).

> And most people would be happy to send one

Maybe if you can wait for weeks, but then again that's a maybe. You do realize how critical this is when you try to design your experiment, why even bother by then.

Yes it is: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pira...

That article never once mentioned "PI" or "Professor", not that it's even on-topic. This article is about setting up a lab on a shoestring budget (by acquiring used equipment or negotiating discounted use on communal equipment).

I don't think Step-1 for acquiring lab equipment is pirating a research article.

Just for you, the caption under the article illustration reads:

"Researchers from Ghana take part in TReND in Africa’s Advanced Open Labware workshop in Cape Town, South Africa, this April.Credit: Agnieszka Pokrywka/TReND in Africa"

How many researchers in Ghana do you think have the funds to buy research papers at $30,- per shot?

You don't have to buy them if you request a copy from the authors. The authors don't make any money when you pay to download a paper from a journal. So they'd have no reason not to send you a pdf.

And wait a few weeks to get replies, and annoy the authors by having to ask repeatedly, ... Yes it works, no it's not a great mechanism to entirely rely on. In comparison, Sci-Hub beats the official journal websites in convenience.

Now we're into matters of convenience and impatience though rather than pleas of poverty. Doesn't quite have the same weight.

I really dislike when people make arguments along the lines of "it works, why are you complaining".

It's not about convenience it's about how some of us things should be. Which is that (at the very least scientific) knowledge should be free and open and accessible and we don't see why a private company should be making huge profits (and even worse influence the direction of science) while they are offering almost nothing in return.

"knowledge should be free and open and accessible "

But it is. You just have to email the authors and wait a bit.

That's like saying that milk is free because if you visit a farm the farmer will let you milk a glass out of his cows

If the person just got hired to be a professor at a university, they already know how to access research articles, one way or another. However they've done it, they are well beyond this "Step-1".

If this piece were about how some of the best young software developers who just got hired by some .org have figured out frugal ways to build their own servers by using 2nd hand equipment from previous builds of Google and Amazon servers; it'd be like someone saying: "Step-1: visit piratebay.org"

I'm getting a PhD at a US News top 100 University (lol), and I'm published in a journal we don't have access to.

false. even in extremely well-funded academic labs, journal access can be sparse. i have heard the line "i could only read the abstract for free, but..." from PIs more than a handful of times.

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