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Comment by nicolas_t | Hacker News Reader

> The website is blocked in a dozen countries, including Austria, Britain, and France.

I'm deeply ashamed that my country would block sci-hub given that the current system is preventing scientific development.

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Scientists should put Scihub in the acknowledgements section of their papers. As in "this research would not have been possible without Scihub".

That is a genius hack. ("Genius" might be redundant.)

That is a huge problem if you acknowledge using an illegal platform in your professional work, including for your co-authors. Almost the opposite of genius, actually.

Ah, but Sci-Hub isn't illegal. There's nothing wrong with visiting the Sci-Hub home page, nor with using it as a convenient way to access open-access papers.

Right* (depending on jurisdiction, ymmv). Getting from it articles that you cannot have otherwise is (except for the vanishingly few articles in the public domain, which are not really likely to be found on Sci-Hub anyway. I tried).

Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. It is also against the policy of all the institutions I know, so could be grounds for termination. And again, this could apply to your co-authors as well.

I am really not endorsing the subscription model, but putting something like that in your articles' acknowledgments really is not smart.

> Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution.

Not really. It could also mean: Scihub offers an efficient way to explore scientific articles, and without it, I (the scientist) wouldn't have bothered with all the different paywalls to even check if papers were worth reading. And as such, I would not have reached the same results.

It does not make the work possible, though. Just more convenient.

No because a scientist can only deal with so much bureaucracy.

After a certain limit, they will go into "I will invent it myself" mode.

And here is a different argument. Scientists often have brilliant moments while e.g. showering. So they could have written: "this work would not have been possible without showers". The statement itself does not imply anything about whether they paid for the water or not. Or even if they took a shower. Perhaps the thought of a shower triggered the eureka moment.

> Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution.

Isn’t that exactly the point? How is it not hindering scientific progress if you do not have access to research that you don’t pay for.

It’s not like the journals themselves fund the research, they’re just getting a free ride.

> if you do not have access to research that you don’t pay for.

The situation is worse as most of the research is already paid for by tax money.

How so? Might not want to mention it in the same footnote as the grant number.

That reminds me of a phrase I've heard in relation to file sharing and such: "if everyone runs the red light together, there is nothing to be afraid of".

Doing it and claiming to have done it in a professional setting are quite different though. I am perfectly willing to believe that a lot of researchers use Sci-Hub (though from my experience they tend to use Researchgate more); I am certain that the number of people who would shout about doing it on the rooftops is nowhere near even a small minority.

What you say does not correspond to my personal experience. As a single data point, in my research group all twelve phd students and five postdocs use SciHub regularly. Some of the faculty don't know it even exists, others do.

That metaphor backfirews pretty hard IMO, is that intentional?

How so? Everyone running a light together is the expected behavior if you change the color of the light. In other words, it describes nothing that isn't occurring constantly everywhere. Where does the metaphor backfire?

The metaphor backfires because if everyone runs red lights they will collide with one another, as well as with those going through green lights.

> if everyone runs red lights they will collide with one another

In the same way that if everyone runs green lights, they'll collide with one another? How do you go through intersections?

Red lights rarely exist in the middle of a road just to slow down traffic, they mainly exist at intersections to allow people on different roads to take turns. It's really not a useful metaphor in this context.

Green lights... are synchronized to avoid collisions.

Imagine an intersection with 3 independent entrances. Normally 1 is green and 2 red. If everyone runs red lights, then we have cars entering from 3 ways instead of the normal 1. The result is collisions in the middle of the intersection.

"Running a red light" does not just mean "go when it's red" but it explicitly means "transgressing a stop signal". That there can be stop signals on multiple entrances also is complicating and sets up the crash.

Can't tell if it's intentional (some variation on Poe's law applies here), but this is a near-perfect illustration of the difference between a rivalrous (space in an intersection) and non-rivalrous (copies of a digital file) good.

I will allow that there may be some harms which can result from unlimited copying of anything you want— but they bear no resemblance to the collision of automobiles in the midst of a busy intersection.

I assume an open intersection or clear path is implied in which case the intersection space becomes non-rivalrous. Automated enforcement w red light cameras change the outcomes however

Probably! If I had to offer a definitive opinion on the author's intention I would agree with this interpretation.

But physical space is inherently rivalrous, and a policy of "everyone runs a red light if they think they can get away with it" is going to have people being disastrously wrong sometimes.

I've actually ridden a scooter in places in SE Asia which basically work this way and it's... different. Less insane than it sounds, or looks like, but the rates of traffic fatality are objectively much higher.

This is why I thought it was interesting enough to comment upon.

Courageous, I would say. More important than genius.

Yes, that would fit better.

If you don't have the courage, you can also do it indirectly: simply reference a paper that states that it would not be possible without Scihub. Then, your paper would not be possible without Scihub either :)

I had a snarky remark about Galileo and Copernicus, but it’s probably not relevant.

I did this! I encourage everyone to do it! Include the Sci hub link with the DOI.

Interestingly, when I was still in university, I never used Sci-hub at all. I can download almost any paper using school's network (or VPN) since the library have subscriptions for basically all the major publishers.

I only started to use it occasionally once I've graduated (but I didn't really do any formal research any more.)

Interestingly, every student I know uses sci-hub.

Interestingly it's almost necessary in third world.

perhaps you're aware of this but sci-hub solves a second problem in addition to simply access - ease of use. Using a library's system requires a proxy or VPN or a credential verification of some sort.

Sci-hub requires the title of the paper. that's it.

You do need to enable VPN if you're off campus, yes, but that's it. It's super simple, you don't need to go though library's website or anything.

I use Google Scholar search exclusively to find papers and you can directly click the link to open the paper (and then download). Constantly copying pasting title, URL or DOI into sci-hub is actually a hassle in this respect when you're just browsing around (I guess there must be extensions or userscripts to make it better, though).

> I'm deeply ashamed that my country would block sci-hub given that the current system is preventing scientific development.

Are you in France? In that case you'll find that french academic librarians are extremely open to this stuff. I have participated in some proposals to cancel all elsevier+other library subscriptions and give all that money directly to SciHub, and the librarians were always very receptive to the idea. Unfortunately, this sort of initiative inevitably gets stuck in the upper echelons of some administrative procedure and never materializes. I guess predatory editors have a deeply entrenched influence within the academic institutions, otherwise I don't understand how that happens...

It probably eventually reaches the ears of someone who's heard of the concept of a lawsuit, and is deeply afraid of Elsevier making an example of a school by suing it into the stone-age, something they desperately want to do to scare every other school away from Sci-Hub.

Libgen seems to be blocked in at least some parts of the US as well.

I tried to access it while reading this thread, and couldn't. Then I remembered I had activated my VPN and I was tunnelling through the US.

> Libgen seems to be blocked in at least some parts of the US as well.

maybe an ISP or VPN service thing?

I had no problem in so-cal. I tried tunnels in NorCal/Oregon/Washington, no problems there either.

> Britain

Not blocked for me at the the original domain

It used to be, but recently I've been able to view Sci Hub again.

Publishing papers in journals isn't about scientific development, it's about publish-persish. The issue is the journals suck-in the papers and then walled-garden them like they were their original research when they are simply the publisher.

Academia needs to throw away for-profit journal publishers and leave it with social co-ops and nonprofits.

No. This is an example of “have your cake and eat it too”.

Scientists want to publicize in a prestigious journal. Elsevier is prestigious. Elsevier charges a subscription fee. Other scientists can’t access it.

So what scientists want is to be able to publish in the most prestigious journals and have free access to them.

It’s like if I said “i want to be able to attend the most prestigious school but I don’t want to pay for it”.

Except in this case, what makes a journal prestigious is not the subscription fees that the school has to pay, but the free work of editors and peer reviewers that perform selection from the submitted papers.

There are free-access journals out there that charge virtually no fees, and still have excellent quality / reputation. One such example is Quantum: https://quantum-journal.org/

Then maybe scientists should stop donating their time? Or do they get something out of it?

And it's certainly not the peer review that makes it prestigious since those are anonymous.

Scientists are indeed moving slowly in that direction. It seems you are under the mistaken belief that they complain without doing anything about it. The fact that someone is vocally unhappy with a flawed status quo, does not mean they are not doing something about it. However, the issue with status quos is that it takes time to change them. Why are you ranting even after being shown examples of scientists doing exactly what you want them to do?

Also, it is indeed the presence of very selective peer review that is a big part of "prestige". This is why free community driven open access journals are slowly overtaking the old journals. The price of a journal publication does not correlate much with the prestige. There are even examples of reverse correlation.

When Elsevier is trying to strong arm universities with high fees and threatening copyright lawsuits, seems like a good time to stop helping them entirely? Why on earth would you keep donating your time to them?

Oh yeah, you want those juicy prestigious papers still.

Your premise is a fantasy. Yes, many people for long time have boycotted Elsevier.

I am really confused, why are you assuming people that are vocal about this continue reviewing for Elsevier (or assuming this about me in particular)? This is simply not happening. Is it really that surprising to you that only part of a community is working on the social problems in the community, while the rest is focusing on their main work: science.

This is a general attitude among every naysayer against progress: "you can not demand that society changes for the better if you are active part of society". Do you not see how ridiculous that is?

And you were already given examples of prestigious journals that have transitioned to the open access model. And universities that boycott elsevier. And grant agencies that demand work to be published open access. What more do you want? For this to have happened last decade? Well, things take time.

Some people have boycotted Elsevier. The vast majority of scientists have not - they continue to get their papers published by Elsevier journals, donate their time as editors and donate their time for peer review.

Let me be more direct - why? If Elsevier is clearly the "bad guy" here?

And if. as your put it, "as decade later" scientists are still donating their time for free, why do you think it will change? How long does it take?

The answer is trivial: because of inertia, they have much more important and interesting work to do, so the activism is left for the few. But again, in every single comment of yours you are neglecting the monumental progress that has already happened: open access is a fairly standard requirement for top institutions and becoming more common. The world you are imagining in your complaints does not exist.

Open access is not fairly standard. In my area (chemistry) there is no requirement and people stick to the paid journals. Why? Because of the prestige, which was my point all along.

Despite all the complaints of being "predatory", people still submit to those journals and volunteer their time. Why? Stockholm Syndrome? No. "Inertia"? No.

It's because they get something they can't get out of open source journals - a publication in a highly prestigious journal.

My point is everyone likes to say Elsevier offers "nothing" yet, what you call "inertia" (I call it "wanting what Elsevier has to offer") keeps them coming back to you point - maybe for decades?

OK, so you are both negatively affected by the bad status quo and at the same time rant against the people that try to change it. What is the point of that behavior? Why are you yourself not trying to help these people change the status quo?

No, my point is: 1) the journals aren't the problem, the requirement to publish in them is and 2) until the incentives change, scientists won't move away from those journals.

As a scientist who does not need extra brownie points, this is exactly what I'm doing: every single review request coming from an Elsevier publication is ignored.

And, yes, it is the quality of peer review (i.e. the work done by unpaid editors and reviewers) that makes a certain publication prestigious or not.

Elsevier does typesetting and distribution, both of which can easily be done otherwise (see LaTeX and Sci-Hub). It sure as hell does not do peer review.

> It’s like if I said “i want to be able to attend the most prestigious school but I don’t want to pay for it”.

I think it's interesting to note that in many European countries the top schools are free to attend.

Sure, but it's because the gov't subsidizes the cost of schools. Are you suggesting they subsidize the cost of journal subscriptions to the point they are free?

That is what has occurred in Uruguay and Egypt. If that grants universal access to the people, then it is a solution. The problem with that model, though, is that governments are then double-paying in many cases. First by paying for the research that birthed the paper and then by paying for access to the paper that resulted from the research the government paid for.

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