But when you mention this to non-scientists, they'll gasp in non-belief.
They gasp in pure joy.
Back in school I had a professor who paid out of his own pocket for access to one particular journal in order to bring scientific articles to class. Our library didn't have access to this journal. I was disgusted by how these journals were exploiting him. I looked for a way to fix that and discovered Sci-Hub for the first time. He was overjoyed when I showed him that. Our classes became better, richer. He could finally bring whatever material he felt was important.
The damage these copyright monopolists cause cannot be quantified.
There's also the usability. When I told my classmates about Sci-Hub, they were also very happy because they no longer had to go through our library in order to access scientific articles. They can just download whatever they want. This is how things should be.
I can't imagine people whose work do not depend on these papers pay the exorbitant fees. And those who need scientific papers for work are generally the ones we call scientists.
Patent researchers. I was one. Except I never paid a fee just to look at a paper, purely because I don't know if it's any good until I read it, and there are HUNDREDS of papers I have to skim. You can always find it or something very similar for free.
Once we know it's an important paper, then our outside law firm would pay the fee, and it would disappear in their monthly bill.
I think there’s a problem in the world (at least in engineering) where research is being done two or more times because of lack of information dissemination. Once by the university researcher, once by the corporate researcher, and many times by the layman who is moving through conclusions on his own work.
I'm sure that outside of workplace, every employee uses sci-hub.
But I am in Computer Science - I know that the situation is not at all the same in other disciplines.
I think if you want to be cited, it is kind of silly to publish at a venue where your paper is not immediately accessible - there's usually enough other papers to cite, so it's in your own interest to be available.
That said, regarding the original question ("why would anyone not do this"), I know from previous discussions here on HN that I'm part of a small minority, but I wouldn't do it because I find it unethical. There's lots of things that I wouldn't mind having / owning but I cannot afford them. Just because they might be available through non-official channels for free does not mean that using that option is the right thing to do.
In this line of thought, I also think it is irrelevant whether putting publicly funded research results behind a paywall is ethical on the publisher's side: two unethical acts don't make an ethical one.
I love SciHub. I used it a lot when I was in a small college that did not have that type of access, but after I moved, I never used it again.
Why do you think that? I cannot imagine anyone losing one second of sleep over it.
In this case, they can't even argue we're depriving creators of revenue they're owed. The only point of journals is peer review. Experts in the field that filter out the bad articles and publish the good ones. Peer review is the only thing that separates these glorified journals from a random website. Those experts don't see any of this money due to concerns over conflicts of interest. These reviewers could get together and create a blog and it would be better than these journals.
The way I see it, these journals have literally no reason to exist. It's unethical to pay them even a single cent for access to anything. The ethical and moral thing to do is to hasten their demise. It is our duty to society.
It does not matter what could be, we're talking about what is. And that is that someone is offering you access to this paper under some conditions (to which the authors and peer reviewers agreed). You can decide for yourself whether you'd like to accept these conditions or not.
But if the answer is "no", I cannot see how that justifies you getting a copy without paying. Where else in life is that a valid option? "I'd love to have a snickers bar, but I don't want to pay a dollar for it, so I guess I just take it." Obviously, there are differences between that example and sci-hub but for the core of the issue, these differences are negligible in my opinion.
> Where else in life is that a valid option? "I'd love to have a snickers bar, but I don't want to pay a dollar for it, so I guess I just take it."
Don't compare physical things to artificially scarce data. They are not the same. Physical things can't be copied infinitely and distributed worldwide at negligible costs.
With data, there is no economy. Economies arise when things are scarce. Data isn't. There is nothing to economize.
> Obviously, there are differences between that example and sci-hub but for the core of the issue, these differences are negligible in my opinion.
These differences are not negligible. Quite the opposite, they are key. The fact is once created data is worth nothing. It's infinitely abundant. Scientists and peer reviewers are the truly scarce resources here and they don't depend on journals to exist.
These monopolists try to make scientific articles artificially scarce but unlike the entertainment industry they don't actually provide any value whatsoever. They're just a brand name.
About copying vs. physical things - that's one of the aspects I had in mind when I wrote that I'm aware of the differences between that example and the scihub situation, but that I also think that they are not at the heart of the issue. Hence I don't subscribe to your argument against that.
Nor do I to your last sentence. Where's the scarcity?
You're defending the notion that journals should be able to continue their rent seeking. Did I misunderstand?
I think the differences are definitely not negligible. There are similarities on the surface, yes, but one can distinguish between the two cases by asking "would it be OK if everyone did this?"
Basically Kant's categorical imperative:
> Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law
In the case of stealing snickers, we can imagine that if everyone did so, then making or selling snickers would no longer be a profitable business, so in the end snickers would no longer be produced, and we would all be worse for it :(
On the other hand, if everyone were to pirate scientific papers, no economic harm would come to the scientists doing the research for those papers. Only the journals would risk going out of business if they don't adapt, and that would be (or could be; i'm not entirely sure) a good outcome, as it would incentivize a more open approach to science distribution and access :)
So, one can conclude that, despite the surface similarities, stealing snickers is morally wrong, while pirating scientific papers is not.
Interestingly, though, no-one who answered to my point has yet commented on the similarities. To me, no-one has yet made a convincing argument to justify why offering for free what others have the right to monetize should be considered okay.
Because having the possibility to monetize something doesn't make it inherently right to do so. People have monetized things that we would now consider abhorrent to do, like human lives in the form of slaves, wives as property, and countless examples of human rights violations.
Heck, even today in many places of the world people monetize access to education or health care for example, prohibiting some people from accessing things that are considered basic human rights. That they have a "right" to monetize it doesn't make it okay to do so.
I guess the underlying questions here is: should we consider access to scientific publications a right that anyone should be able to exercise? I personally think that yes, freedom of information is a laudable goal, and is definitely worth the inconvenience of losing some antiquated journals.
If you don't agree, what do you think would be the issue with having universal access to scientific papers?
Why do you believe these rent seekers have a right to monetize the work of other people?
I can at least understand where the entertainment industry is coming from. I don't agree with them, I think their business model is backwards. However I understand the fact it costs a ton of money to produce films, series.
These journals on the other hand are simply indefensible. They don't do research. They don't do peer review. They don't do much of anything except exploit their brand name. So it doesn't matter what the law says. We refuse to recognize it as legitimate. It doesn't matter what rights they have. We'll take them away.
If you were starving, and society was so misallocated in its resources that Snickers bars were in profound abundance, and political activism wasn't getting you anywhere, I would say you actually have every right, morally speaking, to take that Snickers bar.
But the other commenter is right. Comparing physical objects to duplicating intangible information is extremely misleading. If you take that Snickers bar, someone else can't eat it. That doesn't apply to duplication.
Many Sci-Hub users believe it is ethical to download copies of journal articles there, because they find the consequences of not paying for the article to be more beneficial to society than the consequences of paying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
In their view, closed access journal publishers are stifling academic discourse with extortionate fees (especially considering that they do not financially compensate the authors and reviewers), which means it would be most ethical to limit the closed access journal publishers' revenue in order to reduce their power and importance, and disrupt their business model to pave the way for open access journals. Not paying publishers for copies of articles is how Sci-Hub users help achieve this.
I guess thats something of a stance.
My point is that it is always your choice, but to me, the ethical choice is not between paying for the journal or getting the paper off scihub. It is between paying the journal or not getting access to the paper.
I think taking public money, and using it specifically to enrich a private company, and not providing value back to the public who paid for both sides of the transaction is actually unethical. Moreso, I think there is regulatory capture going on, and manipulation of our political leaders through strategic donations [1]
If, by opposing an unjust system, you are doing something that may be in name "illegal or contrary" to the law, but morally that is sterling, then you are in the right.
By your same argument, you could claim that doing any member of the Underground Railroad that helped blacks escape from an unjust, oppressive system was also doing something unethical. Despite the legal definitions of property at the time. Do you see where this argument heads?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2018/j...
FWIW, I am an academic computer scientist too, have published in top-tier venues, and fully support pirating papers.
Many scientists are juicy targets.
The idea of depending on your government to protect you from exploits is insane. Anyone in the world can upload a shady PDF to a website hosted in any country and suffer zero consequences.
Regarding PDF specifically:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chrome-zero-day-used-in...
https://windowsreport.com/google-chrome-pdf-security-bug/
Who said anything about "depending on the government" or uploading PDFs? This subthread is about downloading from Elsevier directly vs. downloading from SciHub.
The reply was to a comment about downloading from Belarus "where the government apparently tolerates the operation" "of PDF exploits" according to the commenter.