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Comment by Retr0spectrum | Hacker News Reader

I used to have access to papers via my university, but I never used that access. The UX of scihub is infinitely better. Anything else just added unnecessary friction to my research process.

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How so? Did you have to go through your uni library website to search the paper? I usually find the paper through Google Scholar, log in to the website using my uni account and download the PDF from there directly.

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.

That must be quite the convoluted interface at your university then - at my university, access is given automatically based on my being part of the university network. It is absolutely transparent, I only notice when I'm at home and forgot the turn on the VPN to be part of the university network.

Many of us spent a good chunk of the past 18 months outside of our University network. Sci-Hub turns out to be faster than the University VPN.

So "it' faster" is the argument? Please.

Yes. It’s faster. I’m a scientist who authors papers and needs to read an enormous number of them. My ability to easily search and access dozens of papers per day is what makes my job possible. The purpose of the scientific publishing industry is to support that activity and the general dissemination of knowledge. The fact that a random website in Eastern Europe is able to simplify that task is a good thing, and reflects negatively on the existing publishing industry. (As the author of some of those papers publishers are charging to access, I can assure you that the scientists involved don’t mind that people are bypassing journals and their terrible web UX in order to read and cite scientific work.) The fact that my University already pays for all these journals and it’s still more efficient to access them via Sci-Hub only makes the publishing industry look worse, since it means they’re not accomplishing their core purpose, the one that’s supposed to justify their continued existence in this world.

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