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7 comments
These private publishers are scamming US tax payers. Taxes pay for the research to be conducted and then in order for anyone to read it thousands of dollars must be paid to politically connected monopolies. The fact that this system is still operating 8 years after Aaron Schwartz's suicide is an indictment of American society.
The scientists are the ones with the power. If they want their journal articles to be free to the world, they can opt to choose that path from the beginning. But if they choose the old school model, well, they should own up to the decision. Too many scientists I know like to throw up their hands and blame the publishers, but they're the ones with the power to choose.
Is that really true? I suspect there is a lot more to it than that. Is there someone here with direct experience in the matter?
No direct experience, but if you want tenure you have to have papers in "top journals" and if those are all proprietary then it is what it is.
In other words: the Nazis are telling the French Résistance that they are criminals. This is 100 % true, a good number were an unsavoury bunch, and them blowing things up and killing enemy soldiers and collaborators is illegal under any code of law, but they had good reasons.
Well ... who cares?!
The first comment under the article sums up my insight after reading it pretty well. Copypasting the most relevant parts:
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I had very much hoped for a less alarmist, and altogether more thoughtful and insightful discussion (with evidence) about how SciHub gets and uses credentials.
It is an interesting opinion piece (read another thinly veiled SciHub hit job), where you very neatly make statements that conflate hackers with SciHub, without providing any real evidence to back them up. You talk about stolen credentials, and then lay the blame at the foot of SciHub- without any actual proof that they stole or hacked them. Yes they may be using stolen credentials (which I agree is very, very poor form and weakens their position, and importantly reputation), however you offer no proof that they are the originators of the theft or did hacking (do you have such evidence?).
You discuss much about hacking, and very neatly avoid discussing exactly WHO did the hacking of university systems, very very likely nothing at all to do with SciHub (I would hazard a guess that 99.9% of university hacking is nothing to do with SciHub- admittedly i’m not an IT admin but i read a lot about this topic). But its a nice trick in your article to join the two.