Meet the woman who put 50 million stolen articles online
www.independent.co.uk
It's a serious challenge to a $10 billion-a-year industry
      • Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Stealing profits that are already made by stealing? Yeah, I have no sympathy for that.

        Tax payers already pay for this shit through federal funding of the sciences, just for the publishers to turn around and steal people’s time and money to view and peer review them. Publishers are thieves, so they can go fuck themselves.

        • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          I agree, If the research was funded by the government; then the research belongs to the people.

          Publishers and corporations is why IP laws are so fucked up beyond recognition.

  • Universal Monk@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I realize this is an older article from 2016. But it’s just so good, I had to share it in case some here aren’t familiar with her. Her name is Alexandra Elbakyan and she’s the person behind Sci-Hub, a library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers’ paywalls in various ways.

    And she’s my personal hero. :)

  • meme_historian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    “stolen” is such an exaggerated misrepresentation…news organizations should really do better. When you steal something from someone, the owner loses access to it. She just liberated public research.

    • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlEnglish
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      2 months ago

      These articles were stolen, by the paywall operators. Elbakyan rescued them from the thieves. 🎉

    • shath [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
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      2 months ago

      like stealing video games that you technically license if you buy, you’re not stealing anything except access which is fundamentally the only thing they can sell

    • Universal Monk@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
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      2 months ago

      I totally agree that she just liberated it. But since many lawsuits said she was “stealing” from them, and people who don’t know the details at first glance may think that too. So I think the headline is correct in a news sense. And the article is very accurate and favorable of her.

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Also I have met people who have published some pretty important papers, most of them use scihub on a weekly basis, and none of them care that their papers get “stolen”. And they all have some strong opinions about Elsevier.

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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      2 months ago

      This is why I hate the recent trend where people are saying “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

      “Piracy”, or more accurately “copyright infringement” was never stealing. What you’re doing is violating the government-granted monopoly on copying something. That’s so different from stealing.

    • Treetrimmer@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Yep, before sci hub you could always just email an author and probably get the paper that way, they aren’t the ones profiting.

    • I'm Hiding 🇦🇺@aussie.zoneEnglish
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      2 months ago

      I wrote one of those papers. The fuckers charged me $1000 to publish it as open access, then other journals download it and stick it on their websites and charge $60 to read it. What a joke!

      • Luke@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Ignorant person checking in with probably a dumb and oversimplified question, but what prevents you and other science researchers from posting your writing independently? Why must you submit to these corpo controlled publications?

        • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          If you don’t get published, you don’t get cited. If you don’t get cited, it appears your work isn’t important.

          That said, every researcher I’ve emailed requesting a copy of a paper gladly supplied it, and many put them up on their uni sites.

  • Allero@lemmy.todayEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Still insane to me that one woman literally saves the world of science from all this corruption

    • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Perhaps not saved, but I’d venture the most significant nail in the coffin of the scientific publishing mafia so far, pursued with integrity and honor. The rise of open publishing that followed is very telling, and in my mind directly attributable to Alexandra’s work and it’s popularity, they know they need to adapt or (probably and) die.

      Still need to work on the publish or perish mentality, getting negative results published, and getting corporate propaganda out of the mix, to name a few.

  • Crotaro@beehaw.orgEnglish
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    2 months ago

    Alexandra is the hero students (and scientists) all over the world need! And I’m so glad that my former profs acknowledged and recommended Sci-Hub to us. So many people wouldn’t be able to graduate without debt (or “even more debt” for the Americans) otherwise.

      • MrShankles@reddthat.comEnglish
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        2 months ago

        When my wife was getting her masters degree, her professor told her about it too lol. All of her professors pretty much used it. When I myself, tried to tell her about sci-hub and libgen, I was surprised that she was already well acquainted

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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    2 months ago

    You see, the problem, publishers, is that your “business” should not have been a business in the first place.