[kwyjibo12345]

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia and the industry, I can only support Sci-Hub. Publishing as it works currently is an incredibly time consuming and expensive process funneling tremendous amounts of tax money into the pocḱets of publishers.

To some extent the whole situation reminds me of the video and music content piracy era in the early 2000s. I hope there will be an equivalent of Apple Music/Spotify/Netflix for scientific papers in the near future.

[j-pb]

I hope that there will never be a "legal-streaming" equivalent.

These papers have been paid for already, through the salary of the people that wrote and peer reviewed them.

There is a theft happening, but it's not the way commonly portrayed.

It's the publishers stealing from the scientific community, universities and tax payers, and the politicians and bureaucrats are complicit.

The only reason why people publish with these journals is so that they can get funding for their projects, because the people in charge of distributing these funds are using "most prestigious papers" as the only metric and often have a revolving door relationship with publishers.

The university library of my alma mater used to pay 15 Million Euros a year for online licenses. That is three large multi-institutional EU projects worth of money, equivalent to 200 PhD student positions.

We need to build a better research system, that cuts out the leaches, and distributes money to researchers more fairly. And as a bonus we'd also get rid of the paper mills.

[indigochill]

I'm of a separatist mindset in situations like these where the entire ecosystem has turned corrupt. It can't be legislated because legislators are part of the problem as you say.

So you need an independent organization that can fund and provide the resources needed by researchers, and which disregards publication in the corrupt publications. You also need a publication that can support free access.

Something like a hackerspace on steroids, perhaps.

In theory, if you can get enough momentum behind this sort of project, then libraries can turn that license money towards this project and accelerate the research that can be done, where rather than padding publisher's pockets the fees are going directly towards supporting research.

[08-15]

> It's the publishers stealing from the scientific community, universities and tax payers, and the politicians and bureaucrats are complicit.

Not really. The publishers provide hardly any value, definitely not commensurate with their prices. So why don't the scientists simply walk away? Why not publish on the internet, why not simply upload to arxiv.org?

It's because funding through quasi government agencies (NSF, NIH, etc.) is tied to your publication record, which is evaluated in "impact points", and those are actually tied not to your own publications, but to the journals they appear in. So your funding as a scientist depends on you publishing in these expensive journals.

It's actually the politicians and bureaucrats stealing from the tax payers, funneling the money to the publishers, all the while claiming they are funding science.

As a scientist, you have little leverage in this fouled up system, but it is your civic duty to use it: Please refuse to review papers for commercial journals without appropriate payment. You owe it to your fellow scientists to not subsidize predatory business models.

[ineedasername]

The publishers provide hardly any value

Here's an insider's view from having worked the tech side at a small scientific publisher. Prices are too high and the model is flawed [-1] but your opinion is not accurate, the publisher did a tremendous amount of work:

First a distinction, two types of editors: The publisher's editors, each of which handled a batch of journals. The journal editor, who did not actually work for the publisher. The publisher's editors were well educated in the fields they covered, though usually not specialists or researchers in their own right. The journal editors were typically researchers themselves, and being the editor of the journal was not their primary work.

-The publisher's editors organized individual journal editors, helping to find new ones when one left, keeping them on deadline, etc.

-The publisher's editors processed submissions to the journal working with criteria set by the journal editor to perform an initial review for off-topic, low quality, or otherwise flawed submissions.

-The publisher's editors coordinated an enormous network of peer reviewers and the logistics of getting them assigned to submissions and also staying on top of them for deadlines in submitting reviews & feedback.

Other publishing staff:

-performed proof reading & copy editing

-did the layout & type setting

-They used professional color matching labs for all color images, which itself was $100/image (tech for this has probably changed and made it cheaper) [0]

-They managed every aspect of the actual printing of the journal, dealing with printers, reviewing proofs, coordinating a final round of review by the journal editor and authors.

-warehousing copies for expected distribution over the life of the journal, re-prints when something was more popular than expected, and all order fulfillments to individuals & libraries. [1]

-They handled all of the financial logistics, from collecting subscription fees to paying the journal editor and handling royalty fees for decades after a journal was printed & back copies were purchased.

This setup might seem strange, but consider that for the journal itself, the journal editor is often a researcher themselves with very little interest in the mechanics of putting together a publication. They handle reviewing which articles that published and coordinate on the peer review process, and a bit more, but the lion's share of the work of actually turning raw, non-peer reviewed submissions into a printable journal was either coordinated by or directly done by the publisher. All of this cost a lot of money. (Incidentally, the publisher I worked for was ultimately purchased by Elsevier a while after I left, but then Elsevier had to take over all of this.) [2]

[-1] My own opinion is that research funded by the public in some way should have part of the grant dedicated to publication costs. This would keep subscription costs to a minimum and also ensure that not just positive results were published.

[0] Of course this would only apply to printed journals. If you were viewing them online you had to deal with whatever combination of monitor idiosyncrasies and color profiles available, and the difference could be large. It was obvious why they went through the trouble of paying for color matching on print versions.

[1] This was before print on demand was much of a thing. These days it's probably easier to manage

[2] This isn't always how it works. It was where I worked, but for a large publisher like Elsevier there are different models. It's definitely how it works for journals owned by Elsevier. More independent journals may do more of the work themselves, but they may also contract Elsevier to do it. Elsevier may simply license the rights to distribute a journals. But someone has to do the work outlined above.

[mcguire]

And all for the low, low price of $660/issue. (https://ordering.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/Lite/Subs.aspx?doi=...)

"This isn't always how it works."

In my experience, "Other publishing staff: performed proof reading & copy editing, did the layout & type setting" was not done by the publisher.

[ineedasername]

Whether it was done by the publisher or someone else, the work has to be done. If not by the publisher, then it's reflected in a lower share of the sub fees for the publisher.

But my point wasn't to say the high sub fees are okay, it was to rebut the idea that publishers add no value, when that is often (though not always) incorrect.

IIRC, the small publisher I worked for had net profits of about 10% on $5 million in revenue. Not unreasonable for handling pretty much every aspect of the process apart from final decisions on article inclusion and a few other high level details.

Even when I worked at the small company though, we hated Elsevier. Elsevier are little better than extortionists saying "nice library collection you have there. Shame is something happened to it. How about you pay us double this year?"

[NotSwift]

In the traditional model, journal editors and the referees do most of the work, for which they are usually not paid.

> The publisher's editors organized individual journal editors, helping to find new ones when one left, keeping them on deadline, etc.

Most journals have an editorial board and they are generally much better in finding new journal editors because of their contacts in the field.

Keeping deadlines is only important when you are printing separate issues. When you have a journal that consists of an electronic stream of articles, deadlines are not a serious issue.

> The publisher's editors processed submissions to the journal working with criteria set by the journal editor to perform an initial review for off-topic, low quality, or otherwise flawed submissions.

This can also been done by the journal editors. AFAIK all rejections I have ever seen were done by journal editors.

> Other publishing staff:

>-performed proof reading & copy editing

>-did the layout & type setting

>-They used professional color matching labs for all color images, which itself was $100/image (tech for this has probably changed and made it cheaper) [0]

>-They managed every aspect of the actual printing of the journal, dealing with printers, reviewing proofs, coordinating a final round of review by the journal editor and authors.

>-warehousing copies for expected distribution over the life of the journal, re-prints when something was more popular than expected, and all order fulfillments to individuals & libraries. [1]

>-They handled all of the financial logistics, from collecting subscription fees to paying the journal editor and handling royalty fees for decades after a journal was printed & back copies were purchased.

Most of these tasks are no longer needed when the journal changes to free electronic publications. Fortunately, that seems to be increasingly popular.

[08-15]

Clearly, publishers do a lot of work. But what is the value they provide?

[ineedasername]

I'm not sure I understand the question: is there not value in managing every single logistic detail of a complex process?

[08-15]

Only if that complex process provides any value.

So what is the value of a paper journal over a website? That the pictures look better?

I love how you compare a scientific journal to a cinema. It really brings your point home. But you're wrong: Science isn't entertainment. (I have experienced both NPG and AAAS treat it as if it was, though.)

[wolverine876]

One way to look at the question: What marginal value do they provide over arXiv or Sci-hub?

[DangitBobby]

They are arguing that the complexity is artificial and provides little value.

[uniqueid]

Sci-Hub is probably the best thing on the internet, but the fact that some rando had to create it doesn't speak well for the state of our world. If humanity weren't dysfunctional, academic institutions would have beaten Elbakyan to the punch back in the 1990s.

[Tenoke]

Sci-Hub is not especially legal so an actual institution isn't really able to create it instead.

[uniqueid]

I expressed myself poorly. The fact that aspects of Sci-Hub are illegal is the reason I wrote the comment. In a perfect world, academic institutions would have combined their efforts to provide a viable equivalent to Sci-Hub legally. Whether that means buying out publishers, or making do with a small selection of existing papers and focusing on future publications, I don't know.

[stared]

Atheism was illegal. Homosexual acts were illegal. Democrasy was illegal. Studying and voting for women was illegal. (And actually all of these are in some places in the world.)

Very often to progress, as a civilization, we need to change what is legal and what is not.

[bsenftner]

That "not being legal" is a corruption, a continued acceptance of lobby dollar bribes to maintain the situation. Or the lawmakers are so capitalistically corrupted they do not see the problem and think paying multiple times for publicly funded research's information is acceptable.

[Tepix]

These papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally.

[Someone]

Authors are to blame, too. They can put their publications on arXiv. https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing:

“Authors can share their preprint anywhere at any time.

If accepted for publication, we encourage authors to link from the preprint to their formal publication via its Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Millions of researchers have access to the formal publications on ScienceDirect, and so links will help your users to find, access, cite, and use the best available version.

Authors can update their preprints on arXiv or RePEc with their accepted manuscript.”

there still is an issue with older articles that authors don’t have PDFs of, or whose authors aren’t in the field anymore (or even died). That problem will stay, but _if_ authors start putting their publications on arXiv, their university server, etc. en masse, also will get smaller over time.

[stared]

Leading journals allow publishing preprints on arXiv only as there was considerable pressure. In the quantum physics community (where it was expected to post results on arXiv), a journal not allowing arXiv was not considered. So either their de facto allowed, or even started officially to do so.

I don't remember the exact dates, but Nature (who had been hesitant for a long time) gave in as well. They resisted a long time as they were (and are) considered a badge of honor.

[majormajor]

> These papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally.

I strongly disagree with this. Labor has value, and we shouldn't let capital alone dictate ownership. The people who do the research are more important than the bureaucrats who signed the checks.

[mcguire]

The people doing the research don't get paid for publications. At all. Ever. It's just part of their job.

[JumpCrisscross]

> papers that have been paid for by tax payers and peer reviewed for free should be made freely available legally

There is a legitimate argument in the value added of curating research into journals. The publishers don’t do this. But simply eliminating that curation mode is unlikely to be feasible.

[Tepix]

Sure, I'm not saying these journals should be abolished, i merely want the papers to be available for free. You might still want to browse the journal to see what is hot right now.

[rjmunro]

I hear they generally are "freely" available, just email the authors and ask.

[jasode]

>I hear they generally are "freely" available, just email the authors and ask.

I didn't downvote you but the way contracts work, the researchers are not allowed to share the final published article that was professionally edited and typeset by the journal. What they can legally share are the preprints and manuscripts.[1]

Yes, some researchers may ignore the contract they signed (wink wink) and share the final published pdf. IME whenever I asked for a paper, I got the preprint -- which means the author honored their publishing contract. The preprint is fine in most cases because it will have the main idea of the research. However, it's often missing the pretty graphs and illustrations that the journal adds.

[1] https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing

[subroutine]

Having to wait for an author to email you a copy isn't a viable solution. Even getting authors to post a free copy, which is NIH mandate is often overlooked...

https://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm

[Someone]

That’s not something you can blame the publishers for.

[subroutine]

Not saying it is.

[BelenusMordred]

You're not wrong but that system only works on a very small scale. Do you really think the authors would be amenable to answering 10000 emails with the exact same request?

[ebiester]

In general, an averagely successful paper in most disciplines will get 200-250 readers. It’s only when there is outsized media attention that there is any issue.

And luckily, for those cases today, sci-hub is available.

[worik]

A lot more readers than that, surely? In most disciplines there are a lot of, er, disciples. What is the definition of "moderately successful?"

Perhaps you mean citations?

[pmyteh]

The modal number of citations for an academic paper is ~0. 200 citations is a very successful paper in any discipline.

[pmyteh]

Fortunately(?) most of us will never be in a position where even 10 people ask to do that...

[omega3]

Out of my small sample of three, one author sent me a journal, one ignored the request and another told me to pay him for it.

[ineedasername]

I hope there will be an equivalent of Apple Music/Spotify/Netflix for scientific papers in the near future.

There is: You can pay Elsevier for an unlimited access subscription to ScienceDirect journals. The only problem is that it costs about $1700 and you have to buy for a minimum of 3 people. [0]

[0] https://www.ncbiotech.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/2...

[kleiba]

Having worked as a researcher all my life in academia (but not in the industry), I can not support Sci-Hub. I know it's an unpopular opinion but I think it's the wrong approach.

As scientists, I think we should be held to especially high moral standards. And there are two questions one should be allowed to ask:

1. Is is right to publish research results funded by tax money behind a paywall? 2. Is it right to circumvent a paywall to access publicly funded research results?

And to me, the answer to 2. is imply 'no'. I know that most people, especially here on HN, do not agree with that view. Perhaps they might think that a 'yes' would immediately follow from a 'no' to question 1.

But I don't think it does, and I'm not even sure my answer to question 1 would be a 'no'. Perhaps one could think about another question first: should researchers turn to a professional publisher to get their research published, and I think at least some years ago there wasn't much else you could do. Now, of course, there are digital platforms such as arxiv but their acceptance also depends vastly on your field. In any event, such platforms can also be thought of as a publisher, anyway. The main service provided is organizational: publishers don't review the research contents (they're not qualified for that) but they organize external reviewers; publishers provide discoverability because they are a well-defined source known to the community. Are there alternatives to that type of work? Sure! But there is an added value in what a publisher does.

So then in a follow-up question, we can ask whether a publisher should be compensated for their work. And to me, it is pretty clear that they should be. Of course, there are different ways this could be implemented but that decision is up to the one running the business, ie., the publisher. I can think of more customer-friendly ways than to make me pay for every single download of a paper. On the other hand, there are lots of other businesses where I don't like the way they make money - tough luck for me, I guess.

Now, I think this last point is very important, especially before you go and hit that downvote button (unless you already have): I can think of better ways (for me!) how research publishing should be realized. But I don't think that from that it follows that I should be able to or even have the moral right to circumvent publisher paywalls.

Perhaps it's wrong to charge for access to publicly funded research results but I don't think the second wrong of circumventing publisher paywalls makes that right.

Oh, and here's a little subtlety I don't see discussed very often: if I do research funded by UK tax money and publish it, should that paper be freely available to Americans too, or only to UK tax payers?

[berdario]

> I can think of more customer-friendly ways than to make me pay for every single download of a paper. On the other hand

If you're thinking of the scientists and students in your society as "customers" and not as scientists and students...

You are optimizing for the wrong thing (i e. You are optimizing for the benefit to capital, not for the benefit to society)

[kleiba]

That is a very abstract thought, one that could possibly lead to a very interesting philosophical discussion about society.

In the mean time, however, we live in a market economy where publishers exist, and they are a business. Of course they are interested in customers, and yes, they would be scientists and students.

Am I saying that that's the best way to organize academic publishing? No. What I'm saying is that I don't see any justification for circumventing paywalls within a society that adheres to certain laws and regulations.

I believe in a system where the people can critically assess and evaluate all laws and regulations and has the power to get them changed. I don't believe in a system where people can just pick the laws and regulations that suit them and choose to ignore the other ones.

[berdario]

> I believe in a system where the people can critically assess and evaluate all laws and regulations and has the power to get them changed. I don't believe in a system where people can just pick the laws and regulations that suit them and choose to ignore the other ones.

Fair. For the record, I don't believe in neither of the two systems that you describe, or rather... I don't think that those descriptions are meaningful.

i.e. you describe what "people can" do... you might intend "can" to mean: "have the ultimate power to", but to me that's obviously untrue (if people had the ultimate power to change regulations for the better, gerrymandering wouldn't exist, if people had the ultimate power to ignore law and regulations, police wouldn't exist).

What you describe could be true if you mean "can" to be "are allowed to". But obviously people are never allowed to do something as a blanket rule... and thus those statements are less universal, and much less interesting (People can change laws and regulations, as long as they have the support of mass media and the establishment. People can ignore law, as long as LEA turn a blind eye to it)

What is more interesting, is defining what people -should- do.

If people can critically assess all laws and regulations, should they change them?

Unjust laws are obviously not being repealed. Is that the people relinquishing their responsibility, or are there roadblocks preventing that? Who has the power to stop them? How can we empower the people?

If people think that laws are unjust, should they ignore them?

Is that good for society? How do you protect people who are doing civil disobedience?

[kleiba]

Thanks for this nice post.

I certainly mean the first reading of "can", as in "to be able to". You are right, though, that in reality, there are no absolutes. However, by and large, of course people who live in a democracy absolutely have the power to cause societal change - it's just that it's not an easy process and there are certainly parties who are interested in roadblocking this ability for their own benefits.

As for your list of questions toward the end, I have opinions on a number of them. As I'm sure you might have too. A small text box on HN is probably not going to do it for a thorough discussion, though, I suggest we take ourselves a couple of thousands years of time and enough tea to make any progress on them at all.

[mcguire]

You have a very principled position, one that I don't necessarily disagree with[1]. However, information is, in fact, power, and the power disparity in the currently legal model, between those with access to a well-funded research library and those without, is very great. And like most power disparities, it is self-sustaining; it will not change without an equally powerful force changing it.

[1] Two provisos: the costs of professional publishing a journal is per-issue; perhaps, per-paper. Not per-copy. A pay-to-publish model would put incentives in the right place, but is fraught with a whole stack of conflicts of interest. Which is being actively exploited. So, ... yeah.

Second, the consumer-pays model actively hurts researchers themselves, who would like to see their research disseminated as widely as possible. "If I do research funded by UK tax money and publish it, should that paper be freely available to Americans too, or only to UK tax payers?" Want to bet what researchers' answer to that question would be?

Fortunately for me, I was a computer scientist. In that field, researchers (almost?) universally make their papers freely available, often in complete disregard of their publishing venue's rules (with no consequences). So, to medicine and physics and what-not, I can only say phtththp.

[wizzwizz4]

> So then in a follow-up question, we can ask whether a publisher should be compensated for their work. And to me, it is pretty clear that they should be.

But… what does a publisher actually do?

[worik]

They are a filter. They have a reputation to uphold of publishing worth while stuff (hard to believe sometimes...)

[wizzwizz4]

But isn't the peer-review process the filter?

[IanCal]

Ish. Really depends on the field & journal.

Peer review is mostly a requirement but some have professional editors as well, which is a paid position. Costs for OA journals are almost always borne by those successful at getting through the process which means that any costs are related also to the rate of rejection. For journals groups like Nature, that may mean an OA cost paying ~10-20x the actual cost (plus profit margin) due to a high rejection rate.

Broadly the reason this has stuck around so long is that what publishers are assigning to journals is a vague notion of trust. They are incentivised to keep "high quality" articles in their list as that's what people want to be listed in. The recent discussions around reproducibility tie in with discussions around clickbait news, in that the incentive of citations is not identical to the incentive of quality.

Peer review isn't free to do either despite one part of the labour being free, PeerJ increasing their costs is a good overview of this.

(disclaimer - work for a company (digital science) that's related to publishing in that we analyse and combine the data, and we're owned by a larger publishing house (holtzbrinck) but I have no horse in this game myself)

[Jolter]

Nope. Peer review is a kind of quality filter (in theory but seldom in practice), but that does nothing to solve the question of “is this a paper worthy of publishing”. That question gets resolved by the publisher/editor of the journal long before the paper makes it to peer review.

[FabHK]

And the editors are (like the reviewers) a bunch of scientists paid by their respective institutions, aren't they? So, what does the publisher do?

[FabHK]

Of course everyone that does honest and useful work ought to be compensated for that work. But note that there is extensive research that publishers earn excess returns, beyond what is justified by their work and risk taking. In other words, they're rent seeking (ie, not creating value, but appropriating value).

[fdsjgfklsfd]

> I don't think the second wrong of circumventing publisher paywalls makes that right.

What's wrong with "circumventing" paywalls?

17 U.S.C. § 107

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies … for purposes such as … scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

[joshuaissac]

> publishers provide discoverability because they are a well-defined source known to the community

Could this not be said about Sci-Hub itself?

The purpose of copyright is to enrich public access to creative works. So bypassing of paywalls, regardless of whether it was publicly or privately funded, should be judged against that measure. It does not seem that researchers will stop writing papers just because of a drop in publisher revenue, regardless of the source of funding.

[kleiba]

Of course, I'm not claiming that Sci-Hub has no inherent value. But the same could be say for, say, the black market for hard drugs.

Bypassing of paywalls could be judged against many measures.

I don't understand why the publishers get all the blame while no-one talks about the scientists who choose to publish their works behind a paywall.

[jacquesm]

There is a very large gap between fair compensation and greed driven profits, we are currently at the far end of that spectrum on the 'profits' side of the scale.

[kleiba]

That may be true. But I don't think that the perceived greed of one actor should serve as a justification of circumventing a paywall.

[pmoriarty]

"Is it right to circumvent a paywall to access publicly funded research results? ... no"

Why not?

[detaro]

There is also quite a split between "should be compensated for their work" and "asking 30-50€ for a single paper download is a reasonable compensation".

[kleiba]

That may be true. But I don't think a price that's higher than what one is willing to pay then justifies circumventing a paywall.

[mcguire]

The "Hypothetical Monopolist Test":

"[T]he question posed is whether a hypothetical monopolist can profitably impose a small but significant and non-transitory increase in price in the product market as defined. If the answer to the question posed is yes, and the price increase would be profitable for the hypothetical monopolist, then the market is correctly defined, and from here the analysis could go forward to determining whether antitrust laws are being violated if the company at issue has too much market power." (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/hypothetical_monopolist_test)

[detaro]

For me personally that is way past that into "unethical" territory, and that justifies it. I'm very much in favor of solving the issue through different ways long-term, but until then, meh. But YMMV of course.

[kleiba]

I don't think that unethical behavior can simply be justified by some other unethical behavior, especially when personal opinions are involved.

Analogies are often not very useful but consider this: there's this traffic light close to my house and even though there's usually not much traffic, the red phase is much, much longer than any other light I've ever waited at. I don't know what they were thinking but it's crazy long. I go there multiple times each day and I don't want to know how much of my life I already wasted just waiting at that light. For me personally that is into "unethical" territory, so I started just running that red light now. I make sure, though, that I only do it when there's no chance for an accident. I'm very much in favor of solving the issue through different ways long-term, but until then, meh. But YMMV of course.

Maybe here's a better one: there's this really good bakery close to my house. They make everything fresh from scratch, and the smell alone when you walk by is absolutely amazing. Their croissants especially are to die for and there's usually long lines in the morning. I love them too, because they're really heavenly but they come at a price point. I mean, it's always been a bit more than I could/should afford but they're so good! But last month, they even raised the price by another pound. It's actually quite ridiculous now - I mean, do they make their croissants out of gold? There should be a law against such prices! And I know that each day, they have to throw out a handful of croissants at the end of the day that they couldn't sell, probably because of the high price?! For me personally that is into "unethical" territory, so now I just started quickly running into the bakery, grabbing one of the croissants and booking it. That saves me a lot of money, and I can enjoy those beautiful goods again, hmm! I'm very much in favor of solving the issue through different ways long-term, but until then, meh. But YMMV of course.

[fdsjgfklsfd]

> so now I just started quickly running into the bakery, grabbing one of the croissants and booking it.

Sci-hub is more like making a copy of the recipe than stealing the croissant. Making a copy doesn't deprive anyone of the original.

[detaro]

Okay, at this point I'm starting to regret that I upvoted your comments as bringing a good perspective into the discussion if you are just trying to bring ridiculous strawman to anyone engaging with arguments. plonk