Sci Hub and Library Genesis for those who don't want to feed the leeches
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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Also, if you're not in a rush, just email the authors!
A vast majority of professors and researchers hate the publishing industry as much as anyone, and will be happy to shoot you a pdf if you're interested in their work!
Exactly. The worst that happens is they say no or don't respond.
The worst that happens is they say no
this is often poor dating advice, but this time it's good advice :)
The truly worst that could happen (in the dating scenario, that is) is that they say yes, but then turn out to be a serial killer and you're the next victim.
okay but have you ever lived with a serial killer? so fucking clean, intensely discrete.
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They will likely say yes, thanks for being interested in my research. If they're like me, they didn't respond because they're overworked and tired, so politely ask one more time
When I need it, I know how to pirate, but I am privileged enough in terms of my institution that I can get most of anything I want (I mostly pirate for family needing niche things in engineering, and I am in the humanities). BUT, I had this one occasion that both validated my feelings about the system and fucking infuriated me. A professor from an institution that did not have the right subscriptions emailed me asking for an article I published, because they wanted to assign it for a seminar, but could not legitimately access it. That made me lose my shit. I didn't get paid, neither did the editors or peer reviewers, but you know, god forbid someone read it for free. Which is when I realized I didn't even have final copy myself, so I had to go to JS**, download it, spend some time cleaning the "downloaded from XYZ.XYZ.XYZ.XYZ address at XYZ institution" footers on the PDF, sent It to them and encourage them to further pirate that shit
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Also, aren't a majority of studies like this, funded with public money ?
Yes. However, if you find a paper or study you’re interested in reading, reach out to the researcher directly. More often than not, they’re happy to provide you with a copy for free, in my experience.
I did this once. They wouldn't give me a copy, I didn't push it because they were retired and did try to give me advice about contacting librarians to add the journal to their subscription.
I do imagine younger people publishing more recent work would be more open to sharing their work.
For anyone else seeing this the university of the author often also publishes their papers free access. Even when the journal the paper is published in is paywalled. So it's worth checking that. This is especially the case if the work was funded by bodies that require open access.
That’s wild. I’ve always sent people copies when they reach out. It’s especially easy to do so with ResearchGate, but that does require the requester make an account there.
Another option is to ask a librarian to find that specific article, rather than getting them to subscribe to the journal. I had to do this once in grad school for an article in a discontinued journal from the 70s. The librarian found another library that had it and they faxed a copy.
This, surely it's more usual? The first time I ever reached out the person sent me three recent articles and an invitation to let them know when/where my research was published, even though it wasn't relevant to their discipline.
I was a lowly grad student and he was a senior academic with his own lab. I'd heard of his research because it was mentioned in a science documentary on tv, and the whole experience really gave me a happy feeling.
I can see why [email protected] only did it the one time after the experience they had, though.
That’s good advice. Have you found that there’s peer-review included when it’s university published? I’ve only received original research from contacting the researcher directly.
Have you found that there’s peer-review included when it’s university published?
Not comment-OP, but there are different levels:
- "pre-print" means that it hasn't been submitted yet, hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, and hasn't been accepted yet.
- "post-print" means that it's been peer-reviewed, revised, and the content is ready to publish, but it hasn't been formatted to be in the journal.
- "version of record" is the published version. this is called "camera-ready" if it's waiting to be published.
Depending on the contract signed, the academic ~~scammers~~ publishers will usually let the researcher publish the paper on their own web site or university site or repository like arxiv.org. If it's the pre-print, it may be available before publication, but if it's the post-print or version of record, this may be only after a certain period of time has passed.
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The articles published to the journal. That's where the peer review happens. The university will then host a copy of the published paper with open access. The university doesn't peer review this, it just provides the hosting. Often the motivation for doing this is compliance with open access. Many areas have well regarded journals that authors want to publish in that are closed, but the research is funded on the condition of open access.
These papers hosted by the university may have different formatting, but will have the same content. They are often harder to find as the references will be to the same paper published in the journal. Some paper search engines will include links to the university's free access page, but you often have to search separately on a general purpose search engine to find that copy.
In my time looking for published papers, I have only very rarely seen papers which are also hosted by the university of the author. I suspect in your case it was hosted because of something specific to the school or the author, rather than a general thing.
What I am seeing more often in my field is people posting a version of the paper on "arxiv". This is a similar open-access approach, but you do have to be careful with arxiv papers as you can post anything on it, including work that never was or will be peer-reviewed.
Not only do you write the article for free, they will also charge you for the privilege of publishing in their journal.
Depends on the publishing method you choose. If you want free for readers, authors pay. If you want free publishing, readers pay. Reviewers never get paid. Editors get paid shit. Journals profit massively for doing barely anything. Terrible in all directions. Preprint servers are the future
Was the article really written for free or was it written with tax-payer funded government grants?
For the publisher it was written for free, yes. And the amount of founding increases with their fee.
I mean, ok, then, I, a taxpayer, want free access to the document I paid for.
Oh it was funded with tax/university money so that means a 3rd party private company, which had nothing to do at all with the funding/research, gets to profit from it gottcha.
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RIP Aaron Swartz
never forget, never forgive, always pirate.
Oprah's just thinking about how to get her own publishing company into that business.
She knows a good scam when she sees it.
Fuck elsevier.
So what exactly is their argument for the service they provide that 'justifies' the cost?
The reason is tradition.
Because they got money in turn for publishing and distributing the books in the past, now they want to continue getting exorbitant fees even though they are not providing any real value any-more.
As I understand it, bc printing something on paper with ink has costs associated with it. Hey... wait a minute!? :-P
The most important aspect is peer review. At least in physics, journals assign your paper to an Editor (a scientist), that may reject it directly if it is not scientific. If it is, they will send it to another scientist to read the work and (a) suggest rejection, (b) suggest accepting the work directly or (c) in the most common scenario accept the paper for publication after some revisions. The editor reads the review and the informs the author of the paper accordingly, and the story iterates until the work is fine for the reviewer. There can be more than one reviewer (a.k.a. referee). The editor is what the journal offers, together with some spell checking service before publication. Editors are payed, and referees only sometimes.
There are notable, noble exceptions known as diamond open access journals, like my favourite: the Open Journal of Astrophysics
The editor is what the journal offers,
In my (perhaps more limited) experience, the editor isn't an expert in the field, they're just the person who finds the volunteer reviewers who are the experts. Sometimes they find expert "guest editors" who are volunteers. Also, the final formatting / line-editing was outsourced to India.
Academic publishing is a scam. Don't volunteer for scams -- only review for open access journals / conferences.
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They can do that without a publisher though. My partner reviews papers all the time, and she would continue to do so even if this ridiculous ponzi scheme didn't exist.
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As far as I can tell, we're just paying for the reputation of the journal.
Plenty of people here saying: "But the scientists were paid by a public university!", yeah whatever. If I'm financing a scientist with my taxes, they should have their work published publicly, not be incentivised to publish in private journals that will profit from their work while adding pretty little.
Elsevier business model or exploitation business model as I prefer to say
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Is there a reason reasearch pdf:s isnt published on github or simillar instead?
Peer reviews. For the results to be acceptable around the scientific community, their methods and conclusions need to be validated by at least 2 other scientists familiar with that subject. Like someone said, there is axiv.org, that lets you upload your paper without this review, but it's more of a method to claim precedence if someone else publishes a similar work. It's usually not a scitation source that is taken seriously. This could, of course, be improved! There are open access journals that charge the scientists instead of the readers, but there are several scam journals popping up every day that will usually publish anything without reviews.
Open access fees are generally like $4000 per article. Now find a grad student or postdoc (the people actually writing these articles) who has that kind of money to spend because they "believe in free and open access to information."
arxiv.org is a thing
I've never seen this meme format! Exciting!
Love that new meme smell
The new model is actually to charge the author a shitton of money (think thousands of dollars) after the paper has been accepted. After it should be accessible through
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