{"id":8119,"date":"2016-04-04T10:27:58","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T09:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/?p=8119"},"modified":"2016-04-09T10:11:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T09:11:57","slug":"sci-hub-and-elsevier-like-david-and-goliath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2016\/04\/sci-hub-and-elsevier-like-david-and-goliath\/","title":{"rendered":"Sci-Hub and Elsevier: like David and Goliath?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The publishing industry complains\u00a0about Sci-Hub<\/a>, the Kzakhstan\u00a0website\u00a0that provides free\u00a0PDF access by\u00a0pulling them\u00a0through some .edu proxies.\u00a0This is not new while\u00a0the publishing industry’ protest\u00a0is getting\u00a0louder and louder:<\/p>\n

I think what Sci-Hub is doing is terrible \u2014 bad for publishers, researchers, and librarians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It may be\u00a0bad for publishers. But is it really\u00a0bad for researchers? Just to remind the facts, that biomedical research is not paid by any publisher but taxpayers (mostly). Researchers never\u00a0get help from publishers with editing of a paper.\u00a0Publishers also don’t review any manuscript, not even control the review in a standardized\u00a0way.<\/a>\u00a0Typesetting is neglectable\u00a0as the final control remains with the researcher.\u00a0Ultimately, not even\u00a0the main distribution channel is being paid any “publisher”.\u00a0Researchers are\u00a0– as described in an interview of Heather Joseph<\/a>\u00a0–<\/p>\n

forced into a system of workarounds to try to get access to the articles that they need to do their research. Typically, a researcher will have legal access to only between 50 and 70 percent of the articles that they need to do their work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sci-Hub\u00a0\u00a0is called\u00a0illegal according to European\u00a0law. But Elsevier worked\u00a0hard for a bad reputation too, even criticized by their their own flagship journal<\/a><\/p>\n

Lancet calls for publisher to cut ties with international arms trade\u00a0Editors of the Lancet, one of the world\u2019s foremost medical journals, have demanded that its corporate owner stop promoting the international arms trade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Protests directed against Elsevier like those at\u00a0thecostofknowledge.com<\/a>\u00a0haven’t been effective in the past, the company continues to make\u00a0big\u00a0profits –\u00a0\u00a32.048 billion in 2014. These revenues are\u00a0used to continue their fight<\/a> against universities and many websites like academia.edu, sci-hub.io\u00a0and researchgate.net.\u00a0An\u00a0interesting story\u00a0– more about Swartz and Elkabayan may be found at zeit.de<\/a>. Small David prepares\u00a0his sling against\u00a0Goliath\u2019s weaponry.<\/p>\n

It seems that Elsevier doesn’t employ\u00a0any computer experts at all. As you can “order” papers at Sci-Hub, there must be “request” at the publisher website within 2\u00a0minutes which\u00a0should\u00a0help\u00a0to identify leaked passwords. Furthermore it should’t be so difficult to create personalized PDFs. But\u00a0if Sci-Hub can broaden it’s login basis, let’s say to thousands of\u00a0passwords volunteered to them, while using \u00a0thousands of proxies, little David may have won the fight.<\/p>\n\n

 <\/p>\n

\n CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 09.04.2026<\/span>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The publishing industry complains\u00a0about Sci-Hub, the Kzakhstan\u00a0website\u00a0that provides free\u00a0PDF access by\u00a0pulling them\u00a0through some .edu proxies.\u00a0This is not new while\u00a0the publishing industry’ protest\u00a0is getting\u00a0louder and louder:   CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 09.04.2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[2681,166,2985,2984,2983],"class_list":["post-8119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics-biology","category-computer-software","tag-pdf","tag-elsevier","tag-lawsuit","tag-open-science","tag-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8119"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8134,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8119\/revisions\/8134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}