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. :)
Thanks for sharing!
“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.
These articles were stolen, by the paywall operators. Elbakyan rescued them from the thieves. 🎉
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
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.
When a regular person makes something available that shouldnt be behind a paywall to begin with it’s stealing. When a billionaire or company uses ai to gather data from paid sources or just straight out plagiarises it’s just maximising profits.
Hey hey hey, hold on just a second. It’s not called “maximizing profits”, we don’t do that! It’s called ✨innovation✨
disruption 🤌
democratization 🫡
Using public information to create something new is not even a little the same as copying private information and then making it public.
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.
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.
As someone in science that has used this many times, I can’t emphasize enough how much this has accelerated research in the modern era. I am so grateful for her work.
A huge aspect of this also is that it disproportionately benefits academics and students in parts of the world where there is less institutional access to journal subscriptions. That is to say that SciHub has been a significant force for democratising knowledge and countering historic inequities.
Fr. After I graduated I was cut off from access to scientific literature, which is a major blow when trying to keep up in ones field.
Yep, I just found out about it recently because I was doing research on a project. I had heard, but never explored or looked into, sci-hub. I had no idea about it. I don’t know how I missed it all of these years!
Sadly no longer updated but I think libgen and some other services are filling the gaps.
Yeah, I was bummed to find out it’s no longer updated. But there are so many articles that it’s still helpful and great. And she still is holding the flame by keeping it up. I’m checking out libgen right now actually.
Legends walk among us
Your choice of words may trigger some people around here…
Your choice of words may trigger some people around here…
Can you explain what you mean by that?
Legends walk among us
It’s a game that carries a lot of memes, and I see you have already some replies about your comment being “sus”.
Ahh ok! Thanks for the explanation.
I have no idea why my comment is seen as being “sus” or why my choice of words would trigger anyone.
But meh, Lemmy being Lemmy, I guess.
Sussy
Hi 😏
While it’s true that publishers do something of value, the amount they charge is absurd.
What makes it even worse is that so many of the people involved are donating their labour. It reminds me of college sports in the US. The actual people doing the work, the athletes, are forced to do it for free. Meanwhile, a few select groups: coaches, TV networks, etc. are making huge amounts of money.
Yeah, I have no problem with people being compensated for their work.
The problem is that the discussion usually ends at “compensation” and never includes “how much?” Useful idiots believe that whatever price is charged is always fair and necessary, which is sad.
In a system literally built around the amount of money we have, we sure do like to believe that magnitude doesn’t matter.
Stolen papers. Absolutely. Stolen by corporations.
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!
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?
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.
That’s such a fuckin’ racket!
Yep, before sci hub you could always just email an author and probably get the paper that way, they aren’t the ones profiting.
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.
That’s fucking great that your profs even recommended it!
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
Mad respect.
Public knowledge can’t be stolen IMHO
“He stole my idea!”
Kudos for being publicly visible and not getting disappeared by the copyright mafia.
I know a little about what it’s like to have people constantly try to remove me from places. At least in the electronic sense. Lemmy has a hate-erection for me, like no other. lol
Now that I experience hate and censorship daily, I have so much more sympathy for people like her.
And she has to deal with it in the real world. I don’t. Very easy for me to laugh it off.
But that chick has to deal with relocating, lawsuits, hackers, etc. She’s my total hero now. So fucking cool.
“Stolen”…where did the originals go?
Directly to zlibrary
You see, the problem, publishers, is that your “business” should not have been a business in the first place.
So she is the real Trinity character.
Is that the Anna from Anna’s archive?
/s
Still insane to me that one woman literally saves the world of science from all this corruption
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.
And she still doing it. And still pretty much alone in doing it.
