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We often wish to read old scientific articles. But some publisher got exclusive rights and want you to pay for each paper.

There is this beautiful website, Sci-hub by Alexandra Elbakyan.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

Need to copy the DOI of the paper and paste it in sci-ub search line.

I think everybody should know. Waiting for open access.

Hi Patta,
thank you for the link!
I'm always a bit nervous when systems are set up to avoid copyrights. Often it didn't take long and serious counter activities were started by the copyright owners. How is this here? Will I get unfriendly letters from lawyers with attached multi figure bills?

Bob

Not sure, it's a grey area.
But, sure, about 50% of world's students and academics are using sci-hub systematically.
The remaining 50%, either the university has access to the journals they need, or are physicist/mathematicians and just use Arxiv, it is not peer-reviewed but doesn't mean much today.

Let's see if I get unfriendly letters for publishing this post..

patta wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 09, 2021 6:13 am

We often wish to read old scientific articles. But some publisher got exclusive rights and want you to pay for each paper.

There is this beautiful website, Sci-hub by Alexandra Elbakyan.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

Need to copy the DOI of the paper and paste it in sci-ub search line.

I think everybody should know. Waiting for open access.

Sci-hub is absolutely amazing, I love how it makes big publishers seethe and you should consider donating to its creator.

MicroBob wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 09, 2021 7:27 am

Hi Patta,
thank you for the link!
I'm always a bit nervous when systems are set up to avoid copyrights. Often it didn't take long and serious counter activities were started by the copyright owners. How is this here? Will I get unfriendly letters from lawyers with attached multi figure bills?

Bob

Just download and install the Tor browser, open sci-hub from there. Those lawyers can shake their fist all they want.

Major publishers are mad that:

• 1) Governments and funding agencies have finally begun asking why tax dollars are going to university research with papers walled off to the public that paid for that research.
  
  2) Researchers are fleeing the current hyper expensive, peer-reviewed process to publish on low-cost, open-access sites.
  
  3) Everyone with a brain is realizing the long running price fixing scam that the big scientific publishing houses have instituted.

I find it amazing that Elsevier hs such a long history of publishing research that it stretches all the way back to Galileo's Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences.

I say this as a biomedical researcher who frequently publishes and reads scientific papers.

Sci-hub is awesome. Use it.

EDIT: also, email authors for copies. More above-board than sci-hub, and if you get a scientist like me, they'll probably send you their entire back-catalogue of papers.

I have two options:

1. Drive to 80 km to the nearest university library and ask visitor password valid for the rest of the day.
2. Use Sci-hub

You may now guess which one I use.

I say this as a molecular biologist who frequently reads papers. However, not frequently publishing because my research is an infernal mess with no success...

Is there a hacking concern with this?

I agree that the oligopoly given to scientific journal publishers is now pretty much a scam. Far as I can tell the reason it got traction was that researchers wanted the credibility of appearing in peer-reviewed journals -- and the leading journal publishers somehow got a corner on that. Now, they're trying to preserve that in the digital world.

There should be some incentive for assuring the integrity (peer review) of scientific publishing - but the process is both broken and too highly compensated. With that compensation going to the publishers (now basically cloud storage) or various scientific associations rather than researchers and reviewers.

Broken process? A recent study showed that a paper from an established scientist got plenty of offers for review - and the same abstract and article from an unknown scientist got a fraction of that. There's also evidence in many areas (pharma, psychological studies, etc.) that a very high percentage of results (e.g. 30+%) can't be replicated. Perhaps worse, other results aren't even attempted to be replicated.

I'm also confident the original intent was reasonable - to make science research more widely and affordably available.

A concern is that downloads would be an ideal vehicle to insert spyware, bots, and malware into researchers' computers and networks. It's a pretty attractive target for any state-sponsored hacking effort (e.g. China, Iran, N.Korea, Russia, US, etc., etc.). In this case, most likely Russian.

A promising trend is that many researchers are making their publications available on their own websites. A search for the topic may lead to a publisher's abstract. A search for the author and title may lead to the author's website.

PeteM wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 26, 2022 8:31 pm

Is there a hacking concern with this?

Not really; sci-hub self-catalogues the PDFs of scientific articles, so for most papers you're just accessing a PDF stored on a server and are not granting any sort of access (beyond a file download) to your computer. Some publishers have claimed that sci-hub gains access to these articles by hacking their sites, but it appears that in most cases, sci-hub gains access via institutional (e.g. university) libraries where someone has donated to sci-hub access credentials. Much of the sci-hub library is stored on distributed networks (e.g. bittorrent), rather than single servers.

My concern was that viruses can be inserted in PDFs. The more sophisticated ones apparently escape detection:

https://www.malwarefox.com/can-pdf-have-virus/

That wouldn't be the intent of the site, but it might be of its host country and many of its citizens. Russia has one of the world's most sophisticated state-run hacking operations - used for example against the Ukraine and attempted, perhaps successfully, against Western Europe and the US. Access to the computers of a million researchers - and from their to their colleagues at larger research institutions - might prove an attractive target.

One hopes that science and technology stay somewhat above the fray, serving humanity. That's proving an elusive goal.

Given that the files are (largely) stored in a distributed manner, it would be pretty hard for someone to insert malicious code into the PDFs. Not impossible, but it would have to be done at the time scihub first accesses the PDF - once its sent to distributed storage, MD5 would prevent modification of the files.

SuiGenerisBrewing wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:21 pm

… MD5 would prevent modification of the files.

Please forgive my ignorance: What is MD5 in this context ?

… Do you mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

MichaelG.

MichaelG. wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 28, 2022 2:36 pm

SuiGenerisBrewing wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 27, 2022 4:21 pm

… MD5 would prevent modification of the files.

Please forgive my ignorance: What is MD5 in this context ?

… Do you mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

MichaelG.

I'm pretty sure that would be the same MD5.

It's a cryptocraphic hash; in short, it's a signature based on the file's contents. If any part of the file changes, when the MD5 hash is recomputed it will be different so the underlying storage will know that the original file and the new one are not the same. It's a way to detect and prevent corruption (intentional or accidental) in distributed storage.

dtsh wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 28, 2022 5:26 pm

I'm pretty sure that would be the same MD5.

.

Me too, but I was rather hoping it was not

The Wikipedia page seems to say a lot of the things we don’t want to hear

MichaelG.

SuiGenerisBrewing wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 27, 2022 12:13 pm

… but it appears that in most cases, sci-hub gains access via institutional (e.g. university) libraries where someone has donated to sci-hub access credentials.

.
Thus perhaps demonstrating that the donor is inherently untrustworthy ?
… because they will, in so-doing, have breached the terms under which they were given those credentials.

MichaelG.

MichaelG. wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 28, 2022 9:30 pm

SuiGenerisBrewing wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 27, 2022 12:13 pm

… but it appears that in most cases, sci-hub gains access via institutional (e.g. university) libraries where someone has donated to sci-hub access credentials.

.
Thus perhaps demonstrating that the donor is inherently untrustworthy ?
… because they will, in so-doing, have breached the terms under which they were given those credentials.

MichaelG.

Quite the opposite. There is a lot of scientists (myself included) who find the current paywalled access to what is mostly publicly-funded science to be morally repugnant. Most of us are working to advance human knowledge, and want our findings to be accessible by, and useable by, all. We have been finding ways (legal and otherwise) for years to better disseminate findings. Preprints, hosting "reprint" PDFs on personal websites, listserves where people can ask for articles they cannot access, "self archiving" on publicly accessible sites, and simply emailing people articles they ask for (I've send PDFs to several people on this forum, for example, none of them my own work). Some scientists even write scientific papers on sci-hub and its implications (one example). About the only thing sci-hub does is centralize these processes.

But even if the donor is untrustworthy, at the end of the day all they've given is access to their library's proxy server - the article itself still comes directly from the publisher, with the publishers website merely thinking its passing the article onto a subscribing library.

MichaelG. wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 28, 2022 9:20 pm

dtsh wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 28, 2022 5:26 pm

I'm pretty sure that would be the same MD5.

.

Me too, but I was rather hoping it was not

The Wikipedia page seems to say a lot of the things we don’t want to hear

MichaelG.

MD5, as a way to encrypt data, is crap. But it remains an excellent way to provide a hash that ensure a separate file has not been modified after the hash was generated.

I will happily refrain from further comment

MichaelG.

With regard to information security transmission, quantum communication is undoubtedly revolutionary.

BTW, I feel uncomfortable every time I see statements about the inclusion of political views, this is a forum for science enthusiasts and science knows no borders, no?

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