Is It OK to Steal Research?
There are several problems with how current research is made available or is restricted to people who want access. One of the biggies these days is how much research is behind paywalls, such that most people can only see abstracts, even if they need the whole paper for their own research. The fees charged by many publishers have risen so far and so fast that even rich universities like Harvard are abandoning their subscriptions. For researchers in poor countries, getting access to much-needed information becomes next-to-impossible.
This woman in Kazakhstan has taken huge steps to overcoming those paywalls with the power of technology, hacking through the security firewalls and stealing hundreds of thousands of published papers every day. The SciHub repository now claims to hold nearly 48 million published research papers that are free to access by anyone, anywhere in the world.
Naturally, publishers are angry and are suing. Given that the website is found outside the USA, it will be difficult to truly stop her, especially since researchers around the world are actively aiding and abetting her in secret.
The current system is definitely broken; is this the way to fix it? I don’t know, but I’m leaning towards yes.
Personally, I haven’t tried using it, but I plan to try it out.
Lacerant Plainer Ciro Villa annarita ruberto Brian Koberlein Mark Bruce Alison Bernstein Jenny Splitter Kavin Senapathy
http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/a-pirate-bay-for-science?utm_campaign=Echobox
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