'It's a Moral Imperative': Archivists Made a Directory of 5,000 Coronavirus Studies To Bypass Paywalls (vice.com) 61
A group of online archivists have created an open-access directory of over 5,000 scientific studies about coronaviruses that anyone can browse and download without encountering a paywall
. From a report: The directory is hosted on The-Eye, a massive online archiving project run by a Reddit user named "-Archivist." Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global health emergency amid the spread of the novel coronavirus beyond China, where it originated, into roughly two dozen countries so far. The organizers of the archive see their project as a resource for scientists and non-scientists alike to study the virus. "These articles were always written to be shared with as many people as possible," Reddit user "shrine," an organizer of the archive, said in a call. "From every angle that you look at it, [paywalled research] is an immoral situation, and it's an ongoing tragedy."
In 2015, Liberian public health officials co-authored a New York Times op-ed that lamented the amount of critical Ebola research that was unknown or inaccessible to scientists and health workers at the center of the 2014 epidemic. "Even today, downloading one of the papers would cost a physician here $45, about half a week's salary," the authors wrote. Shrine, who is in his late 20s, said he was inspired to assemble the archive when, last week, he clicked on a new research article about the coronavirus and encountered a $39.95 paywall. He and a few friends started to brainstorm solutions around paywalls like the one he had run into. They came up with the idea of searching for coronavirus-related papers on Sci-Hub, a free scientific research repository sometimes called "the Pirate Bay of science." Sci-Hub's site says it provides free access to over 78 million research articles by downloading HTML and PDF pages off the web, in some cases bypassing paywalls. Because of this, major scientific publishing companies -- most prominently Elsevier -- have repeatedly sued Sci-Hub for copyright infringement. Similarly, by disseminating PDFs from Sci-Hub, the coronavirus archive is in questionable legal territory.
In 2015, Liberian public health officials co-authored a New York Times op-ed that lamented the amount of critical Ebola research that was unknown or inaccessible to scientists and health workers at the center of the 2014 epidemic. "Even today, downloading one of the papers would cost a physician here $45, about half a week's salary," the authors wrote. Shrine, who is in his late 20s, said he was inspired to assemble the archive when, last week, he clicked on a new research article about the coronavirus and encountered a $39.95 paywall. He and a few friends started to brainstorm solutions around paywalls like the one he had run into. They came up with the idea of searching for coronavirus-related papers on Sci-Hub, a free scientific research repository sometimes called "the Pirate Bay of science." Sci-Hub's site says it provides free access to over 78 million research articles by downloading HTML and PDF pages off the web, in some cases bypassing paywalls. Because of this, major scientific publishing companies -- most prominently Elsevier -- have repeatedly sued Sci-Hub for copyright infringement. Similarly, by disseminating PDFs from Sci-Hub, the coronavirus archive is in questionable legal territory.
If anyone complains about IP issues here (Score:3, Interesting)
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infect them.
They're suffering from the Disease of Greed.
Let me know when you find a cure for that, since no one else has for the last few thousand years.
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I've found a youtube video which shows that pink unicorns are aliens. What's yer point?
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Oh no. Another Youtube conspiracy theorist. I thought you guys all died in the last SARS outbreak.
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Thanks Rei. You on Mars yet?
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Trump/Musk 2020? I can see it!
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The guillotine
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They're suffering from the Disease of Greed.
Let me know when you find a cure for that
We don't need to eliminate greed to have free access to research.
"Reader pays" is not the only revenue model. "Author pays" and "Taxpayer pays" are alternative models that avoid the throttle on information.
Much of this research is already publicly funded by taxpayers. Making it access-free will add less than 1% to the cost. Papers are submitted as PDFs, so there is no typesetting cost, and peer-reviewers almost always are unpaid. A $1000000 experiment may cost $1001000 when the cost of publishing is incl
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They're suffering from the Disease of Greed.
Let me know when you find a cure for that
We don't need to eliminate greed to have free access to research.
Yeah right.
It should be illegal to paywall research that was funded by taxpayers.
Yes, I agree. And what caused that again? What continues to drive it today? What will ultimately stand in the way and prevent your request from happening?
Greed.
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Not hard actually, since a strain of the common cold is a coronavirus. (Influenza is not though).
IP issues (Score:3, Funny)
There are a lot of IP issues here.
Re:IP issues (Score:4)
There are a lot of IP issues here.
Yes, because claiming copyright on someone's work (especially when publicly funded) without compensating them for it is how they whole system is intended to work, right? If Journals want to paywall papers they should either fund studies themselves or fairly compensate researchers and peer reviewers for profiting from their work.
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"If Youtube claimed copyright on all content that was uploaded to it, plus made everyone pay $39/video to access any content on it."
Why would that be "outrageous"? It is entirely voluntary to upload stuff to Youtube or use Youtube. Weird. Who are you, Bernie Sanders?
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So in the absence of journals, what is your solution to everyone simply posting their "research" online. Caveat Emptor?
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So in the absence of journals, what is your solution to everyone simply posting their "research" online. Caveat Emptor?
I am surprised I have to explain how open source and volunteer expert groups can work to a 5-digit slashdot poster.
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Volunteer expert groups? I am an expert on everything. Where do I sign up?
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Looks like a good project for me. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
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Volunteer expert groups? I am an expert on everything. Where do I sign up?
Here is how the system works now:
1. People establish their expertise by publishing relevant research.
2. These people volunteer to peer-review the work of others for no compensation.
3. Once the research has been reviewed positively, it is published in a journal after months of delay and then paywalled.
How it could work:
1. People establish their expertise by publishing relevant research.
2. These people volunteer to peer-review the work of others for no compensation.
3. Once the research has been reviewed
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Volunteer expert groups? I am an expert on everything. Where do I sign up?
Here is how the system works now:
1. People establish their expertise by publishing relevant research. 2. These people volunteer to peer-review the work of others for no compensation. 3. Once the research has been reviewed positively, it is published in a journal after months of delay and then paywalled.
How it could work:
1. People establish their expertise by publishing relevant research. 2. These people volunteer to peer-review the work of others for no compensation. 3. Once the research has been reviewed positively, it is published online immediately and is accessible by anyone
You seem to feel that the problem is Step #1. It isn't. That would not change.
Here's how it would actually work.
20 Anti-Vaxers* would all peer review each others 'research'.
Once the research has been reviewed positively, it is published online immediately and is accessible by anyone.
What could go wrong?
*
Substitute Climate-deniers / Flat Earthers / homeopaths / Astrologers / Oil companies / Republicans / Chinese, as needed.
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There are a lot of IP issues here.
My coronavirus; my rules.
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IP version 4 has run out of room for more issues. Please upgrade to IP version 6 before logging any new issues.
I love this! (Score:3)
I can see this evolving into a movement that for scientific research becomes what torrent sites are to music, movies, and ePubs. Given that so many of these scientific papers were funded entirely or at least partly by the public, and given the life-or-death implications for some of the research, I don't see anything ethically shady here. On the contrary, it's the toll-charging gatekeepers who are being immoral - and I'd dearly love to see Elsevier and the rest of its ilk die screaming in red-ink agony.
Re:I love this! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, someone could setup a website that would serve as a hub for scientific papers. They could call it SciencePaper-Hub or Scihub or Sci-Hub or something.
Re:I love this! (Score:4, Interesting)
At least in my browser, Sci-Hub only allows searching by URL or DOI, so I'd have to know very specifically what I'm looking for in order to get it. Lib-Gen allows me to enter a general search term, ('ketogenic' for example), and access a list of relevant papers.
This is not simply a paywall-bypassing mechanism; it's a search-and-obtain resource that's truly accessible to everyone, not just to science insiders looking for specific papers whose titles or authors they already know. That was the point of my first post - my apologies if I didn't make that clear.
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it's the toll-charging gatekeepers who are being immoral
Elsevier isn't forcing scientists to publish in Elsevier journals. Scientists *choose* to do so, and thereby *choose* to paywall their work. They could very easily publish in an open-access journal instead. I'm not arguing that Elsevier are in any way good guys here, but the blame for this sorry situation lies squarely with scientists chasing fame and fortune via "highly ranked" journals. The blame for all of this lies squarely with them.
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Research papers should not be copyrightable (Score:2)
Though research often leads to patentable new art, papers just describe research to the scientific world. No researcher ever benefits by copyright on a paper - it’s purely for the profit of scientific publishers, those middlemen who in this online age no longer contribute anything to the process of setting papers before reviewers and other researchers.
It’s time to eliminate copyright on research papers. This will increase the number of patentable ideas that get into circulation.
Remember; academic publishers are racketeers (Score:4, Informative)
Two quibbles and some comments (Score:1)
From every angle that you look at it, [paywalled research] is an immoral situation [emphasis added]
Well, every angle except "no peer-review at all due to lack of funding and maybe "you only get peer review if you can cough up a tidy sum in a pay-to-publish model."
the coronavirus archive is in questionable legal territory
I don't think there is any question that what they are doing is illegal. The only questions are 1) will society see it as a net-good, and 2) will the copyright holders use their discretion to leave them alone for the duration of the crisis.
That said, I do agree with these people, paywalling material where the paywall may cost lives by deterring
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You appear to not understand how peer review works. The reviewers are other academics in the same field, because they are the only people qualified to do it. They don't get paid to do it (I didn't). Rather, it is just part of being in academia.
In the days of paper journals, publishers served a purpose. They took care of typesetting, physical printing, and mailing lists/subscriptions
Today, most academics typeset their own papers using LaTex or similar programs. Online distribution eliminates the rest of
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Today, most academics typeset their own papers using LaTex or similar programs.
Only in math, computer science, theoretical physics, and among a few die-hards in other STEM fields. The rest of academia just uses Microsoft Word. And manuscripts in Word as well as LaTeX typically need additional copyediting because authors don't know all the rules of proper typesetting.
This won't end well (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
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If only researchers were able to distribute their research online somehow themselves. Curse it! Those dastardly publishers! Someone should invent software that allows people to freely share documents and images.
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Better hurry. Between Climate Change the Coronavirus I figure we have about 3 months left to live. Tops.
Publicly funded research (Score:2)
like anything else created with taxpayer dollars should be freely accessible by all. These publishers are profiting off of the researcher's work and the public's money. The only part of the process that they could reasonably claim as overhead is the peer review aspect. And that is in major need of reform as well. There have been quite a few scandals in the last few years showing that the peer review process isn't working as intended. Many studies have test results that can't be reproduced and many peer revi
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If the research and review was funded by French researchers with French taxpayer money, should it be freely accessible to American researchers?
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Well I can't speak for the French but in America at least when development is mandated to be public domained it is truly available to everybody unless it runs afoul of ITAR. This usually isn't a problem because research done for defense purposes is almost always classified for national security reasons and not generally available. I think that is a common sense limitation. But for everything else, it really is freely available. NASA doesn't limit their research data for example. In fact much of it is availa
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What? I never asked that question. Try again.
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Yes you did. You asked if the research should be made available internationally and used France as an example. I said it should be and used existing NASA practice as an example. I can't speak for French policy or what they think is morally right. But for me yes, I think it should be available to everyone. Improve your reading comprehension.
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Great sentiment except (for the U.S.) one political party doesn't believe in science and the other only believes in the "right" kind of science. So good luck getting more money for research.
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Yes.
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100% Wrong. The White House was created with taxpayer dollars. Do you believe you have the right to crash on the presidents couch?
You're ... really not seeing that the OP is clearly talking about works, documents, and digital works? Or are you purposeful being that obtuse?
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In the US, most publicly funded research is available for free. Of course, if the university doesn't provide a place to get it online, it may require a visit to their library, on an inter-library loan. That's the university's responsibility.
As for people going on about the giant, evil companies that hoard knowledge behind paywalls... only the version that they review, curate, and publish go behind the paywall. The university and researchers are free to disseminate their initial public work, just not the ver
Just ask the researchers to submit the papers (Score:1)
Most, if not all, researchers will happily give out their papers to whoever ask for it for free, all you have to do is ask them.
All we need now is a place where the researchers themselves can upload their papers.
You will need a big name, likely Google Scholar or something like that, to codify behind a single archive site, but we can easily make it so it becomes normal to submit the paper not only to the academic journals but also to research paper archive sites.
Nah (Score:3)
There haven't been 5 meaningful studies on nCoV, let alone 5000.
Studies on older, known CoV would be marginally useful, at best. And anyone actually working on nCoV would already have access to them.
Academic publishers are trash, but this is a virtue signaling move.
Sounds like every RPG (Score:2)
Hero: "Quick, shop-keep! Your village is being overrun by a swarm of nameless evil. Everyone will die! Hand me that weapon so I can fight them back!"
Shop-keep: "Thanks for stopping by my place. Always willing to serve the public with a smile. That weapon right there can be yours for only 50 units."
Hero: "Don't you understand?! It's a matter of life and death. Give me the damn weapon!"
Shop-keep:" Sorry we have a strict no-loaner policy. How else can I feed my 7 children? Children that will likely die unless