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Everyone Back To Science Feature Share on * * * * * * Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone John Bohannon Science * 29 Apr 2016 * Vol 352, Issue 6285 * pp. 508-512 * DOI: 10.1126/science.352.6285.508 PREVIOUS ARTICLE Mexico struggles to woo expat genome jocks Previous NEXT ARTICLE The frustrated science student behind Sci-Hub Next get access [science] Get full access to this article View all available purchase options and get full access to this article. Get Access Already a Subscriber?Sign In Information & Authors Information Published In Science Volume 352 * Issue 6285 * 29 April 2016 Pages: 508 - 512 Copyright Copyright (c) 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Permissions Request permissions for this article. Request Permissions Authors Affiliations John Bohannon View all articles by this author Metrics & Citations Metrics Citations View Options Media Figures Other Tables Share Information & Authors InformationAuthors Published In issue cover image Science Volume 352|Issue 6285 29 April 2016 Submission history Published in print:29 April 2016 Metrics & Citations MetricsCitations Article usage Altmetrics Export citation Select the format you want to export the citation of this publication. [Please select one from the list ] [*] Direct import [EXPORT CITATION] Share Share article link Copy Link Copied! Copying failed. 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Submit a Response to This Article Mar. 21, 2021 RE: Sci-Hub and copyright for science papers Peter Uetz * Associate Professor * Virginia Commonwealth University The success of Sci-Hub proves that there is something fundamentally wrong with copyright protection for scientific papers. I am pretty sure that science publishers make most of their profit within a few years of publication of journals or books. Thus, scientific publications should move to the public domain after, say, 5 or no more than 10 years. The benefits would be tremendous: images and other data could be re-used in other publications or websites such as Wikipedia relatively soon, benefiting education and research without the hassle of re-creating such material and painstakingly tracking down copyright holders and requesting permissions. Not to mention the benefits for poorer countries or institutions who cannot afford to subscribe to thousands of expensive journals. The requirement for works of art, fiction literature, or music are certainly more long-lasting than for science, but given the rapid progress in science, copyright protection for scientific works lasting for 70+ years is clearly counter-productive. Mar. 21, 2021 RE: Who's downloading pirated papers? John Henry Noble Jr * Emeritus Professor * State University of New York at Buffalo Mr. Bohannon, Your excellent report suggests a more reliable and valid way to calculate the journal impact factor as a guide to the relative influence or importance of individual author contributions. A frequently asserted criticism of the journal impact factor is the effect of the impact factor on behavior of scholars, editors and other stakeholders, including "a general tendency on the part of a citing individual to be influenced by the already indicated IF." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor A more reliable and valid measure of the relative influence or importance of a scholar's contribution would be use of the download statistics of Sci-Pub that you used in writing your report. While reviled by profit-seeking mega-publishers like Elsevier, Sci-Pub offers a path toward more equitable access to the results of scholarship. Elsevier and other publishers of high impact factor journals need to revisit their business model! Mar. 21, 2021 RE: scihub downloads - Ashburn Gregory Jefferis * Neuroscientist * MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK Dear John, I enjoyed the article. My interest was piqued by the large number of downloads in Ashburm which you identified as the top US download city. I have colleagues and collaborators at Janelia, which you identified as one potential source in Ashburn, so I did a little analysis (http://rpubs.com/jefferis/ashburnscihub). As far as I can see a single individual repeatedly downloading just over 10,000 articles an average of 6.5 time each is responsible for > 70% of the reported Ashburn downloads (see figure - details in full analysis). The mix of articles seems inconsistent with research interests at Janelia. The repeated downloads actually don't make much sense to me and I wonder if someone forgot to inactivate a script. In general it's clear that unusual activity can skew these local download statistics quite heavily - as you noted for East Lansing. It's clear that Scihub provides a simple and efficient API for large scale harvesting of papers. Best wishes, Greg Jefferis. Mar. 21, 2021 RE: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone I'm the electronic resources librarian for a state government agency, and I object to the anonymous publisher's claim that it's librarians fault "for not making their online systems easier to use and educating their researchers." Every new staff member that joins our agency is sent a welcome email, explaining what resources we have available to them, how to access them, and offering a tour of the library -- both physical and digital. Of more than 75 invitations sent out in the last 6 months, I've had 2 people respond and actually request more information. All of the others have been ignored. In today's digital age, people turn to Google by default. They think that Google is the king of the interwebs. They don't want to be bothered with learning how to actually navigate the academic landscape in a digital environment. Instead, they want everything available in a single place, and don't take the time to learn how to properly do things. I guess their time is too important. The point is, librarians do actively attempt to market their resources to their patrons. We do so in a myriad of ways: email, virtual reference desks, webinars, FAQ documents, classes, etc. However, our efforts to market our resources, and educate our patrons can only go so far. At some point, it's on the researcher, student, or faculty member to take advantage of the assistance that librarians are willing to provide. Mar. 21, 2021 RE: In praise of Alexandra Elbakyan and her Sci-Hub Kevin Eric Cahill * physics professor * University of New Mexico A big thank-you to John Bohannon and Science magazine for telling the world about Alexandra Elbakyan and her Sci-Hub. For-profit science and engineering journals drain scarce resources from universities and put a price-wall between scientists and their research. Governments, universities, corporations, philanthropists, and scientists pay for the research. Scientists do the research and write the articles, often in a format superior to the published form. Scientists review and referee submissions, sometimes making helpful suggestions. Yet for-profit corporations such as RELX Group, Wiley, Pearson, and others reap huge profits by charging fees that universities cannot afford for work done by scientists at those same universities. RELX Group, which owns the Elsevier journals, had net income last year of $ 715,790,000. These fees put a price-wall between scientists and the research they create and need to make more discoveries. Nonprofit societies, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the American Mathematical Society, the American Chemical Society do good work, but I'd like to see Sci-Hub and arXiv.org drive RELX, Wiley, Pearson, and the like into bankruptcy. Incidentally, I wrote _Physical Mathematics_ (Cambridge University Press 2013) because I didn't want my students to buy books from Elsevier. Loading... Current Issue Go to Science Developmental chromatin programs determine oncogenic competence in melanoma * By + Arianna Baggiolini + Scott J. Callahan + et al. Architectures of neuronal circuits * By + Liqun Luo tRNA overexpression rescues peripheral neuropathy caused by mutations in tRNA synthetase * By + Amila Zuko + Moushami Mallik + et al. Table of Contents Advertisement LATEST NEWS ScienceInsider3 Sep 2021 An unpublished COVID-19 paper alarmed this scientist--but he had to keep silent ScienceInsider3 Sep 2021 How much did a new privacy tool distort the 2020 U.S. census? 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Callahan + et al. Architectures of neuronal circuits * By + Liqun Luo tRNA overexpression rescues peripheral neuropathy caused by mutations in tRNA synthetase * By + Amila Zuko + Moushami Mallik + et al. Table of Contents LATEST NEWS ScienceInsider3 Sep 2021 An unpublished COVID-19 paper alarmed this scientist--but he had to keep silent ScienceInsider3 Sep 2021 How much did a new privacy tool distort the 2020 U.S. census? 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