[HN Gopher] Indian Government proposes to buy bulk subscriptions...
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Indian Government proposes to buy bulk subscriptions of all
scientific journals
Author : sandGorgon
Score : 255 points
Date : 2021-01-03 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (indianexpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (indianexpress.com)
| zoomablemind wrote:
| In general this should save money in the research budget line.
| Especially, when the research in separate centers (labs,
| universities etc) is funded from the public-supported
| programs/grants. Of course, it's a question about terms of the
| deal.
|
| Still, the government being a government can just mandate an
| open-access pre-publication in a national archive. China required
| in-advance submission of all technical docs just to allow a
| foreign product on their market. India is a huge market too, so
| there's quite a bit of leverage there for this.
| prtkgpt wrote:
| And not follow them at all. Find them at the nearest bhel puri
| stand!
| swiley wrote:
| Better would have been to legalize sci-hub or make the journals
| illegal. This is just regulatory capture.
| shash wrote:
| I don't see how that could be done with WIPO rules and whatnot.
| Like it or not, undeserved as it may be, the journals _do_ have
| copyright, and it's hard to get around that.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25604013
| tchalla wrote:
| So basically, the society pays money to do research and then pays
| again to access PDF/HTML files with enormous license fees. Looks
| like a win-win strategy from publishers. They have effectively
| co-opted "open access" to make public institutions pay even more
| money to host PDF files.
| gruez wrote:
| How hard would it be for the government to issue an edict like
| "from 2025 all research must be published in an open access
| journal to receive public funding"?
| enriquto wrote:
| > How hard would it be for the government to issue an edict
| like "from 2025 all research must be published in an open
| access journal to receive public funding"?
|
| In France it is more or less like that. You have to upload
| your publications to http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr you want
| them to "count" (from the point of view of public research).
| g_p wrote:
| This has happened in the UK and Europe already, I believe.
| The UK definitely - research only counts if it is open access
| and deposited within a certain number of days of being
| accepted. Otherwise it doesn't "count" towards evaluation of
| research output when reviewed.
| shash wrote:
| Well considering that much of the research one would want to
| access might be published outside the country, pretty hard...
| Bancakes wrote:
| Probably harder than simply creating and standardising a .gov
| website that hosts research. It's difficult to demonstrate
| how journals are more than (or utilised better than) search
| engines.
| gruez wrote:
| AFAIK the problem isn't with finding a place to host the
| papers, but that the non-open access journals require you
| to sign over the paper's copyright to them.
| Bancakes wrote:
| I think the problem with open access and such is that
| they're relatively unknown. When you have a standardised,
| credible, authoritative source, well, that's all journals
| have for them. Only this time it's government-guaranteed
| instead of an appeal to corporate authority.
| czzr wrote:
| An issue with open access is that you have to pay
| thousands of dollars up front to get published - fine if
| you're in a rich western lab, not so great if you're in
| India or some other emerging country.
| acomjean wrote:
| Certain public funding sources (nih in the us) require
| publications be accessible to the public.
|
| https://publicaccess.nih.gov/
|
| Some journals like to issue a "surcharge" for this so some of
| the cost is passed on to the authors.
|
| Eg: https://www.elsevier.com/open-access/agreements/elsevier-
| nih...
| vinay_ys wrote:
| I think they are saying Indian taxpayer funded research will be
| made available to public for free by passing a law and for
| international scientific journals they will make a deal for a
| country-wide subscription and make it available to the whole
| country for free. As a taxpayer I would want to see some usage
| statistics (not asking for ROI or such, just usage).
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yeah this is silly, but I think this could be progress:
|
| - Before: institutions paying the rent might be lame and want
| to hoard the benefits to themselves.
|
| - Now: everyone gets the same benefits so there is no
| competitive advantage of being the institution able to pay.
|
| Of course, this opens up regulatory capture where few notice
| the rent seeking on the government, but I hope that there is
| enough buzz around this issue that that phenomenon can be
| avoid.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| This might not be as crazy as it sounds.
|
| One group selects research to fund in the social good. This is
| the INPUT to the scientific process.
|
| The publishers filter the OUTPUT: they select what is
| noteworthy and (ostensibly) good science produced with those
| funds.
|
| If I got a pile of cash to pursue an interesting cancer
| treatment, you'd want some filter on the output to know
| whether, indeed, I did anything noteworthy with the cash.
| afrojack123 wrote:
| This assumes the public is stupid. Citizen scientists and
| readers can decide what is good and what is not. Think of a
| Substack or Patron model as opposed to Fake News(NY times,
| Washington Post, CNN, etc).
| tchalla wrote:
| > The publishers filter the OUTPUT: they select what is
| noteworthy and (ostensibly) good science produced with those
| funds.
|
| You may want to check this assumption. The publishers do not
| filter the output. It is done for free by the scientific
| community.
|
| Source : I have been a reviewer for many of these
| publications over the years.
| fermienrico wrote:
| These publishers are just glorified PDF hosting companies?
| Do they do _anything_?
| pirocks wrote:
| Glorified pdf hosting would probably be an accurate way
| of describing them. Also sometimes they print the pdfs.
| [deleted]
| oli5679 wrote:
| http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju...
| Information is power. But like all power, there are those who
| want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and
| cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and
| journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a
| handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers
| featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to
| send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
|
| There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access
| Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not
| sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is
| published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to
| access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will
| only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until
| now will have been lost.
|
| That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money
| to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries
| but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing
| scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First
| World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous
| and unacceptable.
|
| "I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the
| copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for
| access, and it's perfectly legal -- there's nothing we can do to
| stop them." But there is something we can, something that's
| already being done: we can fight back.
|
| Those with access to these resources -- students, librarians,
| scientists -- you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at
| this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked
| out. But you need not -- indeed, morally, you cannot -- keep this
| privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the
| world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling
| download requests for friends.
|
| Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly
| by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over
| fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers
| and sharing them with your friends.
|
| But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground.
| It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of
| knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and
| murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral -- it's a moral
| imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a
| friend make a copy.
|
| Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws
| under which they operate require it -- their shareholders would
| revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off
| back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide
| who can make copies.
|
| There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come
| into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience,
| declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
|
| We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our
| copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff
| that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy
| secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download
| scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We
| need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
|
| With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong
| message opposing the privatization of knowledge -- we'll make it
| a thing of the past. Will you join us?
|
| Aaron Swartz
|
| July 2008, Eremo, Italy
| 20kleagues wrote:
| This is incredible, from the point of view of the average
| researcher they will simply be able to (legally) obtain any paper
| they wish. The effort to get more publishing in open-journals is
| something which will go on in parallel, but this is going to
| immediately boost access for the average person who doesn't have
| the time (or money) to lobby for open-publishing.
| sudhirj wrote:
| Is this even possible under the licensing agreements of journals?
| Why isn't every country already doing this?
| newswasboring wrote:
| I'm guessing they will be able to define their own license if
| the order is big enough. If not, I think a new National Library
| can be established and every citizen is automatically a member?
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| Maybe because the country sees the absurdity in paying for the
| research and then paying again to read the results.
| wolco2 wrote:
| Why not create a new journal that would be free for all? If
| the subscription journals provide no value I don't see the
| problem.
| input_sh wrote:
| There's plenty of such journals out there (commonly
| referred to as open access journals).
|
| But popular subscription journals are seen as crown jewels
| for researchers and readers are unwilling to pay ridiculous
| amounts of money to read a paper or two, so sci-hub remains
| extremely popular.
| netizen-9748 wrote:
| As a scientist, it is of my opinion that this is rather
| absurd. Research should be viewed as being for the
| betterment of humanity and furthering our knowledge, not
| personal prestige
| rusticpenn wrote:
| Unfortunately ones career is based on personal prestige
| in this field.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| As a former scientist, the depths of academia I have
| visited and what I have seen had better not reach the
| light of day.
| whereistimbo wrote:
| But would it be indexed by Scopus, which is owned by
| Elsevier? Some research grants might require researcher's
| past findings to be indexed in Scopus.
| HPsquared wrote:
| They already are, effectively, through publicly-funded
| universities.
| djohnston wrote:
| Stop placating the parasitic middleman. I wish the govt would
| donate to sci hub and tell elsevier et al to shove it.
| jestinjoy1 wrote:
| Related:
|
| A case is going on in Delhi HC against libgen and sci-hub.
|
| https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/delhi-hc-asks-libg...
| cute_boi wrote:
| they could just have allow and legalize scihub .
| malloreon wrote:
| What's to stop me, as a journal publisher, from saying, "hmmm,
| yes, Indian government? So that will be...1.35 billion
| subscriptions, yes?"
| detaro wrote:
| the fact that then you sell them 0 subscriptions? It's not like
| "the government has said it'll do this, so now it has to do it
| at all costs", and governments of larger countries do have
| options to make a publishers life difficult if they are
| unreasonable, so there is some interest on both sides to
| negotiate.
| teatree wrote:
| Genuine cases languish in Indian judicial system for decades,
| couldn't they just make the case against SciHub run around in the
| system for a few decades. Why waste money to satisfy somebody's
| greed when it can be put to much better use ?
|
| Can't these researchers get a VPN and access SciHub, Govt of
| India banned many porn sites, made no difference to its users ?
|
| Use the same money and fund more research!
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| This is a great news, Universities were already using their
| subscription to give access to its students, researchers;
| Considering govt. was paying for that (public universities) and
| other research centers for access anyways; Giving access to all
| tax payers makes absolute sense.
|
| The current Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of
| India - Prof. K. VijayRaghavan[1] have been publicly pushing for
| greater scientific literacy in the country incl. using the
| current rise in coverage of science/research in mass media due to
| pandemic as a platform to promote wider adoption of scientific
| content.
|
| [1]https://twitter.com/kvijayraghavan
| mncharity wrote:
| > This is a great news
|
| The journal aspect, regrettably not. The publishers are trying
| to shut down sci-hub, and to disincentivize policies of
| mandatory open-access. And they have a long history of getting
| in a door with tolerable cost and terms, and then each time you
| need to renew the contract, costs are higher, terms are worse,
| and both are bundled so "there's nothing you can do about it,
| is there?". Combine those ethics with Indian governance's
| potential for kickbacks, and sadly, not good news.
| seg_lol wrote:
| India should mandate that all research done in the country
| with any level of state sponsorship should also be made
| available through a digital library within six months of
| publication in any journal.
| mncharity wrote:
| > greater scientific literacy
|
| Yes, sci-hub has made the research literature _far_ more
| accessible to anyone not currently affiliated with a
| university. Including journalists, and anyone creating
| educational content. Even in fields with an emphasis on open
| access. Which many fields still lack. And the introduction
| sections of papers can sometimes be surprisingly accessible to
| even young students.
|
| I wouldn't even be considering working on improving science
| education content, if sci-hub didn't exist. And I used libgen
| the other day, to check the best-selling introductory astronomy
| textbooks, and find they most all have the color of the Sun
| wrong (really - there's a common misconception, pervasive in
| introductory astronomy education content). From some of the
| same publishing corporations too. It's something I've been
| meaning to check for years, and which finally happened, only
| because libgen made it easy.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| So how about pay them ransom money and let us use scihub in peace
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| scihub rules!
| zajdband wrote:
| Argentina has been doing this for decades. The Ministry of
| Education has one account and all the different institutions
| (universities and research organizations) share the same unique
| password.
| whereistimbo wrote:
| How could that work in practice? Is anyone able to change the
| same unique password?
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Source please, that's kind of incredible.
| jmartrican wrote:
| How would the logistics of this even work? Like would every
| citizen be given their own unique creds, or do they share just
| one? Would the publishers charge a massive fee for all 1 billion
| citizens (at a massive discount) or would they just charge for
| one account? What about password sharing with citizens from
| another country?
| ayush--s wrote:
| it will be published in govt's library, to which you login
| using Aadhar linked creds
| teatree wrote:
| Most probably each public library would be assigned a set of
| accounts, which any citizen can use via their computers by
| visiting the library.
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