why is this even considered piracy tho?

science journals that lock research papers behind paywalls appropriate the free research done by scientists and funded by taxes, peer reviewed by other fellow scientists, this shouldn’t even be considered piracy

I am a statistician. I work on a lot of different projects, some for corporations and others for public good. While I was in university I had fantastic access to research and papers. I didn’t realize how hard it would be once I left. Historically, I’ve relied on sci-hub heavily to stay up to date on the latest research in my field – without sci-hub I almost certainly would have made “damaging” mistakes, not intentionally but simply do to having to operate off decade old knowledge. I realize that I could pay for many articles ; however , I spend 30 - 50 % of my days reading papers. Probably 1/8 of the papers I read are actually what I am looking for but I need to do the diligence of covering a broad swath of papers in my area of interest to make sure I am not missing anything. As someone who works independently, this level of research would cost a huge amount of money and honestly be preventative. Opening up this information is power. It is empowering. It is how we build a better society and equip people with knowledge. Gating it through universities is straight up dumb. If anything is a public utility , it should be this type of information. Luckily more and more people/universities are aware of this problem. Some universities now publish papers directly onto their university press pages and I’ve had a huge amount of success emailing professors directly asking if they will send me their research – this is a huge pain but often has unexpected benefits (I’ve had several calls with profs that published papers where I’ve been able to ask questions). All that being said , I shouldn’t have to email profs – they are busy, I am busy.

Locking research papers behind paywalls hmmm. And that is why the occult and esoteric arts will soon overtake the sciences. Crowley was wrong, science will not win.

Hopefully she moves to Mastodon

Not promoting this site but some good points are collected like:

Academic research, often carried out with taxpayer dollars, is disseminated through publication in scholarly journals. In recent years for-profit publishers such as Amsterdam-based Elsevier corporation have developed a strangle-hold on the business of scholarly publishing. By purchasing thousands of journals, relying on free labor from academics, and placing results of publicly-funded research behind paywalls Elsevier has increased the cost of scientific research and decreased our access to it.

https://www.change.org/p/elsevier-boycott-elsevier-and-support-affordable-open-access-scholarly-publishing

more here: https://torrentfreak.com/the-exploitive-business-model-of-academic-publishers-fuels-piracy-210227/