“While some scholars think that this business model may become unsustainable in the future, we think that Sci-Hub, paradoxically, may help preserve the current publishing system.”
One should ponder if the current publishing system is worth preserving though or if the time has come to tear down those paywalls
Couldn’t agree more!
As a researcher, I think it’s tough to overstate how much the current publishing system hinders scientific progress.
Not only does it make published results less accessible to other researchers, while siphoning tons of money away from research, it also financially incentivizes a quantity-over-quality approach to publication.
Sci-hub is the best thing that has happened to science in ages, imo.
“The lack of access to publications, which preprints and open access journals are trying to solve, may no longer be felt so strongly to find required increasing support. In any case, the existence of pirate websites represents an important factor for journals to rethink their commercial policies in terms of granting access to scientific literature.”
In my opinion, piracy is also a legitimate solution to the problem of expensive journals. Maybe open access isnt as great as assumed.
Disclaimer, I am not a scientist and only read a few papers during university.
Open access publication is just another great idea ruined by unfettered capitalism.
The big publishers decided to make up for the loss of one-time fees by charging thousands of dollars to publish an open access article.
Generally, this money has to come out of the research funding, which is scarce enough already in many fields, and the cost is prohibitive for most projects.
For context, peer review is performed for free by volunteer academics, so all the publishers really do these days is turn a word document into a fancy pdf, and lend a mostly illusory veneer of respectability.
