This post shouldn’t need to be written, but apparently it does. In recent discussions of Sci-Hub, I still keep seeing people trot out idiot analogies where copying scientific papers is portrayed as the equivalent of stealing physical goods. A couple of examples: Or: It pains me to read the words of experienced and presumably knowledgeable people when they trot out such absolute nonsense.

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Yesterday we asked what will happen if Sci-Hub succeeds (by which I meant that it survives whatever legal challenges come its way, and continues to distribute copyrighted scholarly publications to anyone in the world at zero cost, ignoring the claims of that copyright). Now let’s think about what happens if it fails — that is, if it’s taken down by legal action within Russia, or it’s successfully DDoSed (don’t laugh, I’ve seen it

Let’s think this through. Ignore for now the questions about Sci-Hub’s legality, and just consider the pragmatics. Imagine that it “succeeds” in that it survives whatever legal challenges come its way, and continues to distribute copyrighted scholarly publications to anyone in the world at zero cost, ignoring the claims of that copyright. Then what follows?

I was relaxing on the Sunday afternoon before last, when there was a knock on the door. A couple of friends of mine had popped round with a plastic sack containing a fox and a pheasant that they’d found. (They rightly pointed out that it sounded like a pub.) The fox is a treat for another day.

THE STORY SO FAR: Erin McKiernan can’t get access to the research she needs in Mexico, Mohammad M.M.H can’t get it in Jordan, and Nora Turoman can’t get it in Serbia.

This one is for journalists and other popularizers of science. I see a lot of people writing that “scientists believe” this or that, when talking about hadrons or hadrosaurs or other phenomena grounded in evidence. Pet peeve: believing is what people do in the absence of evidence, or despite evidence.

Whatever else Sci-Hub may or may not be, it’s becoming apparent that it functions as a litmus test. It focuses people’s thoughts on the problems of scholarly communication, and draws out their ideas in their clearest form. Who is sympathetic? For example, on one side, you have Duke librarian Kevin Smith, whose radical thoughts about Sci-Hub are radical in the literal sense of the word: going to the root.

A while back, I mentioned that I’d written and released VertFigure, a program for drawing schematic comparative diagrams of vertebral columns.

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I’ve been a bit nonplussed recently to see some strange claims about Alexandra Elbakyan, the creator of Sci-Hub. For example, this from Angela Cochrane in an article at the Scholarly Kitchen : I don’t think that’s the case at all. Nothing Elbakyan has said seems to communicate the kind of arrogance or exceptionalism that this implies.