• sndrtj@feddit.nl
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      10 months ago

      A website where you can download paywalled scientific literature. Most scientific literature is paywalled by publishers, and costs a real significant amount to read (like 30-50$ per article if you don’t have a subscription).

      Scihub basically just pirates it. And has been shut down several times. But as most scientific studies are already laid with public money, scihub isn’t that unethical at all.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Lots of scientists will just send you their article if you email them. They don’t get the money when you pay to read it - often they pay to submit. Reviewing journal articles is a privilege and doesn’t get you paid. The prestige of a scientific article is from the number of times people have cited it. The only “harm” done is that the publisher doesn’t get to make 100% profit for doing nothing.

        Journal publishing is mostly a way to extract money from universities. Elsevier and its ilk name whatever price they think a research university can afford.