Universities turning to piracy in order to access academic research. (1 Viewer)

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Toller

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Feb 21, 2018
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As More Universities ‘Ditch’ Elsevier, Sci-Hub Blossoms

The University of California (UC) is the latest institution to cancel its subscription to leading academic publisher Elsevier. UC cites high costs and the lack of open access research among the reasons. This likely means an increase in traffic for Sci-Hub, the site that's often referred to referred to as 'The Pirate Bay for Science', which may actually play a bigger role than some suspect.

Little more than three years ago, Elsevier, one of the world’s largest academic publishers, took Sci-Hub to court.

It was a mismatched battle from the start. With a net income of more than $2.4 billion per year, the publisher could fund a proper case, while its nemesis relied on donations.

Elsevier won the case, including millions of dollars in damages. However, the site remained online and grew bigger. Ironically, the academic publisher itself appears to be one of the main drivers of this growth.

In recent years there has been a major push in academic circles to move to Open Access publishing. Instead of locking academic publications behind paywalls, they should be freely available to researchers around the world as well as the public at large, the argument goes.

https://torrentfreak.com/as-more-universities-ditch-elsevier-sci-hub-blossoms
 

Pucksterguy

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Another example of the shift. Walls are coming down everywhere.
 
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therium

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Nov 1, 2018
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I'm not surprised. Most people, and more and more institutions, cannot afford $200 for a single issue of a journal, or $4000 per year for a subscription to one journal. Those are actual prices I've found.

I've even found tools to download PDF files from Scribd. Scribd will let you read most files for free but you can only download them if you pay for a subscription.
 
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Toller

Toller

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I've even found tools to download PDF files from Scribd. Scribd will let you read most files for free but you can only download them if you pay for a subscription.
Scribd Files Complaint Against DRM Circumvention Tool
Scribd has filed a complaint targeting a tool that allows users to permanently download books, audiobooks, magazines, and other digital content from its publishing platform. Scribd Downloader does require the user to have a Scribd subscription to operate fully, but the company says the tool breaches the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.

Founded in 2007, Scribd billed itself as the “world’s first open publishing platform.”
In 2013, the platform debuted “the first reading subscription service”, offering readers access to all books for a single flat fee.
The following year, Scribd added audiobooks to its service, later adding access to sheet music and magazines. By 2017, the site had established itself as a base for news articles, publishing works from The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and others under its subscription model.
With an estimated 100 million visitors per month and a place in the world’s top 200 websites, Scribd is now huge. According to the latest company information, it has 700,000 premium subscribers, but not everyone plays by the rules when obtaining content from the service.

https://torrentfreak.com/scribd-files-complaint-against-drm-circumvention-tool-190224/
 

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