Re: [LIS-Forum] Sci-Hub Case: The Court Should Protect Science From Greedy Academic Publishers

Scihub is not a pirate website, it is a demonstration of civil disobedience. It is a pirate website as it illegally stores copyrighted materials. Pressurising academic publishers to relax copyright restrictions by reducing embargo, allowing authors to share accepted manuscripts and lifetime access to own research papers or publicly funded research for that country are some of the measures that need to taken forward but illegally breaching copyright laws will ultimately harm the science and science communication. Similarly, governments need to increase funding for research and fund national-level consortium models. On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 11:01 AM madhan muthu wrote:

- *These pirate websites are killing revenue of academic publishers indirectly harming science communication. To compensate their losses due to these pirate websites the publishers increase subscription costs which are again have to paid by funding agencies. *

Scihub is not a pirate website, it is a demonstration of civil disobedience. Scihub rather helps science grow, and it contributes to better science communication. Scihub maximises the use of research papers, and eventually maximizes the impact of research.

Scihub has been there for the past 10 years or less, but, the 'serial crisis' has been existing since long before the birth of Scihub. "The subscription prices of scholarly journals have been increasing at a rate faster than the inflation rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_rate for several decades." < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serials_crisis >. There is only profit, and more profit in science publishing (there is no question of loss). Major publishers' profit has been increasing consistently. < https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science>. And, for decades funding agencies are in the trap of the triple pay system - “the state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product.” < http://dst.sciencecentral.in/36/3/UAJB_A_1366194-Postprint.pdf

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- *No doubt reforms are needed to regress academic publishers' increasing subscription prices and Article Processing Fees but such kind of gross copyright infringements will hamper publishers' rights and ultimately reduce the publication avenues for authors. We have seen mushrooming of low quality free journals in recent years compelling UGC to come up with a white list. *

Author's have never felt the scarcity of avenues to publish and they will never feel so (thanks to the web). Predatory journals are products of the author-pay open access journals (model). We should stop 'paying money to publish' to kill predatory publishers. Scihub is not the reason for the proliferation of predatory publishers.

- *The copyright laws are to promote and incentivise intellectual output by protecting the rights of creaters*.

"The primary purpose of copyright law is not so much to protect the interests of the authors/creators, but rather to promote the progress of science and the useful arts—that is—knowledge. To accomplish this purpose, copyright ownership encourages authors/creators in their efforts by granting them a temporary monopoly, or ownership of exclusive rights for a specified length of time. However, this monopoly is somewhat limited when it conflicts with an overriding public interest, such as encouraging new creative and intellectual works, or the necessity for some members of the public to make a single copy of a work for non profit, educational purposes. " < https://lib.siu.edu/copyright/module-01/purpose-of-copyright-law.php >

Madhan

On Wed, 23 Dec 2020 at 19:56, Vinit Kumar wrote:

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These pirate websites are killing revenue of academic publishers indirectly harming science communication. To compensate their losses due to these pirate websites the publishers increase subscription costs which are again have to paid by funding agencies. No doubt reforms are needed to regress academic publishers' increasing subscription prices and Article Processing Fees but such kind of gross copyright infringements will hamper publishers' rights and ultimately reduce the publication avenues for authors. We have seen mushrooming of low quality free journals in recent years compelling UGC to come up with a white list. The copyright laws are to promote and incentivise intellectual output by protecting the rights of creaters.

In my opinion, rather than asking everything for free we need to increase funding towards research.

Regards -- Vinit Kumar, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Library and Information Science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A central university) Lucknow 226025

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On Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 1:28 PM madhan muthu wrote:

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Sci-Hub Case: The Court Should Protect Science From Greedy Academic Publishers

A court of law in India shouldn't allow itself to become a tool for perpetuating inequalities in access to scientific literature in the developing world.

https://thewire.in/law/sci-hub-elsevier-delhi-high-court-access-medical-lite...

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-- Madhan, M

-- Regards Vinit Kumar, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Library and Information Science Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Rae Bareilly Road, Lucknow 226025 +919454120174 https://sites.google.com/view/vinitkumar