{"id":180035,"date":"2017-08-02T18:07:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T23:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/08\/02\/the-streisand-effect-benefits-us-all\/"},"modified":"2017-08-02T18:07:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T23:07:00","slug":"the-streisand-effect-benefits-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/08\/02\/the-streisand-effect-benefits-us-all\/","title":{"rendered":"The Streisand Effect Benefits Us All"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written a bit about the increasingly larcenous and parasitic scientific journal industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have in fact said that the giant of the industry, Elsevier, “Is determined to suck the marrow out of learning, and dance on its bones<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

I have on occasion (first link) noted that there is a site, Sci-Hub, based in Russia, which is making much of the previously paywalled material freely available.<\/p>\n

Elsevier has aggressively gone after Sci-Hub in court, with the result that Sci-Hub’s profile and hence access on the internet, has skyrocketed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Techdirt has been covering the story of Sci-Hub<\/a>, which provides unrestricted access to a massive (unauthorized) database of academic papers, for a while now. As several posts have emphasized, the decision by the publishing giant Elsevier to pursue the site through the courts is a classic example of the Streisand Effect: it has simply served to spread<\/a> the word about a hitherto obscure service. There’s a new paper exploring this and other aspects of Sci-Hub, currently available as a PeerJ preprint<\/a>. Here’s what one of the authors says in a related Science interview about the impact of lawsuits on Sci-Hub<\/a>: <\/span><\/p>\n

 In our paper we have a graph plotting the history of Sci-Hub against Google Trends — each legal challenge resulted in a spike in Google searches [for the site], which suggests the challenges are basically generating free advertising for Sci-Hub. I think the suits are not going to stop Sci-Hub.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That free advertising provided by Elsevier and others through their high-profile legal assaults on Alexandra Elbakyan, the academic from Kazakhstan who created and runs Sci-Hub pretty much single-handedly, has been highly effective. The surge in searches for Sci-Hub seems to have led to its holdings becoming incredibly comprehensive, as increased numbers of visitors have requested missing articles, which are then added to the collection:  <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As an FYI the Streisand effect<\/a> is where an attempt to suppress information results in further publicizing and popularizing the data.<\/p>\n

Considering the nature of peer reviewed journals, where the publishing houses neither pay the authors, the reviewers, and frequently the editors, and prices have increased largely because of industry consolidation.<\/p>\n

If Sci-Hub and its ilk sends these publishers into bankruptcy, the world will benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written a bit about the increasingly larcenous and parasitic scientific journal industry. I have in fact said that the giant of the industry, Elsevier, “Is determined to suck the marrow out of learning, and dance on its bones.” I have on occasion (first link) noted that there is a site, Sci-Hub, based in Russia, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,520,367,428,486],"class_list":["post-180035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-copyright","tag-internet","tag-ip","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}