This is about Sci-Hub. yeah we get it.. gatekeep knowledge and protect the interests of capitalâŚ
Listen, this is serious.
Do not use the website called Sci-Hub!
It lets people access scientific articles for free. This is dangerous. It helps the free flow of knowledge and reduces the competitive edge of all the people who worked really hard to have been born into a wealth.
Like, itâs literally a website where you can type in the DOI of an article and read it, without ever having to pay the publisher who exploited the author.
So, again, do not, under any circumstance, use Sci-Hub. I mean, can you imagine a world where knowledge is free and easily accessible to everyone? Even, y'know, poor people?
Libgen also has many books online, including textbooks, searchable by name, author, and ISBN. Can you imagine textbook companies not getting their hard-earned income from poor college students? Here is the link just so you make sure that you never accidentally stumble across this horrible, unethical website.
Oh, and while weâre talking about books, if youâve managed to stay clear from Libgen, definitely donât go to zlibrary, where you can also find a lot of textbooks, but unfortunately theyâre completely free.
Reblogging so you know which sites to totally avoid
Another inside tip from academia: Those papers in really expensive journals that are effectively inaccessible to anyone not in a university network? Depending on the discipline itâs very likely that same paper is on a âpreprintâ server somewhere, with no access restrictions.
Like if you want to read basically any physics, math, or CS paper, arXiv.org will have you covered, because everyone uploads their papers there before submitting to a journal (and generally updates it after peer review). I know all of my papers are on there. This is such common practice that journals have it baked into their licensing agreements that authors retain the right to upload their work to these places.
So the next time you get hit with that paywall, you may not even need sci-hub, just click the arxiv link on google scholar instead.
if for some reason none of this works, the old âsend a email nicely asking for the paper to the authorâ is always a good trick. remember most scientists hate the commercialisation of scientific knowledge
Donât mind me, just gotta share this with my bf so that he knows what websites to avoid
Many authors of papers are on ResearchGate! You can ask for papers there, if they donât just post a copy to download. If theyâre associated with a college, you can usually find their email addresses in the department directory, also.
Always reblog.
