1. So, it seems like that these blog posts have unintentionally become a bimonthly occurrence. I wish to apologise for that ... it really was not my intention for this to happen, however the pattern seems to have emerged by itself and since its relatively relaxed, ah what the well ... why not go with it ...
2. Its seven in the evening, and I am still sitting at my desk in the office ... So I thought it would be good for my mental health to stop working for a second and do something else with my time ... such as write a post over here. Today was one of those days where I started a million different things, and only progressed a teeny weeny bit in each and every one of them, so much for productivity. But during this particular day of craziness and head banging against my desk, I read an interesting article which made me wonder about what I am actually doing with my life, and why.
I was randomly browsing on the internet during my lunch break, the following article that got published on the International Business Times caught my attention. For anyone who is interested to read it for themselves, you can follow the link below.
So for those who couldn't be bothered to read it, the article tells the story of a Kazakh woman, Alexandra Elbakyan, who essentially became the modern day Robin Hood, of the world of science. But lets back track a little bit here, all of us that somehow are involved in the world of science and academia know how much of a pain it can be sometimes to obtain access to scientific papers whilst we are trying to research something. Only the inexistent God above knows how many a nights I spent banging my head against the desk, searching on Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, Research Gate and the Wiley Online Library and so many more search engines looking for scientific papers and journals that maybe, just maybe, I could reference in my work. Luckily enough, the University gives me accessto loads and loads of material and journals, however there still are those few papers and journals which I would like to read but I'd have to access to, unless I pay the typical $30. And as you can imagine, that would be the last nail in the coffin where my patience would be kept ... thus resulting in the following reaction ...
And it was then that I remembered a reply that Elon Musk gave to an interviewer, who had asked him why he had given away for free all the patents Tesla had obtained over the years.
2. Its seven in the evening, and I am still sitting at my desk in the office ... So I thought it would be good for my mental health to stop working for a second and do something else with my time ... such as write a post over here. Today was one of those days where I started a million different things, and only progressed a teeny weeny bit in each and every one of them, so much for productivity. But during this particular day of craziness and head banging against my desk, I read an interesting article which made me wonder about what I am actually doing with my life, and why.
I was randomly browsing on the internet during my lunch break, the following article that got published on the International Business Times caught my attention. For anyone who is interested to read it for themselves, you can follow the link below.
So for those who couldn't be bothered to read it, the article tells the story of a Kazakh woman, Alexandra Elbakyan, who essentially became the modern day Robin Hood, of the world of science. But lets back track a little bit here, all of us that somehow are involved in the world of science and academia know how much of a pain it can be sometimes to obtain access to scientific papers whilst we are trying to research something. Only the inexistent God above knows how many a nights I spent banging my head against the desk, searching on Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, Research Gate and the Wiley Online Library and so many more search engines looking for scientific papers and journals that maybe, just maybe, I could reference in my work. Luckily enough, the University gives me accessto loads and loads of material and journals, however there still are those few papers and journals which I would like to read but I'd have to access to, unless I pay the typical $30. And as you can imagine, that would be the last nail in the coffin where my patience would be kept ... thus resulting in the following reaction ...
Well apparently, as she was writing her dissertation, Alexandra encountered these same problems we all do, but she had had enough of this crap. So, she decided that all science should be free for all to access, and that is the story of how Sci-Hub was born.
If there is any research paper you desire, but you cannot manage to access it for free online, you can access it illegally via this magnificent jewel of a website. Alexandra referred to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights when she was asked about the controversial website by an interviewer, and said "there should be no obstacles to accessing knowledge, I believe, everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits" - quoted from the article I already linked above, which in turn they quoted it from another article published by RT.
Personally, I think say her reasoning is perfect. But then I also ended up thinking, that being part of the scientific world myself, would I want my work to end up being freely distributed to everyone, and me not getting a penny's worth out of it? The thing is, scientists already do not make any money from publishing their work. Sometimes they even have to pay to publish their work on journals and to present it at conferences. So is it right that the publishers sell the papers for $30 each, whilst the scientists gets nothing?
"If we're all on a ship together, and there's holes in the ship, and we're bailing water out ... and we have a great design for a bucket; we should probably share the bucket design because we're all gonna sink!" - Elon Musk
And that pretty much gave me the answer I was looking for. If Elon Musk has just given away for free all of Tesla's patents for other companies to make the same scientific advancements, why should the publishers of scientific material make the life of budding scientists so hard to give them access to previous scientific work, and make so much money in the meantime?
Fuck the big corporations, fuck the publishers, fuck the institutions looking to make money off scientists ... if we do not do something, and something quick about the state of the world that we are living in,there soon will be no world left to live in. So to hell with money and to hell with the regulations ... thank you Alexandra! This world needs more people like you !
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03/03/2016 Update - Apparently the site is no longer accessible. I am guessing due to some legal shit ... sad day where instead of defending the right to science, the courts have defended those who want to make money out of the scientists' hard work. Shame.
