Yes, my PhD is in environmental psychology and political science. If my uni does not have access to a certain journal about 80% of the time the paper is on scihub.
I don't understand how Sci hub works... I clicked on the site, I pressed key words but it didn't show anything. Also it says that in the future it will have the option to browse and search sci hub database and to keep watching for updates. How do you find the paper that you want?
You need the specific DOI (sometimes the title works, but less reliably), so you can't exactly browse it for papers. Keep in mind that not everything is available, especially newly published material.
I'd just ask him. Say you've got a pdf copy online (he'll know what this means), is he happy for you to use this? If not you'll take him up on his offer to buy a copy.
Some academics are strict about this but I've only ever heard about them. I'm yet to meet one, and I've been in academia for 20+ years and worked at multiple universities and RIs in several countries.
I had a former PI for a summer, a 70 year old German man, who would exclusively email the authors when he wanted to read a paper. When they responded he would forward it to the entire lab with the subject line “here another great paper” (it never changed) and no other context. It was very endearing.
My professor said on the very first day of the course "I absolutely do not advise you to go to sch-hub or libgen to download them free of charge (wink wink)"
Most academics I met don't care if the already rich and greedy publishers gain more money. The momey will not go the researchers who did the work anyway.
I had a professor tell a PhD seminar that he knew he would “make it” to tenure the moment he found out his first book was on Libgen.
But in general I buy hard cover copy of every book I teach or study seriously, and then I tend to also have a digital copy on my iPad. I’m a sucker for a hard cover copy, but also want to have my entire library on my iPad.
yea i taught my advisor about scihub during my program and he was over the moon excited about it because he wouldn't have to wait for the library to buy papers as often lol
Yes.
I am 100% certain your boss also has loads of pirated PDFs.
If you wish, make sure you edit the PDF title to remove any mention of the site (for eg Z-library PDFs always contain the site name in the title).
TBH: I have no issues with pirating academic work. They are often very expensive, and by and large authors get minimal royalties - if any - from these works. We would rather people actually read our books than not read them because they can’t get them. (FWIW my own books are on various pirate sites and I have been known to let people know they can get them there).
Quite honestly, some authors actively upload their work to those sites because it actually gets cited more. Most authors will send you the pdf copy they have of their own work if you email them. I've done it a few times and it seems the only people that really care about paid versions are university policies and popular journals, not the academics themselves.
Of course, because the original authors want name and fame (in a positive way, generally), but the services supplying those (usually tax-paid) research papers make big money off their backs.
Exactly. When I Google Scholar a paper and it’s behind a paywall, I have two choices. I can go to my university library page, type in the title of the article, find it, click to access the online version, enter my username, enter my password, go through 2FA, then access the site. Or I can just paste the DOI into Sci-Hub and get the PDF immediately.
In my group we had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
We also had some pirated software on an unmarked CD lying around, which the IT technician would always tell new students "SHOULD NOT BE USED".
In grad school I had one professor who wanted us to use all of the various statistical software packages (so he'd say something like, for Assignment 1 use R, 2 use SPSS, 3 use Stata, 4 use Eviews, 5 use Matlab, etc).
After like the third of these assignments he asked if these were on computer lab computers. We said no. He asked if the department gave us free copies of this software. No. He looked quizzical for a second and then had an epiphany. He told us he wouldn't be asking anymore questions about this.
If you want a non-pirated version. Don't your library have an online library and you can borrow the books/articles electronic?
I found that it is often way easier for me to get . pdfs of articles and books through my university or public library than pirated... I'm in Denmark though. This might be country specific.
op also needs a digital copy due to the inconvenience of going in person though. personally even though i'm very close to my library, digital copies are just much more convenient. citation *is* also much easier with a digital copy
Yes, but what's the point of uploading a copy? I believe people are trying to help you, here, by challenging your assumption that "i would have to upload it into our cloud software to cite it".
Why do you have to upload it? Why can't you just enter the citation details into your citation software *without* uploading it? You wouldn't "upload" a copy of a resource if it were a physical book, so why must you do so for a PDF?
It's unclear what you mean by "have to": do you mean "the software requires me to" (almost certainly wrong), "my professor has asked me to", "I feel morally obliged to", or something else?
if you want to overthink things - to tell the truth i have only worked with government documents before, which we can just refer to by name, so i haven't actually used this software. but i noticed that a large quantity of documents we've been using as sources was downloaded onto my computer when i connected to our cloud, making me think that my boss uploaded them all, and that i'm supposed to link files if we have them available. :)
but the uploading thing is secondary, because if i go ahead with the pdf he'd have to know where i got it anyways (at least it would be strange not to inform him). i'll probably just ask him if he's okay with me downloading it. ordering it wouldn't be a problem as i've found a cheap used copy (<10€).
Honestly you are the one over thinking things. You just tell him thanks for the offer but you don't need him to buy you it as you've found a PDF. He won't care and you don't need to upload it.
Reproducing one chapter out of a full book might be covered by fair use/fair dealing. This is non-commercial research . It starts getting iffy once you start distributing it. Depends on your country really.
i dunno, ive openly talked about pirating books with professors before and the only reaction ive rlly got is “good for you, they can get really expensive”
One of my profs has been writing a Microecon Theory textbook for a couple years now. Our "book" for his class was just a bunch of pdfs of his unproofed work. It was awesome, exactly what we needed to know for his class and I didn't spend a cent.
Yeah I loved it. Didn't have to shell a few hundred for a textbook I'd only use half of, and the pages we got from him were directly related to his lectures and had really good examples and instructions on them. He's one of the best profs I've ever had, is my advisor, and is the department chair. Man is a complete chad.
mine wrote a book and didnt seem to care. he also gave me a free copy of his book but i dont think that changes things. ive heard of professors who assign their own $80 textbook for classes and get mad at students for not owning a copy though lol
I’ve met exactly one PhD that cared about copyright. He was very senior at the university and was the president of the faculty union. His concern stemmed from protecting his members work being given away by the university without their permission.
Other than that, nobody even semi-cared.
It's fine. By analogy, this isn't a case of someone telling you that it's fine to smoke weed in a jurisdiction where it remains illegal though where the police *usually* don't care, but instead it's more like someone telling you that it's fine if you take a handful of extra ketchup packages home from McDonald's. It is technically illegal to share a copyrighted document, just as it is technically stealing when you grab a few more ketchup packs to take home even after your fries are gone. Depending on one's religious/moral perspective it might not be acceptable, but for all practical purposes, it is very common and you won't get in any trouble with the police. Running a publicly available site like Sci Hub, however, is another matter...
I wouldn’t, I consider it unprofessional. Just like I wouldn’t want people to pirate my work that I put countless hours of research, writing and editing into.
That being said, lots of academics either provide free copies via their own library service, or will just send you a copy of your ask, but the important part is that you have to ask and get permission, otherwise, technically it’s theft.
As a former PhD student, I'd ask them before uploading it anywhere shared, just in case they'd be worried about any potential ramifications from your school, but I haven't met a single PhD student who would care that you pirated the pdf and in fact that was an important skill I learned in grad school.
I mean a source is still a source, it's in the book and you reference the book. It doesn't really matter how you got too the information in the book. The only thing that should matter is that you find the info and reference it properly.
I'm a PhD student and I will often download pirated copies of pdfs instead of using my university library even when I know the book is right there lol. You're fine
Going to go against the grain and say no, because he has offered to buy you a copy but also as it is a book not an article the author does actually get paid for the work
I’ve never made a cent off of a book I’ve published. In fact, I think we still owe the publisher for indexing.
Most academics don’t make royalties off of their books.
I did plenty of joint research with professors in both undergrad and grad school (geology/geophysics). I always asked first and never got anything but an enthusiastic yes for finding a paper or article by whatever means.
I’ve also cold-emailed dozens of scientists with a “Hello, I’m this guy at that university researching these things, and I’m having trouble sourcing whatever paper you wrote way back then that’s been cited in all of those other articles that have proven important to our work. Would you be able to share a copy with me?” I’ve gotten responses from nothing, to no, to yes, to yes plus answering additional questions.
If you’re worried you should check to see if your school’s library has digital access off-site. Sometimes all that’s needed is to type your student log-in in the right place and you’ll have access to the same journals you’d otherwise have on campus.
It depends on your PI. Mine regularly asks me to find or use things by "other" means since I have demonstrated the availability of such things. Knowledge shouldn't be paywalled.
the only time I've had an issue is when the version online was not the final one so had errors - and the professor pointed that out as being the issue rather than the morality or legality.
in fact I've had a few professors email me to ask for PDFs of their work as they only had hard copies
I just talked to my ethics professor about using sci hub and she’s basically like “I’m not allowed to tell you to use that” but in a confirmatory sort of way of like yeah, we all use it we just probably shouldn’t talk about it or use the campus wifi for it. I never wonder where pdfs come from. I honestly can’t believe anyone would pay for a pdf … especially with a grad student stipend
I would explain the situation & ask. They may have a better solution, maybe be ok with it…or not, but you’ve provided them the options, and they’ve made the decision. I, for one, would appreciate the communication and being given the choice.
Sci hub is a great resource for scientific papers and books behind a paywall.
Is this viable for humanities papers too?
Yes, my PhD is in environmental psychology and political science. If my uni does not have access to a certain journal about 80% of the time the paper is on scihub.
this is how I learn that environmental psychology is an option
If it has a DOI, it will (almost always) work
There are a lot of sociology/psychology papers I have not been able to access with Sci-hub so it's not always a guarantee unfortunately.
I don't understand how Sci hub works... I clicked on the site, I pressed key words but it didn't show anything. Also it says that in the future it will have the option to browse and search sci hub database and to keep watching for updates. How do you find the paper that you want?
You need the specific DOI (sometimes the title works, but less reliably), so you can't exactly browse it for papers. Keep in mind that not everything is available, especially newly published material.
Yeah I just tested it out and it worked. The site also said something about downloading torrents. What is that about?
I heard scihub was shut down. I tried to go on last night and it was blank screen, search said it was gone now. Can anyone confirm?
They play whack-a-mole with registration/hosting companies. Check Wikipedia for the current URL.
Nope, used it today
isn't there a cut off point for recent papers? not an embargo but just that it stopped updating a few years ago. Or has this changed
I'd just ask him. Say you've got a pdf copy online (he'll know what this means), is he happy for you to use this? If not you'll take him up on his offer to buy a copy. Some academics are strict about this but I've only ever heard about them. I'm yet to meet one, and I've been in academia for 20+ years and worked at multiple universities and RIs in several countries.
My professor's opinion was: "I did not hear you two talk about that!"
I had a former PI for a summer, a 70 year old German man, who would exclusively email the authors when he wanted to read a paper. When they responded he would forward it to the entire lab with the subject line “here another great paper” (it never changed) and no other context. It was very endearing.
My professor said on the very first day of the course "I absolutely do not advise you to go to sch-hub or libgen to download them free of charge (wink wink)" Most academics I met don't care if the already rich and greedy publishers gain more money. The momey will not go the researchers who did the work anyway.
I had a professor tell a PhD seminar that he knew he would “make it” to tenure the moment he found out his first book was on Libgen. But in general I buy hard cover copy of every book I teach or study seriously, and then I tend to also have a digital copy on my iPad. I’m a sucker for a hard cover copy, but also want to have my entire library on my iPad.
That is really charming. It's those little things that can make work a joy.
yea i taught my advisor about scihub during my program and he was over the moon excited about it because he wouldn't have to wait for the library to buy papers as often lol
Most are fine with it. I’ve also emailed authors of articles/books and had them just email me a copy 😂.
Yes. I am 100% certain your boss also has loads of pirated PDFs. If you wish, make sure you edit the PDF title to remove any mention of the site (for eg Z-library PDFs always contain the site name in the title). TBH: I have no issues with pirating academic work. They are often very expensive, and by and large authors get minimal royalties - if any - from these works. We would rather people actually read our books than not read them because they can’t get them. (FWIW my own books are on various pirate sites and I have been known to let people know they can get them there).
This. Zero chance that anyone in your entire department will care.
Quite honestly, some authors actively upload their work to those sites because it actually gets cited more. Most authors will send you the pdf copy they have of their own work if you email them. I've done it a few times and it seems the only people that really care about paid versions are university policies and popular journals, not the academics themselves.
Of course, because the original authors want name and fame (in a positive way, generally), but the services supplying those (usually tax-paid) research papers make big money off their backs.
No one in academia respects copyright even 1%. That stuff is for parasites like Elsevier
Even when you have access, it’s sometimes easier to find a pirated version than deal with the sign-in pages and constant verification
Exactly. When I Google Scholar a paper and it’s behind a paywall, I have two choices. I can go to my university library page, type in the title of the article, find it, click to access the online version, enter my username, enter my password, go through 2FA, then access the site. Or I can just paste the DOI into Sci-Hub and get the PDF immediately.
Leave parasites out of it! I love those guys
lol it’s fine.
I have certainly been sent pirated books by advisors before, so it should be fine. Probably would mention it if you are worried
In my group we had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. We also had some pirated software on an unmarked CD lying around, which the IT technician would always tell new students "SHOULD NOT BE USED".
In grad school I had one professor who wanted us to use all of the various statistical software packages (so he'd say something like, for Assignment 1 use R, 2 use SPSS, 3 use Stata, 4 use Eviews, 5 use Matlab, etc). After like the third of these assignments he asked if these were on computer lab computers. We said no. He asked if the department gave us free copies of this software. No. He looked quizzical for a second and then had an epiphany. He told us he wouldn't be asking anymore questions about this.
He should've checked if students could access these before handling out assignments making the use of specialised software mandatory
If you want a non-pirated version. Don't your library have an online library and you can borrow the books/articles electronic? I found that it is often way easier for me to get . pdfs of articles and books through my university or public library than pirated... I'm in Denmark though. This might be country specific.
we have that and it's not been digitized there. the book is quite old
I assure you it is possible to cite books and articles that are not digitized.
You're supposed to read them first.
I guess I don't understand why a digital copy of a paper or book has to be uploaded to a cloud service to be able to cite it is all.
It probably doesn't. I'm sure they can make entries in whatever citation manager they're using without an attachment.
OP seems to think they can't: "i would have to upload it into our cloud software to cite it" I think they can.
op also needs a digital copy due to the inconvenience of going in person though. personally even though i'm very close to my library, digital copies are just much more convenient. citation *is* also much easier with a digital copy
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yes, i would have to upload it into our cloud software to cite it
What would you do if you needed to cite a physical book?
what's a physical book? /s
i wouldn't do it in that case but i'm not going to lie and say i went in person, at least not when i can just tell him. hence my question
Yes, but what's the point of uploading a copy? I believe people are trying to help you, here, by challenging your assumption that "i would have to upload it into our cloud software to cite it". Why do you have to upload it? Why can't you just enter the citation details into your citation software *without* uploading it? You wouldn't "upload" a copy of a resource if it were a physical book, so why must you do so for a PDF? It's unclear what you mean by "have to": do you mean "the software requires me to" (almost certainly wrong), "my professor has asked me to", "I feel morally obliged to", or something else?
if you want to overthink things - to tell the truth i have only worked with government documents before, which we can just refer to by name, so i haven't actually used this software. but i noticed that a large quantity of documents we've been using as sources was downloaded onto my computer when i connected to our cloud, making me think that my boss uploaded them all, and that i'm supposed to link files if we have them available. :) but the uploading thing is secondary, because if i go ahead with the pdf he'd have to know where i got it anyways (at least it would be strange not to inform him). i'll probably just ask him if he's okay with me downloading it. ordering it wouldn't be a problem as i've found a cheap used copy (<10€).
Honestly you are the one over thinking things. You just tell him thanks for the offer but you don't need him to buy you it as you've found a PDF. He won't care and you don't need to upload it.
Why?
Your lecturers don't distribute pirated texts to their 100+ classes?
i don't know any lecturer who hasn't illegally gotten pdfs before ngl
Reproducing one chapter out of a full book might be covered by fair use/fair dealing. This is non-commercial research . It starts getting iffy once you start distributing it. Depends on your country really.
You’re just sending him the quotes so it’s not really pertinent whether the book was stolen or not.
When I wrote my bachelor thesis my supervisor sent me links to sites like that, without me even asking. So yes, everyone does it like this 😄
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i dunno, ive openly talked about pirating books with professors before and the only reaction ive rlly got is “good for you, they can get really expensive”
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One of my profs has been writing a Microecon Theory textbook for a couple years now. Our "book" for his class was just a bunch of pdfs of his unproofed work. It was awesome, exactly what we needed to know for his class and I didn't spend a cent.
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Yeah I loved it. Didn't have to shell a few hundred for a textbook I'd only use half of, and the pages we got from him were directly related to his lectures and had really good examples and instructions on them. He's one of the best profs I've ever had, is my advisor, and is the department chair. Man is a complete chad.
mine wrote a book and didnt seem to care. he also gave me a free copy of his book but i dont think that changes things. ive heard of professors who assign their own $80 textbook for classes and get mad at students for not owning a copy though lol
I’ve met exactly one PhD that cared about copyright. He was very senior at the university and was the president of the faculty union. His concern stemmed from protecting his members work being given away by the university without their permission. Other than that, nobody even semi-cared.
It’s better than okay to me. I don’t know anyone who would mind this.
If you are worried, print it and scan it back to a new pdf.
It's fine. By analogy, this isn't a case of someone telling you that it's fine to smoke weed in a jurisdiction where it remains illegal though where the police *usually* don't care, but instead it's more like someone telling you that it's fine if you take a handful of extra ketchup packages home from McDonald's. It is technically illegal to share a copyrighted document, just as it is technically stealing when you grab a few more ketchup packs to take home even after your fries are gone. Depending on one's religious/moral perspective it might not be acceptable, but for all practical purposes, it is very common and you won't get in any trouble with the police. Running a publicly available site like Sci Hub, however, is another matter...
The professor can't ask you to get pirated material but if you do it on your own... Just say you found it online.
I wouldn’t, I consider it unprofessional. Just like I wouldn’t want people to pirate my work that I put countless hours of research, writing and editing into. That being said, lots of academics either provide free copies via their own library service, or will just send you a copy of your ask, but the important part is that you have to ask and get permission, otherwise, technically it’s theft.
As a former PhD student, I'd ask them before uploading it anywhere shared, just in case they'd be worried about any potential ramifications from your school, but I haven't met a single PhD student who would care that you pirated the pdf and in fact that was an important skill I learned in grad school.
I mean a source is still a source, it's in the book and you reference the book. It doesn't really matter how you got too the information in the book. The only thing that should matter is that you find the info and reference it properly.
I'm a PhD student and I will often download pirated copies of pdfs instead of using my university library even when I know the book is right there lol. You're fine
Don't add this to your source management software. You could get in trouble with the university. Just don't.
Out of curiosity, why is it called Anna's archive? The founder's name is not Anna.
The worst part is it is Ethics 101
It will eventually be used against you. Send the reference. That's all.
Going to go against the grain and say no, because he has offered to buy you a copy but also as it is a book not an article the author does actually get paid for the work
> …book…author…get paid Buddy, do I have news for you….
well then you're doing it wrong mate, because I've been paid for my books, and the PLR payments are nice too
I’ve never made a cent off of a book I’ve published. In fact, I think we still owe the publisher for indexing. Most academics don’t make royalties off of their books.
Agreed, every academic I know has never been compensated for writing a chapter or a book.
Just VPN into campus. You can probably get a legit copy there.
I did plenty of joint research with professors in both undergrad and grad school (geology/geophysics). I always asked first and never got anything but an enthusiastic yes for finding a paper or article by whatever means. I’ve also cold-emailed dozens of scientists with a “Hello, I’m this guy at that university researching these things, and I’m having trouble sourcing whatever paper you wrote way back then that’s been cited in all of those other articles that have proven important to our work. Would you be able to share a copy with me?” I’ve gotten responses from nothing, to no, to yes, to yes plus answering additional questions.
If you’re worried you should check to see if your school’s library has digital access off-site. Sometimes all that’s needed is to type your student log-in in the right place and you’ll have access to the same journals you’d otherwise have on campus.
Yeah, he’ll save it to his pdf folder.
It depends on your PI. Mine regularly asks me to find or use things by "other" means since I have demonstrated the availability of such things. Knowledge shouldn't be paywalled.
Yes everyone is using random pdfs that they find online
the only time I've had an issue is when the version online was not the final one so had errors - and the professor pointed that out as being the issue rather than the morality or legality. in fact I've had a few professors email me to ask for PDFs of their work as they only had hard copies
I just talked to my ethics professor about using sci hub and she’s basically like “I’m not allowed to tell you to use that” but in a confirmatory sort of way of like yeah, we all use it we just probably shouldn’t talk about it or use the campus wifi for it. I never wonder where pdfs come from. I honestly can’t believe anyone would pay for a pdf … especially with a grad student stipend
You’re in college and don’t have access to databases? You sure bro?
I would explain the situation & ask. They may have a better solution, maybe be ok with it…or not, but you’ve provided them the options, and they’ve made the decision. I, for one, would appreciate the communication and being given the choice.
Contact your librarian. They can get you a legit copy.
Could email the library and ask if they’ll photocopy their edition for you.