scholarly journals Looking into Pandora's Box: The Content of Sci-Hub and its Usage

F1000Research ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Greshake

Despite the growth of Open Access, potentially illegally circumventing paywalls to access scholarly publications is becoming a more mainstream phenomenon. The web service Sci-Hub is amongst the biggest facilitators of this, offering free access to around 62 million publications. So far it is not well studied how and why its users are accessing publications through Sci-Hub. By utilizing the recently released corpus of Sci-Hub and comparing it to the data of  ~28 million downloads done through the service, this study tries to address some of these questions. The comparative analysis shows that both the usage and complete corpus is largely made up of recently published articles, with users disproportionately favoring newer articles and 35% of downloaded articles being published after 2013. These results hint that embargo periods before publications become Open Access are frequently circumnavigated using Guerilla Open Access approaches like Sci-Hub. On a journal level, the downloads show a bias towards some scholarly disciplines, especially Chemistry, suggesting increased barriers to access for these. Comparing the use and corpus on a publisher level, it becomes clear that only 11% of publishers are highly requested in comparison to the baseline frequency, while 45% of all publishers are significantly less accessed than expected. Despite this, the oligopoly of publishers is even more remarkable on the level of content consumption, with 80% of all downloads being published through only 9 publishers. All of this suggests that Sci-Hub is used by different populations and for a number of different reasons, and that there is still a lack of access to the published scientific record. A further analysis of these openly available data resources will undoubtedly be valuable for the investigation of academic publishing.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Greshake

AbstractDespite the growth of Open Access, illegally circumventing paywalls to access scholarly publications is becoming a more mainstream phenomenon. The web service Sci-Hub is amongst the biggest facilitators of this, offering free access to around 62 million publications. So far it is not well studied how and why its users are accessing publications through Sci-Hub. By utilizing the recently released corpus of Sci-Hub and comparing it to the data of ˜28 million downloads done through the service, this study tries to address some of these questions. The comparative analysis shows that both the usage and complete corpus is largely made up of recently published articles, with users disproportionately favoring newer articles and 35% of downloaded articles being published after 2013. These results hint that embargo periods before publications become Open Access are frequently circumnavigated using Guerilla Open Access approaches like Sci-Hub. On a journal level, the downloads show a bias towards some scholarly disciplines, especially Chemistry, suggesting increased barriers to access for these. Comparing the use and corpus on a publisher level, it becomes clear that only 11% of publishers are highly requested in comparison to the baseline frequency, while 45% of all publishers are significantly less accessed than expected. Despite this, the oligopoly of publishers is even more remarkable on the level of content consumption, with 80% of all downloads being published through only 9 publishers. All of this suggests that Sci-Hub is used by different populations and for a number of different reasons, and that there is still a lack of access to the published scientific record. A further analysis of these openly available data resources will undoubtedly be valuable for the investigation of academic publishing.


Compiler ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saryanto Saryanto ◽  
Sumarsono Sumarsono ◽  
Nurcahyani Dewi Retnowati

Data communication in the internet today is so complex as an example of the speed factor becomes very important in communicating, everyone wants fast data communication services provided in order to maximum. In relation to the application as a communication liaison with client server applications, web service using a data serialization format to transmit the data. Before the data is sent, either fromthe client to the server or vice versa, should be modified in a specific data format beforehand according to the web service is used. Types of data serialization format used in the web service such as XML and JSON. The method used for testing include data serialization method, data measurement method and data parsing method. Data serialization method is used to calculate the time serialization of data from the database to the form of XML and JSON in applications with PHP platform. Data measurement method used to measure the size of the XML and JSON data which based on many fields of data serialization process. Data parsing method is used to calculate the processing time and JSON parsing XML data. Results o f comparative analysis o f XML and JSON in PHP applications using thearchitecture Rest can be concluded that the test result o f the difference in time and time serialization and JSON parsing XML data is influenced by the number o f records, if the number of records the greater the difference in eating time data serialization and parsing the data the greater the time also itcan be concluded that the faster the process JSON serialization and parsing XML data is compared. Testing results o f the JSON data size is smaller than the size of XML. Data exchange using XML format has a size limit of up to 31456.31 KB while JSON XML exceeds the size limit. Testing results on the Internet when the number o f records up to 50,000 data when the data serialization and parsing time data can not be detected in the database.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (09) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Velin Spasov Kralev ◽  
Radoslava Stankova Kraleva ◽  
Ninа Sinyagina ◽  
Petia Koprinkova-Hristova ◽  
Nadejda Bocheva

<span lang="EN-US">This paper presents the results obtained from a comparative analysis of two methods for experimental data sharing. </span><span>Several </span><span lang="EN-US">works</span><span> related to the </span><span lang="EN-US">topic</span><span> and some </span><span lang="EN-US">approaches</span><span> for </span><span lang="EN-US">processing data</span><span> have been discussed. Different </span><span lang="EN-US">technolgoies related to the web services</span><span>, ways of using them and the areas of their application are analyzed. For the purposes of the study, a </span><span lang="EN-US">web service</span><span> for </span><span lang="EN-US">retrieving </span><span>specific data</span><span lang="EN-US"> from a behavioral experiments database</span><span> was de</span><span lang="EN-US">veloped</span><span>.</span><span>The methodology and conditions for conducting </span><span lang="EN-US">the </span><span>experiments are described. T</span><span lang="EN-US">wo</span><span> different indicators </span><span lang="EN-US">a</span><span>re analyzed, respectively: </span><span lang="EN-US">time to retrieve the data from a database </span><span>and iteration time across all records through one </span><span lang="EN-US">loop</span><span>. The results show that when </span><span lang="EN-US">retrieving</span><span> thousands of records both </span><span lang="EN-US">web service based approach</span><span> and an approach based on a remote database</span><span lang="EN-US"> server can be used. However, when retrieving millions of records</span><span>, </span><span lang="EN-US">the fastest approach was the one that uses remote database server</span><span>.</span><span> <span lang="EN-US">T</span></span><span>he obtained</span><span>results</span><span>show that </span><span lang="EN-US">the </span><span>dynamic arrays</span><span lang="EN-US"> (containing strings) </span><span>iterated much faster </span><span lang="EN-US">across all data records </span><span>than </span><span lang="EN-US">the dataset </span><span>approach.</span>


2014 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-209
Author(s):  
Ariel Majcher ◽  
Arkadiusz Cwiek ◽  
Mikołaj Cwiok ◽  
Lech Mankiewicz ◽  
Marcin Zaremba ◽  
...  

GLORIA is the first free and open-access network of robotic telescopes in the world. Based on the Web 2.0 environment, amateur and professional users can do research in astronomy by observing with robotic telescope, and/or analyzing data acquired with GLORIA, or from other free access databases. The GLORIA project develops free standards, protocols and tools for controlling Robotic Telescopes and related instrumentation, for scheduling observations in the telescope network, and for conducting so-called off-line experiments based on the analysis of astronomical data. This contribution summarizes the implementation and results from the first research level off-line demonstrator experiment implemented in GLORIA, which was based on data collected with the “Pi of the Sky” telescope in Chile.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Bozzato ◽  
Marianna Gnoato ◽  
Antonia Vilia ◽  
Mauro Apostolico

This paper aims at analyzing the importance of protection of intellectual property (IP) in biomedical scholarly publications, both for the author’s reputation and the dissemination of scientific knowledge. The laws that regulate IP are very complex and differ from country to country. We shall focus on the Italian framework though many considerations could be applied to foreign contexts. IP is very articulated, yet often ignored, that is worth paying attention to a correct copyright management can help researchers promote their Work and the community to benefit from it. In the scholarly publishing field, there are two main areas: traditional publishers and open-access publishers. The first group requires a fee to access the content they publish and usually ask the authors for a complete transfer of copyright. The possibility to negotiate terms with such publishers is often overlooked: scholarly authors tend to think they do not have leverage in the publishing cycle. The so-called addendum and professional figures, like librarians and attorneys, can help manage the authors’ intellectual property. On the other hand, open-access publishers give free access to published material, guaranteeing the protection of IP: thanks to the Creative Commons Licenses, the authors do not have to surrender their copyright to the publisher and can manage and control the use made out of their Work. Applying the principles put forth in this article implies enhancing research dissemination by increasing its impact and visibility. However, to achieve such a goal, it is necessary to protect intellectual property for the sake of authors, users, and scientific progress.


Author(s):  
Felicia Yusuf ◽  
Sola Emmanuel Owolabi

Information access has been a major challenge to researchers, especially in Africa and majorly in Nigeria. The exploitation experienced by researchers who do not have free access to papers but have to pay constitutes a major factor for consideration of Open Access Initiative. An exposition on the oppositions confronted by proponents of open access initiative has been done in this work; the change management process and challenges encountered and how to obliterate the challenges are presented in this chapter. Academics across the globe are coming to terms with open access initiative but the Nigeria environment has not fully integrated into this philosophy. This chapter points out the need to embrace open access initiative. It was concluded that open access signals a new dawn for conducting research by granting free access to the deluge of information available across the globe. The open access initiative challenges publishers who place unnecessary restrictions on access of scholarly publications. This makes research endeavours of scholars around the globe easily accessible, thus enabling researchers to extend the frontiers of existing knowledge.


Author(s):  
Yusuke Yanbe ◽  
Adam Jatowt ◽  
Satoshi Nakamura ◽  
Katsumi Tanaka

Social bookmarking is an emerging type of a Web service for reusing, sharing, and discovering resources. By bookmarking, users preserve access points to encountered documents for their future access. On the other hand, the social aspect of bookmarking results from the visibility of bookmarks to other users helping them to discover new, potentially interesting resources. In addition, social bookmarking systems allow for better estimation of the popularity and relevance of documents. In this chapter, we provide an overview of major aspects involved with social bookmarking and investigate their potential for enhancing Web search and for building novel applications. We make a comparative analysis of two popularity measures of Web pages, PageRank and SBRank, where SBRank is defined as an aggregate number of bookmarks that a given page accumulates in a selected social bookmarking system. The results of this analysis reveal the advantages of SBRank when compared to PageRank measure and provide the foundations for utilizing social bookmarking information in order to enhance and improve search in the Web. In the second part of the chapter, we describe an application that combines SBRank and PageRank measures in order to rerank results delivered by Web search engines and that offers several complimentary functions for realizing more effective search.


CytoJournal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janavi A. Kolpekwar ◽  
Vinod B. Shidham

Objectives: Open access (OA) is based on a set of principles and a range of practices through which fruits of research are distributed online, free of cost, or other access barriers. According to the 2001 definition, OA publications are without barriers to copy or reuse with free access to readers. Some studies have reported higher rates of citation for OA publications. In this study, we analyzed the citation rates of OA and traditional nonOA (with or without free access) publications for authors publishing in the subspecialty of cytopathology during 2010–2015. Material and Methods: We observed and compared citation patterns for authors who had published in both OA and traditional non-OA, peer-reviewed, scientific, cytopathology journals. Thirty authors were randomly selected with criteria of publishing a total of at least five cytopathology articles over 2010–2015. Number of citations per article (CPA) (during 2010–2015) for OA publications (in CytoJournal and Journal of Cytology) and non-OA publications (in Diagnostic Cytopathology, Cytopathology, Acta Cytologica, Journal of American of Cytopathology, and Indian Journal of Pathology and Microbiology) was collected and compared statistically using two-tailed Student’s t-est. The data were collected manually through science citation analysis sites, mostly Google Scholar. Results: Thirty authors published 579 cytopathology articles in OA and non-OA journals. Average CPA for OA publications was 26.64. This was 11.35 higher than the average CPA) of non-OA conventional with subscription cytopathology journals (74% increase) and 11.76 higher than the average CPA of conventional cytopathology non-OA journal articles with free access (79% increase). These differences were statistically significantly with P < 0.05. Conclusion: We observed that the cytopathology publications in the OA journal attained a higher rate of CPA than the publications in the traditional non-OA journals in the field of cytopathology during 2010–2015.


sui generis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabienne Sarah Graf ◽  
Dario Henri Haux

Open Access is the principle of free access to scientific literature. Both the Swiss National Science Foundation and Swissuniversities are increasingly promoting Open Access. With this, the question arises, as to whether university employees may be obliged to publish Open Access. The authors describe in a first step, how this issue has been addressed in other countries, and then consider a possible implementation in Switzerland.


2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
Howard F. Wilson
Keyword(s):  

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