Random novels =/= knowledge.
I’m totally supporting sci-hub and it’s quest for free access to academia, but contemporary books aren’t on the same level. Writers deserve to be paid.
Classics are all in the public domain anyway.
Fiction writers deserve to be paid but not academic writers?
Or is it that science should be free but culture should be gate locked?
Scientific writers should be paid, but most of them receive grants for specific research or do their research in their function as employed researchers/lecturers at some university. Their work is then posted on some scalping journals that are charging the author a listing fee, and then charge readers an access fee, which they pocket in its entirety. Scientific authors receive ZERO compensation for their work.
Source: Used to work in academia, published a few articles myself. Best case is that your work is considered “outstanding” and the journal graciously lists it for free instead of charging you for it.
As it stands, they don’t get paid when you pay for reading it anyways. They themselves pay to publish it to a journal, the journal then sells it to you.
The scientists aren’t paid by people reading their science, they are paid by grants, for doing the science in the first place.
I wholeheartedly support academic “piracy”, it only hurts the gatekeepers.
we sure do twist and cram so many things into a capitalist framework, if only there were another way
