The Trump administration is possibly working on an executive order to boost public access to scientific papers that involve public funding:
This potentially can make much of SciHub, which is a website that pirates scientific articles, obsolete. Speaking of which, the DoJ is going after its founder:
As WaPo from 2013 put it:
It's unclear what if anything is actually going on, but over a hundred publishers are threatened enough to co-sign that letter [pdf] against it. The rumoured executive order may be related to a 2013 memo by the Obama administration that would require such research to be available within a year.[E&E, 18 Dec 2019] Though there is generally broad support for public access, publishing groups like the Association of American Publishers worry that a tougher order would upend their subscription-based business model.
Once it caught wind of the effort, AAP began drafting a sharply worded letter of concern to the White House, multiple sources said. The letter could be sent as early as tomorrow.
About a dozen sources told E&E News that they were aware the White House has been considering an executive order but the details remain murky. A senior administration official declined to comment on "internal deliberative processes that may or may not be happening."
This potentially can make much of SciHub, which is a website that pirates scientific articles, obsolete. Speaking of which, the DoJ is going after its founder:
I'm very unclear as to whether this hacking involves anything more than asking researchers 'hey, can I has your logins plox?', which is the usual way SciHub got started, as scientists are generally fed up with publishers' strangleholds on their fields and provide it themselves.[WaPo, 19 Dec 2019] The Justice Department is investigating a woman who runs a major Internet piracy operation on suspicion that she may also be working with Russian intelligence to steal U.S. military secrets from defense contractors, according to people familiar with the matter.
Alexandra Elbakyan, a computer programmer born in Kazakhstan, is the creator of Sci-Hub, a website that provides free access to academic papers that are usually available only through expensive subscriptions. Elbakyan's supporters have favorably described her as a "Robin Hood of science."
It's unclear whether Elbakyan is using Sci-Hub's operations in service of Russian intelligence, but her critics say she has demonstrated significant hacking skills by collecting log-in credentials from journal subscribers, particularly at universities, and using them to pilfer vast amounts of academic literature.
As WaPo from 2013 put it:
The interests of the researchers are opposed to those of the publishers, because the former generally benefit when as wide an audience as possible reads their papers, and the system makes them work for the publishers for free (mostly through peer review). On top of that, there's a whole lot of researchers in poorer countries with universities that can't afford to buy off the likes of Elsevier anyway, and SciHub got started by credential trading between people in Kazakhstan, South Africa, etc.A growing number of academics believe they have a better way: open access. This approach emphasizes making peer-reviewed research available without restrictions online. It includes pushing for open-access journals with more flexible publishing terms, the creation of institutional repositories that host research produced by faculty, and legislative proposals like requiring federally funded research to be made available to the public within a certain time frame after its publication.
One group advocating for this cause, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), counts nearly 800 academic and research libraries around the world among its ranks. But it's not just about combating the rising costs of journal subscriptions -- many argue that broad dissemination of scholarly works is key to validating the contributions of individual researchers and continuing to build humanity's collective knowledge base.
"Academics are not paid for their journal articles," explains Suber, "they write journal articles entirely for impact or influence, not for money." And while formal peer review prior to publication is valuable, Suber says, the far more important process is the informal vetting papers receive after the fact by "everybody who has access to the paper." The more people who have access to the paper, the more effective that process is.