This is pretty ironic and tragic
There is a browser extension called LeanLibrary, which you can install from here: https://www.technologyfromsage.com/products/lean-library-extension/
You can get free access to quite a lot of journals, etc. You just have to set it up to “Lean Library Open” as your institute, or to your University/College, if they are subscribed to it. Makes reading articles and stuff much easier.
Someone I know recently showed me that extension. I replied to them with “why bother with a browser extension, just paste the DOI into Anna’s Archive and it’ll show up 99% of the time” and showed it to them on their computer. It then showed a message along the lines of “you can access this file, but not here. Go to this site instead”.
They were signed into their university account. As you use that extension yourself, do you know if that’s normal behavior? I’m afraid the extension flagged this person at the campus IT department or something like that
When using the extension on the article above, and using my university as the institute, I get: “Article available here Your library has this article available for you in a different database. [Get Citation] [Access Article]”. When using Anna’s Archive, I get “Library Access This extension will open when you are looking at databases that your library subscribes to. This will help you access the resources provided by your library.”
If I am using Lean Library Open as an institute and I am on Anna’s Archive, I get: “Lean Library Open The extension will only be active when you are on an academic site. If you have any questions, contact us”.
I haven’t had any issues with it to be honest.
They will absolutely paywall an article discussing alternatives to paywalling. It’s just good business practise. No introspection on their part.
“Ethical and legal objections”. The point in this case is that what’s legal is unethical, and what’s ethical is illegal. Analogous to other situations through history and countries, for example in the USA when it was illegal for black people to sit in certain parts of a bus, or in Germany when marriage with Jewish people was illegal.
As human beings, it’s always important to make the ethical choice.
Civil wars were fought over ethical issues that were illegal. Similarly fueled civil wars will be fought in the future.
no dude since people can’t read anymore i doubt this will cause a stir. maybe once you can only view the upper part of Instagram videos people will become mildly annoyed 😂
Lmao great find. Academic publishing companies are absolute parasites btw, Libgen did the world a favor
