this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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Science Memes

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top 21 comments
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[–] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was going to comment that Library Genesis went offline earlier this year, but I'm very happy to see that I'm wrong and it seems to be back.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago

Sadly not always. Perhaps 80 % of the papers I try to find are there and perhaps 60 % of the books.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

How large is scihub , if you wanted to download the whole thing?

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So about $800 in HDDs. Steep but reasonable for all the knowledge man has acquired so far.

[–] FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus -3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

All of human knowledge is not encoded into academia.

Academia is heavily western biased.

[–] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don't understand why you're getting downvoted. You're not wrong. Sci-Hub focuses on academic journal articles, which are a pretty novel phenomenon. The first journal was created in the 17th century, and journals didn't become the primary medium for publications until well into the 19th century. I wouldn't say academia is "biased" per se, but it's true that the academic publishing business is heavily dominated by western companies.

[–] SpicyAnt@mander.xyz 9 points 1 day ago

I think both statements are true - not all knowledge is recorded by academia, and academia is heavily western biased.

What I suspect is that the down-votes are because the first user was using hyperbole to make a positive comment about our ability to archive these documents and their value. The response points out something that is evident - obviously academic papers do not hold all human knowledge - and shifts the conversation into a not so casual topic of western biases. This sudden shift of the conversation from friendly-casual to geopolitical with little motivation can make some users upset.

OR, as the other person suggested, maybe the mention of 'western bias' is enough to trigger some.

[–] 9bananas@feddit.org -2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

the downvotes are due to the bullshit "bias" claim.

let's you know they're a tankie...

[–] FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus 6 points 1 day ago

Ah yes, I’m a tankie because I acknowledge the fact academia is dominated by the west? And therefore western epistemologies are favoured.

I hope people stop using tankie as a meaningless word like in this case. And actually for its original meaning, which is so called “communists” who support the brutal repression of states like the soviet union and china. Which I do not.

[–] jackr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

Or a postmodernist, or someone who knows their history? Or are you conna tell me the Ethiopian view is as represented as the English one?

[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Then get digitizing. We have unicode and AI text extraction.

[–] FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Not every human knowledge is written ;)

[–] Gutek8134@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't think anyone would stop you from writing it down. Could even get a lot of respect for that.

[–] FundMECFS@anarchist.nexus 3 points 1 day ago

Well personally I can’t because I’m functionally deafmute.

But anyways this is all beside my original point which was that published academia doesn’t contain all of human knowledge.

[–] redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

So write it down...

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unlike wikipedia, they don't offer a full torrent of the site, so it's hard to estimate. I guess the closest point of comparison would be Anna's archive index, since they have a rough filesize total?

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

I should seed Wikipedia

[–] MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 day ago

*If it is older than 2023

[–] Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 day ago

I have been more often disappointed by sci-hub than satisfied, but maybe I just tend to look up more obscure or new research.