I was recently unable to find a particular journal article I wanted to read that was referenced in something else I was reading. I only could find an abstract on Google Scholar, and nothing at all on Z-lib. I was able to get a full copy by just emailing the author at her university (I guess its true that most of them will give you a PDF if you ask. they are just glad SOMEONE is actually reading their work). But now that I have it, I fell obligated to share it with the world, the question is, where is the best place to put it?
Look at the PDF carefully before sharing it. Most academic publishers put a timestamp on it that reveals who downloaded it, at least at institution level. Sometimes this is even embedded as metadata. If the PDF says anywhere “author personal copy”, please don’t share it on the author’s behalf.
This is mostly to avoid getting them into trouble.
Otherwise, go and share, authors love it!
@blah thanks for the heads up. I’ll take a look and I’ll edit if I need to.
You might want to get her permission before sharing it. She might be okay sharing it individually, but not publically.
@kia LOL
Not sure if lost lemming
There’s a difference between distributing a huge corporation’s work versus an individual researcher’s paper…
Yeah researchers want their life work known and journals just want $$$
@kia @ryannathans no there’s not.
Considering the version you were given by the author could be watermarked in some way, and they could get into shit from a publisher if you uploaded it for mass retrieval, you ought not to do this without their express permission. It’s different if you had downloaded the article from a journal/database yourself, or if it was some other version (like an unformatted manuscript).
They can’t get shit - you can. They’re allowed to give it to people who ask. You’re not allowed to upload it for mass retrieval.
They’re allowed to give it to people who ask.
I think that very much depends on what sort of article/chapter, what publisher, and what the nature of the copy the author has is (e.g. preprint, journal published version download, unpublished Word manuscript, etc.) It’s hard to make any true generalisations here.
Would copying the text and uploading that get around it?
It might be possible to embed that metadata in the target as well. If I were doing this I would copy and paste the text off into some editor that only supports raw text like notepad, then use screenshots of any images, then reassemble them into a “clean” version by hand. I would also probably not ever do this because that’s a giant pain.
Potentially, I suppose. But then most people who want a pirated copy of an article are probably looking for something with at least the right pagination – makes citation easier. So it depends on how much effort you’re willing to give to that endeavour haha. Anything is better than nothing in a pinch though.
I’ve never done it, but I though there was a way to upload docs to Z-lib
Check academia.edu
I have never used it, but seems like my uni is uploading there. Im getting emails when someone is reading my article
@rambos@lemm.ee if I recall correctly I had used that before, and it didn’t seem legit. (Unlike Friendica, it appears blocked from my work VPN)
I was under the impression that who could get the .edu tld was restricted only to schools and other acredited educational institutions?
Research Gate exists for authors, though I don’t think it would let you post others’ work.
Is there an option to add to Z-lib?
Have you checked the author doesn’t have it linked on her researchgate or lab website? As in, it might already be available, just not easily searchable.