“The webinar where Cory presented was the first mention I’d seen of a new group called the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI). SNSI is the latest in a series of publisher-driven initiatives to reduce the paywall’s friction for paying users or library patrons coming from licensing institutions. GetFTR (my thoughts) and Seamless Access (my thoughts). (Disclosure: I’m serving on two working groups for Seamless Access that are focused on making it possible for libraries to sensibly and sanely integrate the goals of Seamless Access into campus technology and licensing contracts.)…”
Category Archives: oa.snsi
WHOIS behind SNSI & GetFTR? | Motley Marginalia
“I question whether such rich personally identifiably information (PII) is required to prevent illicit account access. If it is collected at all, there are more than enough data points here (obviously excluding username and account information) to deanonymize individuals and reveal exactly what they looked at and when so it should not be kept on hand too long for later analysis.
Another related, though separate endeavor is GetFTR which aims to bypass proxies (and thereby potential library oversight of use) entirely. There is soo much which could be written about both these efforts and this post only scratches the surface of some of the complex issues and relationships affect by them.
The first thing I was curious about was, who is bankrolling these efforts? They list the backers on their websites but I always find it interesting as to who is willing to fund the coders and infrastructure. I looked up both GetFTR and SNSI in the IRS Tax Exempt database as well as the EU Find a Company portal and did not find any results. So I decided to do a little more digging matching WHOIS data in the hopes that something might pop out, nothing interesting came of this so I put it at the very bottom….
It should come as no surprise that Elsevier, Springer Nature, ACS, and Wiley – which previous research has shown are the publishers producing the most research downloaded in the USA from Sci-Hub – are supporting both efforts. Taylor & Francis presumably feels sufficiently threatened such that they are along for the ride….”
Academics band together with publishers because access to research is a cybercrime | chorasimilarity
“This is the world we live in. That is what I understand from reading about the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative. and it’s now famous webinar, via Bjorn Brembs october post.
I just found this, after the post I wrote yesterday. I had no idea about this collaboration between publishers and academics to put spyware on academic networks for the benefit of publishers.
What I find worrying is not that publishers, like Elsevier, Springer Nature or Cambridge University Press, want to protect their business against the Sci-hub threat. This is natural behaviour from a commercial point of view. These businesses (not sure about CUP) see their activity atacked, so they fight back to keep their profit up.
The problem is with the academics. Why do they help the publishers? For whose benefit?…”
Scientific publishers propose installing spyware in university libraries to protect copyrights – Coda Story
“A recent proposal recommending the deployment of surveillance software in order to monitor those accessing academic material has drawn fire from digital rights advocates and scientists.
The plan was outlined on October 22 during a virtual webinar hosted by a consortium of the world’s leading publishers of scientific journals, featuring security experts discussing the threats posed by cyber-criminals and digital piracy to academic research.
One speaker proposed a novel tactic publishers could take to protect their intellectual property rights against data theft: introducing spyware into the proxy servers academic libraries use to allow access to their online services, such as publishers’ databases. …”
Cybersecurity Landscape – Protecting the Scholarly Infrastructure
“Institutions and publishers have always collaborated on ways to ensure researchers, students and faculty have access to critical research information in efficient and secure ways.
The proliferation of online resources for learning, research and basic operations has also meant a proliferation in cyber-attacks targeting institutions, publishers and other service providers. Fighting cyber-attacks is not a task any one entity can do alone.
The purpose of this virtual security summit is to discuss security threats to the research ecosystem with the aim to engender closer collaboration between publishers
and academics in dealing with these threats….”
To Prevent Free, Frictionless Access To Human Knowledge, Publishers Want Librarians To Be Afraid, Very Afraid | Techdirt
“After many years of fierce resistance to open access, academic publishers have largely embraced — and extended — the idea, ensuring that their 35-40% profit margins live on. In the light of this subversion of the original hopes for open access, people have come up with other ways to provide free and frictionless access to knowledge — most of which is paid for by taxpayers around the world. One is preprints, which are increasingly used by researchers to disseminate their results widely, without needing to worry about payment or gatekeepers. The other is through sites that have taken it upon themselves to offer immediate access to large numbers of academic papers — so-called “shadow libraries”. The most famous of these sites is Sci-Hub, created by Alexandra Elbakyan. At the time of writing, Sci-Hub claims to hold 79 million papers.
Even academics with access to publications through their institutional subscriptions often prefer to use Sci-Hub, because it is so much simpler and quicker. In this respect, Sci-Hub stands as a constant reproach to academic publishers, emphasizing that their products aren’t very good in terms of serving libraries, which are paying expensive subscriptions for access. Not surprisingly, then, Sci-Hub has become Enemy No. 1 for academic publishers in general, and the leading company Elsevier in particular. The German site Netzpolitik has spotted the latest approach being taken by publishers to tackle this inconvenient and hugely successful rival, and other shadow libraries. At its heart lies the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI), which was founded by Elsevier and other large publishers earlier this year. Netzpolitik explains that the idea is to track and analyze every access to libraries, because “security” ….”
Elsevier en lugar de negociar con las universidades propone un spywere contra Sci-Hub | Universo Abierto
From Google’s English: “However, instead of offering transparent open access contracts on fair terms, Elsevier has adopted a different strategy in the fight against shadow libraries like Sci-Hub. These must be fought as “cybercrime”, if necessary also with technological means. Within the framework of The Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI) , founded in conjunction with other major publishers, Elsevier is campaigning for libraries to upgrade with security technology. In a SNSI webinar titled” Cybersecurity Landscape – Protecting the Scholarly Infrastructure “Hosted by two senior executives at Elsevier, one speaker recommended that publishers develop their own proxy or proxy plug-in for libraries to access more (usage) data (“develop or subsidize a low-cost proxy or proxy plug-in). existing proxies ”). With the help of an “analysis engine”, not only could the location of access be better delineated, but biometric data (eg typing speed) or striking usage patterns (eg a student pharmacy suddenly interested in astrophysics). Any doubt that this software could also be used – if not primarily – against shadow libraries like SCI-HUB was dispelled by the next speaker.”
Beyond Sci-Hub: Cyber Challenges for the Scholarly Communications Industry – Against the Grain
“Given recent reporting in the press,1 it seems that the legitimacy and credibility of Sci-Hub is no longer a matter for debate. However, the challenge of how to address the continuing threat Sci-Hub poses to authors, societies, university presses, and other publishers reliant on the royalties derived from book sales and subscription income remains — and is connected to the much wider challenge of cybercrime….
Collectively, we have a responsibility to safeguard and manage a successful online researcher experience by ensuring institutional and individual access is enabled to high quality, licensed, peer reviewed publications; that data is protected; and entitlements from licensed institutions are safeguarded. For example, publishers and librarians worked together as part of the RA21 initiative, now called seamlessaccess.org, to make access to articles easier for researchers using their institutional logins when they are not on campus. As this becomes implemented across platforms and publishers, it will also negate the need for researchers to log in each time they move between publishers’ websites. …
One way that our community is looking to address and tackle these issues is through the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI). …”
Working together to protect from cyber attacks | Research Information
“Nick Fowler and Steven Inchcoombe introduce SNSI [Scholarly Networks Security Initiative], an initiative to solve the cyber challenges facing the scholarly communications industry
Last year the Washington Post and several other media outlets reported that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) was investigating pirate website Sci-Hub….
Such activities threaten the scholarly communications ecosystem and the integrity of the academic record. Sci-Hub has no incentive to ensure the accuracy of the research articles being accessed, no incentive to ensure research meets ethical standards, and no incentive to retract or correct if issues arise.
As this issue goes beyond that of the illegal accessing of academic research, publishers cannot tackle it alone. We need to work with librarians, university network security officers and others responsible for cybersecurity in academic institutions which is why a new pan-publisher initiative has recently been set up with the purpose of encouraging exactly that. The Scholarly Networks Security Initiative brings together publishers and institutions to solve cyber challenges threatening the integrity of the scientific record, scholarly systems and the safety of personal data. The group will explore, for example, how the dangers related to Sci-Hub use can be included in information literacy and other library outreach programs….
Ultimately a combination of forces are needed to protect institutions from cyber-attacks and to ensure that researchers are presented with the best possible user experience, safe in the knowledge that the work they are accessing is correct, up to date and properly connected to the scientific record. Awareness of the damage Sci-Hub is inflicting on institutions and academia needs to be increased. Law enforcement efforts to address the site’s illegality need to be supported. And publishers need to continue making their platforms more interactive and interconnected so that our communities can access the research we publish how they want to. We need to demonstrate that Sci-Hub is not only harmful to the research community but that it is also redundant.”