Are questions on features offered by a website related to academic research on-topic?

Question

Are questions on features offered by a website related to academic research on-topic?

Some are closed, some are open, so I wonder what the scope of this Stack Exchange website is on that kind of questions.

Examples:

• Is there a more user-friendly way to download multiple articles from arXiv?
• Bulk download Sci-Hub papers
• Bulk download of arXiv (or other publication data set) with metadata AND citations

Answer 1

What I have observed in this community's collective judgement is that the axis that you propose to consider ("Is this question about features offered by a website?") does not appear to be a useful discriminator for question quality.

The problem is that both "feature" and "website" cover way too broad a spectrum:

• "Website" can mean anything from google-scholar and arxiv (clearly considered interesting and useful) to the details of a specific graduate program's online application form (clearly a "too specific" closure).

• "Feature" can mean anything from the DOI question above to the transient and proprietary details of how a particular search engine is currently ranking its results (clearly a "too specific" closure) to obvious boat programming like "As a visually impaired scientist, how should I access arXiv?"

Instead, I would propose the following three-prong test with regards to questions related to the use of academia-related websites, apps, and similar systems:

• Is the website academia-specific? (e.g., Google Scholar is, Yahoo Answers is not)
• Is the website well-established and widely used in a significant number of disciplines? (e.g., arXiv is, CrazyEddiesPreprintShack.com is not)
• Is the question about functionality that is both long-term stable and academia-specific? (e.g., curating one's publications on arXiv is, search-engine result orderings are not)

If a question passes all three of these tests, then it is likely to be on topic (though it may fail in other ways); if it fails any of them badly, then it probably should be closed as off-topic.

Now, as with every judgement of on-topic-ness, there will be boundary cases in which the judgement is not obvious. I think that the two arXiv questions that you link are a little bit toward that boundary: they obviously pass the first two tests, and while the functionality is long-term stable, it's a bit questionable whether it's necessarily academia-specific. On balance, though, they were simple enough questions with simple enough answers, and there's no reason to be nit-picky.

For your Sci-Hub question, on the other hand, while I believe it can pass the first two tests, for the third test both the stability and the specificity of the functionality seem extremely dubious. You are asking how to yank many, many terabytes of data from Sci-Hub or from the organizations that it pirates. That's not a scientific problem, that's a rather blatant abuse of shared network resources, and any method for doing so will likely soon be defended against by Sci-Hub.

Answer 2

Questions on websites

Yes, in my view, questions on the usage of websites that target academics should be considered on topic on academia.se. Using websites such as arxiv.org, google scholar, and article submission systems is a part of the work of a professional researcher, and questions on this aspect should have full citizenship here.

Of course, there are other conditions for a question to be acceptable: if a question is too localized (for instance, a very specific website on a single research topic with a tiny audience, or an unknown startup), then it should be closed, and the same if it has nothing specific to academia (for instance, if it is a general question on the usage of a browser --- these are known as "boat programming" questions in the stack exchange culture).

OP's question mentions sci-hub.io, a website which has gained much popularity recently, despite its dubious legal nature. It is 100% targeted on academics, and it satisfies the notability criterion, so I find little justification to close it on the basis of its content.

If any, the only reason for which I could consider closure is if we agree on a very strict policy on questions involving copyright infringement. But this is a different issue than the one on "on-topicness".

Questions on copyright infringement

Since the discussion in the other answers and comments has diverged into legality and copyright infringement, I should probably give my opinion on this part, too.

Lots of sites can be used to infringe copyright, including Twitter and Google. Some of them are used prevalently to infringe copyright, but ultimately the guilt lies with the usage, not with the website itself.

In addition, some forms of copyright abuse are widespread in academia, and a non-negligible part of the community recognizes them as illegal but does not consider them ethically wrong.

My stance is: if a user asks a question on how to infringe copyright, we leave the question open, and point out that it is illegal and/or wrong in the answers and comments. Closing questions does not make the asker aware of the legal and ethical issues; it only creates an illusion of control and censorship, and drives the user away.

If, as @MassimoOrtolano wrote, "the only possible ethical answer to a question about how to bulk download Sci-Hub papers is: You don't.", then we leave that question open and answer You don't. We don't say sssh, we don't speak about this sort of stuff here, because it sends a wrong message.

Answer 3

I think that we should not publicly support, in any case, the usage of services that are at the edge, or beyond the edge, of legality, however widespread they are in academia, and even if we privately think that they are ethical because they might constitute a form of protest against the publishing industry. Doing otherwise would open to a number of shaky possibilities that probably Stack Overflow Inc. would not be willing to support (e.g., linking papers or books on the SE sites directly to Sci-Hub or Libgen).

Thus, I think that the only possible ethical answer to a question about how to bulk download Sci-Hub papers is: You don't. Other answers can be interpreted as a tacit, public, support of such a service.

We can then discuss what is the more appropriate close reason for such questions or if we want to put a canonical answer, but I think that the above should stand.

For what concerns clearly legal services, instead, I agree with jakebeal's answer.