Wikipedia

Sci-Hub is a website with over 64.5 million academic papers and articles available for direct download.[2] It bypasses publisher paywalls by allowing access through educational institution proxies. Sci-Hub stores papers in its own repository, and additionally the papers downloaded by Sci-Hub are also stored in Library Genesis (LibGen).

Sci-Hub was founded by Kazakhstani graduate student Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, as a reaction to the high cost of research papers behind paywalls, typically US$30 each when bought on a per-paper basis.

In 2015 academic publisher Elsevier filed a legal complaint in New York City against Sci-Hub alleging copyright infringement, and the subsequent lawsuit led to a loss of the original sci-hub.org domain. Following the first domain loss, Sci-Hub has cycled through a number of domains, some of which have been blocked in certain countries. Sci-Hub has been controversial, lauded by parts of the scientific and academic communities and condemned by a number of publishers.

History

The Sci-Hub project started running on 5 September 2011,[5] created by Alexandra Elbakyan, a software developer and neurotechnology researcher from Kazakhstan.[6] Her stated goal is to help spread knowledge by allowing more people to access otherwise paywalled content.[7] Elbakyan claims she could not have performed research at a Kazakh university had she not similarly "pirated" articles through research sharing forums, given the need to access hundreds of articles at 32 dollars each.[8][9] After getting highly involved with and sending out hundreds of papers she started developing ways to automate the process.[8][9] From September 2011 to early 2013 the website operated without any repository, but following an increasing amount of download requests coming mainly from China and after the loss of more than 40,000 collected papers from the LibGen repository due to hard drive problems, Elbakyan launched a crowdfunding campaign to have Sci-Hub's own copy of the articles in the database of LibGen. In 2014, code was implemented to allow Sci-Hub itself to download scientific papers, and by the end of the year several mirror websites had been established, which currently are the only Sci-Hub repositories that are independent from LibGen.[10]

The project's original domain name, Sci-Hub.org, was suspended in November 2015 following a court order.[11] The project resurfaced again that same month under a .io domain.[12] The .io address was subsequently also seized after a complaint from Elsevier was directed to the site's Chinese registrar, Now.cn.[citation needed] Despite the takedown by the registrar, Sci-Hub remains reachable via alternate domains at .cc and .bz (domain at .bz had closed in Jan–Feb 2017, but was again active later that year) as of November, 2017. The domains .io and .ac had previously been active. Sci-Hub has also been accessible at times by directly entering the IP address (80.82.77.83), or through a .onion Tor Hidden Service (scihub22266oqcxt.onion)[citation needed], which TorrentFreak states is "pretty much immune" to takedown requests.[13][14] Articles can also be retrieved using a bot in the instant messaging service Telegram.[15]

The site has seen widespread popularity in both developed and developing countries such as the United States, India, Indonesia,[16] Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia and Brazil.[17] As of early 2016, data released by Elbakyan shows usage in developed countries is high, with a large proportion of the downloads coming from the US and countries within the European Union.[4]

Part of a larger network of sites which provide free access to scholarly papers, Sci-Hub is the first to automate the process of bypassing paywalls.[18][19] Other methods are requesting papers manually by direct email to paper authors or other academics or by requesting them via online research forums or social networks, like the #ICanHazPDF Twitter tag.[18][20][21] The other way to provide users with access to pay-walled scientific and scholarly research articles is through "green" open access self-archiving, in which the authors of the articles deposit them in their institutional repositories. Some publishers attempt to impose embargoes on self-archiving; embargo-lengths can be from 6-12 months or longer after the date of publication (see SHERPA/RoMEO). For embargoed deposits some institutional repositories have a copy-request button (e.g., DSPACE,[22] EPrints[23]) with which users can request and authors can provide a single copy with one click each during the embargo.[24]

Website

The Sci-Hub website provides access to articles without requiring subscription or payment.[25]:10 In February 2016, the website claimed to serve over 200,000 requests per day[4]—an increase from an average of 80,000 per day before the "sci-hub.org" domain was blocked in 2015.[26] As of March 2017 the website has 62 million papers in its collection.[27]

The site bypasses publishers' paywalls using a collection of credentials (user IDs and passwords) belonging to educational institutions which have purchased access to the journals. In April 2016, Elbakyan was reported by Science as saying that many anonymous academics from around the world donate their credentials voluntarily,[4] which she later clarified as having merely stated that she would not disclose the source of the credentials.[10] Publishers have claimed that Sci-Hub relies on credentials obtained by phishing. Elbakyan claims that although she cannot guarantee that none of the credentials have been phished, she has never been involved in phishing herself.[4] Sci-Hub has credentials to access papers through platforms owned by JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, among others.[28] In 2013 Sci-Hub began collaborating with Library Genesis (LibGen), a repository of educational books and documents hosted in Russia.[29] If a requested paper is available through that database, it will be deployed to the user without needing any credentials. Estimates suggest Sci-Hub has downloaded between 50–56 million different articles, which are now stored in the LibGen database.[13][30][31] The site's operation is financed by user donations[4] paid in bitcoin.[32]

Though Sci-Hub does not limit itself to scientific papers, published research in the humanities and social sciences may not be as frequently downloaded (accounting for ten percent of Sci-Hub's top 100 downloads).[33]

Lawsuits

In 2015, Elsevier filed a lawsuit against Sci-Hub, in Elsevier et al. v. Sci-Hub et al., at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.[34] Court documents which discuss technical details of how the site functions are available to the public.[35] Elsevier claimed that Sci-Hub illegally accesses accounts of students and academic institutions to provide free access to articles through their platform ScienceDirect.[17] The website is hosted in St. Petersburg, Russia, where judgments made by American courts are not enforcible.[17] A similar case was also filed against Library Genesis (LibGen),[16][17] and Sci-Hub did not send a legal representative to the United States to take part in the lawsuit.[36] which may be based in either the Netherlands[17] or also in Russia.[37] As of May 2017, Elsevier was demanding $15 million in damages.[38] In June 2017, the court awarded Elsevier $15 million in damages for copyright infringement by Sci-Hub and others in a default judgment.[36][39] Observers in academic publishing said that Elsevier is unlikely ever receive the payment, as Sci-Hub has no assets in the United States.[36]

Alexandra Elbakyan said in response to the lawsuit that publishers demanding payment despite putting in minimal effort in publishing the academic papers, which she says are essentially donated by researchers, is illegal and violates Article 27 (1.) of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which recognises the right "to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".[40] The Electronic Frontier Foundation has expressed support for Sci-Hub and its sister site LibGen.[41] The lawsuit has generated criticism of Elsevier, and following the 2015 verdict, a group consisting of researchers, writers, and artists wrote an open letter in support of Sci-Hub and Library Genesis, calling the lawsuit a "big blow" to researchers around the world and stating that "it devalues us, authors, editors, and readers alike. It parasites on our labor, it thwarts our service to the public, it denies us access".[20][42] Elsevier was criticized for simultaneously striking down on access while donating accounts to Wikipedians in order to increase the visibility of their content on the web.[43][44]

In September 2017, the American Chemical Society (ACS) confirmed they were seeking a judgment against Sci-Hub of $4.8 million. The injunction is also seeking Internet service provider blocking of the Sci-Hub website.[45][46] On 6 November 2017, the ACS was granted a default judgment, and a permanent injunction was granted against all parties in active concert or participation with Sci-Hub that has notice of the injunction, "including any Internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, and domain name registries", to cease facilitating access to the service.[47][48] On 23 November 2017, it was reported by The Register that four Sci-Hub domains had been rendered inactive by the court order.[49]

Reception

Sci-Hub has been lauded as "transformative" and having "changed how we access knowledge",[50][51] while a number of publishers have been very critical, so far as to claim that Sci-Hub is undermining more widely accepted open access initiatives,[52] and that it ignores how publishers work hard to make access for third-world nations easier.[52] It has also been criticized by library researchers for disincentivizing the use of interlibrary loans.[19]

However, claims have been made that even prominent western institutions such as Harvard and Cornell have had to cut down their access due to ever increasing subscription costs,[53] potentially causing some of the highest use of Sci-Hub to be in American cities with well-known universities (this may however be down to the convenience of the site rather than a lack of access).[4] Sci-Hub can be seen as one venue in a general trend in which research is becoming more accessible.[54] According to The Washington Post, many academics, university librarians and longtime advocates for open scholarly research believe Elbakyan is "giving academic publishers their Napster moment", referring to the illegal music-sharing service that "disrupted and permanently altered the industry".[55]

For her actions in creating Sci-Hub, Elbakyan has been called a hero and "spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz".[9][56] She has also been compared to Edward Snowden, because he is hiding in Russia after having "leaked" files in violation of American law.[56] She has also been called a modern-day "Robin Hood" and a "Robin Hood of science".[18][57]

In August 2016, Gabriel J. Gardner, a researcher at California State University who has written papers on Sci-Hub and similar sites, was sent a letter from the Association of American Publishers. The letter asked Gardner to stop promoting the site after he had discussed the site at a session at the American Library Association.[58] In response the publishing institution was highly criticized for trying to silence legitimate research into the topic, and the letter has since been published in full, and responded to by the dean of library services at Cal State Long Beach, who supported Gardner's work.[59] In December 2016, Nature Publishing Group named Alexandra Elbakyan as one of the ten people who most mattered in 2016.[60]

In June 2017, public domain advocate Carl Malamud posted a series of tweets in which he confirmed that Public Resource had carried out an audit of Sci-Hub content and discovered over 2 million paywalled items that should be in the public domain.[61][62] He also reported that Public Resource have made a submission to American Bar Association in this regard to be considered by the House of Delegates in August.[63]

Sci-Hub VK group

Alexandra Elbakyan is using Sci-Hub group on the Russian social networking service VK to inform users about the service updates, promote open science and for the political news.

Conflict with Dynasty Foundation

In May 2015, the Russian Ministry of Justice added the Dynasty Foundation to its list of foreign agents. As a result, the Foundation was shut down in the same year in order to avoid being declared as a foreign agent. Several thousand scientists expressed their support[64] for the foundation which had provided grants for research and scientific publishing.[65]

In the period between the announcement by the Ministry of Justice and the foundations' closure in July 2015, Elbakyan was promoting the actions of the Ministry using the group.[66] There was a poll on the group asking which entity was more important to scientific research in Russia, Sci-Hub or the Dynasty Foundation.[67] Users who favored the latter were permanently banned from the group.[67][68] In an interview, which was also posted to the group, Elbakyan stated that the foundation was mostly supporting people with liberal and pro-western positions, and supporters of the foundation were expressing their support as a consequence of the grants they had received for their research.[69]

Blocking of Sci-Hub in the Russian Federation

In 2017 a species of parasitoid wasp discovered by Russian and Mexican entomologists was named Idiogramma elbakyanae "in honour of Alexandra Elbakyan (Kazakhstan/Russia), creator of the web-site Sci-Hub, in recognition of her contribution to making scientific knowledge available for all researchers".[70] Elbakyan was offended by this, writing, "If you analyse the situation with scientific publications, the real parasites are scientific publishers, and Sci-Hub, on the contrary, fights for equal access to scientific information".[71] In the context of long-term tensions with the Russian scientific community, this appears to have been the trigger cause for Elbakyan to block Sci-Hub's services in the Russian Federation.[72][71] Four days later, Elbakyan unblocked the project for Russian citizens. She explained that she received many letters with words of support and gratitude, and that she was advised not to pay attention to those who attack her on the Internet.[73]

See also

References

Further reading

‏Source en.wikipedia.org