Working at a large, wealthy institution like the Charité, we
are mostly insulated from the frustrations of academic paywalls.
Multi-million euro academic subscription fees assure that works
published in most large biomedical databases are easily within reach,
and not being able to access a publication is the exception. However, in
other places, a publisher paywall can literally make or break an
academic career. A single paper typically costs around 20-30 euros to
purchase, while some websites cheekily offer “rentals”. Imagine yourself
considering what you can afford to read. In science, information is
power, and corralling this information behind paywalls means a steep
imbalance in who gets to set the tone of the cutting-edge research.
Introducing Sci-Hub
If the digitization of scientific knowledge is feeding an ever-growing problem, could it also provide some solutions? Some self-proclaimed scientific data pirates are using big data to beat online scientific publishing at its own game. Enter Sci-Hub [1], the “Pirate Bay of Scientific Publishing”. On this site, not unlike PubMed, anyone can search and download texts pertaining to their scientific field. It’s free, simple, and incredibly popular worldwide. Understandably, the publishers hate it.
A few quick facts and figures [2]: Sci-Hub handles about 200,000 paper requests per day, coming from all over the world and most academic disciplines. The heaviest use of the site is in Iran, but other nations aren’t far behind. The publisher arguably being hit hardest by these illegal downloads is Elsevier, though analysis found that Sci-Hub was only diverting about 5% of its legal traffic. Thus far, more than 6 million papers have been accessed through the site, and these numbers continue to grow. The number one downloaded paper so far was a piece on wind turbine testing [3], followed by a paper on glioma [4].
Sci-Hub was the brainchild of 22-year old Kazakh computer science and neuroscience student Alexandra Elbakyan. Frustrated by the lack of availability of scientific resources in her home country and with a knack for hacking, she created the site in the hopes of leveling the playing field for academics worldwide [5]. She’s widely been celebrated as a game-changer in the field of digital media, but her whereabouts are currently unknown… Due to ongoing legal proceedings, being found could mean imprisonment.
The Publishers Strike Back
In 2015, the publication group Elsevier sued the website for unlawful use of copyrighted material [1]. Despite Elbakyan invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which calls on signatory parties to "to share in scientific advancement and its benefits", Sci-Hub lost, and the website was promptly taken down. However, thanks to a sophisticated team of hackers and administrators involved in the project, it was up again in no time, and has since appeared under several different domain names. In the age of Big Data, Sci-Hub is not disappearing anytime soon.
Recently, Science magazine undertook an official study on the use of Sci-Hub, and the results were surprising. Whereas the study authors expected that use of the site would be most popular in less developed countries, it seems that the site was also being heavily used in Europe and North America [2]. Site critics seized on this point, claiming that for most, data piracy was an issue of convenience, rather than necessity. In some sense, they’re right: Science’s analysis of the site found that a large number of open-access articles (which theoretically anyone, anywhere can access) were being pulled from the site.
Leverage and Loopholes
There are other reasons why some are skeptical of Sci-Hub. One argument is that official publishers often keep track of downloads and usage statistics for individual works – something that Sci-Hub doesn't do. These statistics are increasingly being used as career metrics for researchers. Without facts and figures about journal readership/downloads, institutions or smaller publishers may cut ties with periodicals that are immensely popular and useful to the community [6].
A final argument from the publishing industry is that many large companies already have lots of ways to get free access to articles in their collections. For example, after users register with the journal Science, they can access all articles that were published more than a year ago for free [6]. However, not all journals are as generous with their materials, and the loopholes that researchers have to jump through make the process cumbersome, and still occasionally expensive. The heavy use of Sci-Hub in less wealthy countries suggests that (a) most researchers don’t know about these special channels to access manuscripts behind paywalls, or (b) they don’t work as advertised [2,6]. Whether a matter of education or logistics, it’s clear that there is still significant work to be done on the part of the journals.
Piracy or Cooperative Change?
However, one point remains a fact: publishing companies are not immune to change. Ten years ago, open access publishing for scientific articles was still in its infancy, and today represents a major step forward in the democratization of scientific knowledge. This happened through public pressure together with cooperation of the companies. But will publishing companies ever be able to deal with scientific data piracy in a productive manner? Peter Suber from the Office of Scholarly Communications at Harvard put it succinctly when interviewed in Science: “Lawful open access forces publishers to adapt […], unlawful open access invites them to sue instead.” [2].
by Constance Holman, PhD Student AG Schmitz
[1] http://bit.ly/1UI574H
[2] http://bit.ly/1STnFAv
[3] Osgood et al. Proceedings of the IMAC-XXVIII, 2010
[4] Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network, NEJM 2015
[5] http://bit.ly/1SIgci8
[6] http://bit.ly/1NO7qSS
Introducing Sci-Hub
If the digitization of scientific knowledge is feeding an ever-growing problem, could it also provide some solutions? Some self-proclaimed scientific data pirates are using big data to beat online scientific publishing at its own game. Enter Sci-Hub [1], the “Pirate Bay of Scientific Publishing”. On this site, not unlike PubMed, anyone can search and download texts pertaining to their scientific field. It’s free, simple, and incredibly popular worldwide. Understandably, the publishers hate it.
A few quick facts and figures [2]: Sci-Hub handles about 200,000 paper requests per day, coming from all over the world and most academic disciplines. The heaviest use of the site is in Iran, but other nations aren’t far behind. The publisher arguably being hit hardest by these illegal downloads is Elsevier, though analysis found that Sci-Hub was only diverting about 5% of its legal traffic. Thus far, more than 6 million papers have been accessed through the site, and these numbers continue to grow. The number one downloaded paper so far was a piece on wind turbine testing [3], followed by a paper on glioma [4].
Sci-Hub was the brainchild of 22-year old Kazakh computer science and neuroscience student Alexandra Elbakyan. Frustrated by the lack of availability of scientific resources in her home country and with a knack for hacking, she created the site in the hopes of leveling the playing field for academics worldwide [5]. She’s widely been celebrated as a game-changer in the field of digital media, but her whereabouts are currently unknown… Due to ongoing legal proceedings, being found could mean imprisonment.
 |
| via Wikimedia Commons |
The Publishers Strike Back
In 2015, the publication group Elsevier sued the website for unlawful use of copyrighted material [1]. Despite Elbakyan invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which calls on signatory parties to "to share in scientific advancement and its benefits", Sci-Hub lost, and the website was promptly taken down. However, thanks to a sophisticated team of hackers and administrators involved in the project, it was up again in no time, and has since appeared under several different domain names. In the age of Big Data, Sci-Hub is not disappearing anytime soon.
Recently, Science magazine undertook an official study on the use of Sci-Hub, and the results were surprising. Whereas the study authors expected that use of the site would be most popular in less developed countries, it seems that the site was also being heavily used in Europe and North America [2]. Site critics seized on this point, claiming that for most, data piracy was an issue of convenience, rather than necessity. In some sense, they’re right: Science’s analysis of the site found that a large number of open-access articles (which theoretically anyone, anywhere can access) were being pulled from the site.
Leverage and Loopholes
There are other reasons why some are skeptical of Sci-Hub. One argument is that official publishers often keep track of downloads and usage statistics for individual works – something that Sci-Hub doesn't do. These statistics are increasingly being used as career metrics for researchers. Without facts and figures about journal readership/downloads, institutions or smaller publishers may cut ties with periodicals that are immensely popular and useful to the community [6].
A final argument from the publishing industry is that many large companies already have lots of ways to get free access to articles in their collections. For example, after users register with the journal Science, they can access all articles that were published more than a year ago for free [6]. However, not all journals are as generous with their materials, and the loopholes that researchers have to jump through make the process cumbersome, and still occasionally expensive. The heavy use of Sci-Hub in less wealthy countries suggests that (a) most researchers don’t know about these special channels to access manuscripts behind paywalls, or (b) they don’t work as advertised [2,6]. Whether a matter of education or logistics, it’s clear that there is still significant work to be done on the part of the journals.
Piracy or Cooperative Change?
However, one point remains a fact: publishing companies are not immune to change. Ten years ago, open access publishing for scientific articles was still in its infancy, and today represents a major step forward in the democratization of scientific knowledge. This happened through public pressure together with cooperation of the companies. But will publishing companies ever be able to deal with scientific data piracy in a productive manner? Peter Suber from the Office of Scholarly Communications at Harvard put it succinctly when interviewed in Science: “Lawful open access forces publishers to adapt […], unlawful open access invites them to sue instead.” [2].
by Constance Holman, PhD Student AG Schmitz
[1] http://bit.ly/1UI574H
[2] http://bit.ly/1STnFAv
[3] Osgood et al. Proceedings of the IMAC-XXVIII, 2010
[4] Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network, NEJM 2015
[5] http://bit.ly/1SIgci8
[6] http://bit.ly/1NO7qSS
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