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| screenshot =
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| url = {{URL|sci-hub.io}}<br/>{{URL|sci-hub.cc}}
| url = {{URL|https://sci-hub.io}}<br/>{{URL|sci-hub.cc}}
| slogan = To remove all barriers in the way of science
| slogan = To remove all barriers in the way of science
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==External links==
==External links==
* {{Official website|http://www.sci-hub.io/}}
* {{Official website|https://www.sci-hub.io/}}
* {{twitter|sci_hub|Sci-Hub}}
* {{twitter|sci_hub|Sci-Hub}}
* {{Nowrap|[[Tor (anonymity network)#Hidden services|Tor]]: scihub22266oqcxt.onion}}, a [[Tor (anonymity network)#Hidden services|Tor hidden service]] for accessing the website
* {{Nowrap|[[Tor (anonymity network)#Hidden services|Tor]]: scihub22266oqcxt.onion}}, a [[Tor (anonymity network)#Hidden services|Tor hidden service]] for accessing the website

Revision as of 08:43, 7 April 2016

Sci-hub
Available inRussian, English
Created byAlexandra Elbakyan
URLsci-hub.io
sci-hub.cc
CommercialNo
Launched5 September 2011; 13 years ago (2011-09-05)
Part of a series on
File sharing
Technologies
Video on demand sites
BitTorrent sites
Academic/scholarly
File sharing networks
P2P clients
Streaming programs
Anonymous file sharing
Development and societal aspects
By country or region
Comparisons

Sci-Hub is an online repository of over 48,000,000 scientific academic papers and articles,[1] available through its website. New papers are uploaded daily after accessing them through .edu proxies.[2] Founded by Alexandra Elbakyan from Kazakhstan in 2011, it began as a reaction to the high cost of research papers behind paywalls, typically US$30 each when bought on a per-paper basis.[3] Academic publisher Elsevier has in 2015 filed a legal complaint in New York City alleging copyright infringement by Sci-Hub.[4]

History

The Sci-Hub project started running on 5 September 2011,[5] founded by Alexandra Elbakyan, a software developer and neurotechnology researcher from Kazakhstan,[6] with the goal to increase the spread of knowledge by allowing more people to access paywalled content.[7] The project's original domain name, Sci-Hub.org, was suspended in November 2015 due to a court order.[8] The project resurfaced again that same month under a .io domain.[9]

The site has become very popular in developing countries such as India and Indonesia,[10] as well as Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia and Brazil.[11] Providing access to research for less privileged institutions and countries has been Elbakyan's express goal in creating the site, stating that she similarly shared papers without permission when she did research at a Kazakhstan university, given the need to skim hundreds of papers.[12]

Sci-Hub is the first known website to provide automatic and free access to paywalled academic papers on a massive scale.[13] Before Sci-Hub people used to request and share research papers manually by direct email to paper authors or other academics[13] or by requesting them via online research forums[14] or social networks, like the #ICanHazPDF Twitter tag.[15]

Website

Elbakyan at a conference at Harvard (2010)

Sci-Hub provides readers with articles without requiring a subscription or payment.[16] In February 2016, the Sci-Hub website claimed to serve more 200,000 requests per day.[17][18] According to Elbakyan, the website had an average of 80,000 visitors per day before its original domain, Sci-Hub.org, was blocked.[1]

The site gains access to papers by passing through the corresponding paywall and retrieve the document from the original publisher's website. Sci-hub is able to achieve this thanks to a collection of subscription credentials that anonymous academics from around the world have donated. Sci-hub has credentials to access papers published at JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, among others.[19] As of 2013, Sci-Hub started collaborating with Library Genesis, a repository of educational books and documents hosted in Russia.[20] If the requested paper was available there, it was deployed to the user. If a paper was not previously available at LibGen, Sci-Hub would download it and share a copy of the document with LibGen for future use.[16] Today, Sci-Hub relies on a distributed network of repositories to store and retrieve research papers.[citation needed]

Lawsuit

The site is currently involved in a legal case with Elsevier: Elsevier et al. v. Sci-Hub et al.[4] Court documents relating to the case are in the public domain.[21] Elsevier claims that Sci-Hub illegally accesses accounts of students and academic institutions to provide free access to articles through their platform ScienceDirect.[11] The case is complicated by the fact that the site is hosted in St. Petersburg, Russia, making it difficult to target within the US legal system.[11] Some question Elsevier's motives behind its simultaneous attempt to partner with Wikipedia to disseminate their paywalled papers.[22] A similar case is also being run against the site Library Genesis (LibGen),[10][11] which may be based in the Netherlands[11] or possibly Russia as well.[23] Despite seizure of the "sci-hub.org" domain name as ordered by a New York district court on October 28, 2015, the site is still accessible through alternative domains as of December 2015 and also accessible through the Tor network.[1]

Alexandra Elbakyan has cited the Article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights "to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".[24] The Electronic Frontier Foundation has expressed support for Sci-Hub and its sister site LibGen.[25] The lawsuit has prompted widespread criticism of Elsevier.[26] After Elsevier's 2015 court victory, 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".[15][27][28] 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".[29]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Schiermeier, Quirin (4 December 2015). "Pirate research-paper sites play hide-and-seek with publishers". Nature News & Comment. Retrieved 6 December 2015.
  2. ^ Storm, Darlene (19 August 2015). "Jump paywalls, score academic research for free, share it without being busted". Computerworld. Retrieved 6 December 2015.
  3. ^ Russon, Mary-Ann (15 February 2016). "Sci-Hub: Russian neuroscientist running 'Pirate Bay for scientists' with 48 million free academic papers". International Business Times. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  4. ^ a b Ernesto (9 June 2015). "Elsevier Cracks Down on Pirated Scientific Articles". TorrentFreak (Blog). Lennart Renkema. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  5. ^ "About Sci-Hub". Retrieved 13 December 2015.
  6. ^ "Lifeboat Foundation Bios: Alexandra A. Elbakyan". Lifeboat Foundation. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  7. ^ Ernesto (27 June 2015). "Sci-Hub Tears Down Academia's "Illegal" Copyright Paywalls". TorrentFreak (Blog). Lennart Renkema. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  8. ^ Ernesto (2 November 2015). "Court Orders Shutdown Of LibGen, Bookfi And Sci-Hub". TorrentFreak (Blog). Lennart Renkema. Retrieved 13 December 2015.
  9. ^ Ernesto (21 November 2015). "Sci-Hub, BookFi and LibGen Resurface After Being Shut Down". TorrentFreak (Blog). Lennart Renkema. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  10. ^ a b Stone, Maddie. "Academic Publishing Giant Fights To Keep Science Paywalled". Gizmodo (Blog). Gawker Media. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  11. ^ a b c d e Glance, David (15 June 2015). "Elsevier acts against research article pirate sites and claims irreparable harm". The Conversation. The Conversation Trust. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  12. ^ Ernesto. "Science "Pirate" Attacks Elsevier's Copyright Monopoly in Court". TorrentFreak (Blog). Lennart Renkema. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  13. ^ a b Oxenham, Simon (10 February 2016). "Meet the Robin Hood of Science". Big Think. The Big Think, Inc. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  14. ^ Belluz, Julia (18 February 2016). "Meet the woman who's breaking the law to make science free for all". Vox. Vox Media. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
  15. ^ a b Waddell, Kaveh (9 February 2016). "The Research Pirates of the Dark Web". The Atlantic. Atlantic Media. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  16. ^ a b Cabanac, Guillaume (April 2015). "Bibliogifts in LibGen? A study of a text-sharing platform driven by biblioleaks and crowdsourcing" (PDF). Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology: n/a–n/a. doi:10.1002/asi.23445. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  17. ^ Brouwers, Lucas (23 February 2016). "Gratis wetenschap via Kazachstan". NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). Egeria.
  18. ^ @Sci_Hub (17 February 2016). "last 24 hour: 217276 different papers downloaded by 69532 users. The top five countries are India, China, Iran, Russia and United States" (Tweet). Retrieved 8 March 2016 – via Twitter.
  19. ^ MacDonald, Fiona (12 February 2016). "Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge". ScienceAlert (Blog). Retrieved 12 February 2016.
  20. ^ @Sci_Hub (14 February 2013). "Новости ресурса: интеграция с Либгеном (libgen.org - более 18,000,000 статей) и новый сервер фронт-энда" (Tweet) (in Russian). Retrieved 8 March 2016 – via Twitter.
  21. ^ "Elsevier v. Sci-Hub on the docket – Stephen Reid McLaughlin". Retrieved 2016-03-18.
  22. ^ Stone, Maddie (18 September 2015). "Is A Giant Academic Publisher Trying To Paywall Wikipedia?". Gizmodo. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  23. ^ Mance, Henry (26 May 2015). "Publishers win landmark case against ebook pirates". Financial Times. The Nikkei. ISSN 0307-1766. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  24. ^ Henderson, Emma. "Pirate website offering millions of academic papers for free refuses to close despite lawsuit". The Independent. Independent Print Limited. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  25. ^ Harmon, Elliot (16 December 2015). "What If Elsevier and Researchers Quit Playing Hide-and-Seek?". Deeplinks (Blog). Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 18 December 2015.
  26. ^ "Simba Information: Five Professional Publishing News Events of 2015 Signal Times Are A-Changin'". PR Newswire. 17 December 2015. Retrieved 18 December 2015.
  27. ^ "EXCLUSIVE: Robin Hood neuroscientist behind Sci-Hub research-pirate site talks to RT". RT. TV-Novosti. 14 February 2016. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  28. ^ "Open letter: In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub". custodians.online. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  29. ^ Rosenwald, Michael S. (30 March 2016). "This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they're free". The Washington Post. Nash Holdings LLC. Retrieved 30 March 2016.

Further reading

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