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Concept
Sci-Hub
Summary
Sci-Hub is a shadow library website that provides free access to millions of research papers, without regard to copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. It does not provide access to books. Sci-Hub was founded in Kazakhstan by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, in response to the high cost of research papers behind paywalls (see Serials crisis). The site is extensively used worldwide. In September 2019, the site's operator(s) said that it served approximately 400,000 requests per day.
In addition to its intensive use, Sci-Hub stands out among other shadow libraries because of its easy use/reliability and because of an enormous size of its collection: a 2021 study estimated, that Sci-Hub provided access to 95% of all scholarly publications with issued DOI numbers, and on 15 July 2022 Sci-Hub reported that its collection comprises 88,343,822 files.
Sci-Hub and Elbakyan were sued twice for copyright infringement in the United States, in 2015 and 2017, and lost both cases by default, leading to loss of some of its Internet domain names. The site has cycled through different domain names since then.
Sci-Hub has been lauded by some in the scientific, academic, and publishing communities for providing access to knowledge generated by the scientific community, which is usually funded by taxpayers (government grants) and with zero royalties paid to the authors. Publishers have criticized it for violating copyright, reducing the revenue of publishers, and potentially being linked to activities compromising universities' network security, though the cybersecurity threat posed by Sci-Hub may have been exaggerated by publishers.
Elbakyan questioned the morality of the publishers' business and the legality of their methods in regards to the right to science and culture under Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while maintaining that Sci-Hub should be "perfectly legal." Many Sci-Hub users, including Alexandra Elbakyan herself, maintain the position that Sci-Hub is a moral imperative, and if the operation of Sci-Hub contradicts the law, it is the law that should be changed rather than banning Sci-Hub.
Official source
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Ontological neighbourhood
Related publications (5)
Related concepts (5)
JSTOR
JSTOR ('dʒeɪstɔːr; short for Journal Storage) is a digital library founded in 1994. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of journals in the humanities and social sciences. It provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals. Most access is by subscription but some of the site is public domain, and open access content is available free of charge. William G. Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, founded JSTOR in 1994.
Digital object identifier
A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier or handle used to uniquely identify various objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). DOIs are an implementation of the Handle System; they also fit within the URI system (Uniform Resource Identifier). They are widely used to identify academic, professional, and government information, such as journal articles, research reports, data sets, and official publications.
Elsevier
Elsevier (ˈɛlzəviːr) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as The Lancet, Cell, the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, Trends, the Current Opinion series, the online citation database Scopus, the SciVal tool for measuring research performance, the ClinicalKey search engine for clinicians, and the ClinicalPath evidence-based cancer care service.