What is Sci-Hub?

WHAT IS SCI-HUB?: This short video by John Bond of Riverwinds Consulting discusses the website Sci-Hub.

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Transcript
Hi there. I am John Bond from Riverwinds Consulting and this is Publishing Defined.

Today I am going to discuss Sci-Hub, the online search engine that provides academic articles for direct download for free.

Sci-Hub was launched in 2011 by Kazakhstan graduate student Alexandra Elbakyan. Since then Sci-Hub has been at the center of controversy and legal battles.

Sci-Hub offers over 58,000,000 articles free to users by bypassing publisher’s paywalls, illegally. New articles are uploaded daily, perhaps by access through educational institutional proxies.

Sci-Hub has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, most notably by Elsevier. Starting in 2015, a complaint was filed against the original domain. Following the loss of the domain, Sci-Hub has used several other domains, some of which have been blocked in certain countries. Despite these efforts, the site remains active but sometimes requires additional steps to access including the option of a direct IP address.

In April 2016, Elbakyan told Science magazine that many academics from around the world donate their credentials, while publishers have claimed that Sci-Hub relies on credentials obtained by illegal means. Sci-Hub also began collaborating with Library Genesis or LibGen, a repository of educational books and documents in Russia. The Sci-Hub site is financed by user donations paid in bitcoins.

The website has widespread popularity in both developed and developing countries including the United States, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Russia, Brazil, and the whole European Union.

The goal of Elbakyan has been to spread knowledge by allowing more people to access paywalled content. Elbakyan has cited the UN Declaration of Human Rights "to share in scientific advancement and its benefits" as her rationale. She claims the content is hindered by publishers demanding excessive payment for content which is written and donated by researchers. Sci-Hub has been compared to, among others, Napster and Edward Snowden.

All publishers with a paywall or that require login for membership are being affected by Sci-Hub today, whether they know it or not. Sci-Hub conversely does not appear to be going anywhere, anytime soon. This situation will continue to be followed closely as this push and pull over fair access to academic knowledge and the right to monetize a product are debated.

Well that’s it. Hit the Like button below if you enjoyed this video. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel or click on the playlist to see more videos about Sci-Hub.

And make comments below or email me with questions. Thank so much and take care.

[Vipashayana.]

I support Sci-hub! No one has the right to hide knowledge behind paywalls. Anyone who want to learn, understand and absorb information must have access to all research

[laxmanmishra]

The academic/research article are written by us, reviewed by our peers at free of cost. The publishers merely publish it (mostly online these days). It is only fair to say that those articles are public property and should be accessible to the public. The publishers do incur some cost. However, the subscription fee charged or price per article is way beyond proportion.
Thus sci-hub deserves a place in the world wide web. If not millions, thousands of scholars have benefited from it. Thanks to you sci-hub.

[vengeancewaffle]

As a private citizen with no institutional access to paid journal articles, I routinely run into the paywall.
The abstracts are generally useless, and some of the journal articles cost hundreds of US dollars!

This is grossly over priced, and is pure profiteering at the expense of all.

I can't afford to pay, and I feel any article stuck behind a paywall stands in the way of progress, and is a detriment to humanity.

[vishwanathiari]

I work for Govt. but the resources are limited here. Could not imagine completing PhD without SC-hub.

[xpediteafrica]

Sci-hub are doing amazing work! Providing for hundreds of millions who need scientific information to improve the world.

[arushisharma]

I support scihub coz it is doing a service to the global community of education and knowledge. The real culprit are the publishing houses. They charge the scholars who write the articles and charge the scholars who read them.

[bldhoney]

I pay for research, from my taxes, I should be able to access it for free!

[tcpip]

I support sci hub. Here's a data point. I'm currently preparing a paper for a journal. It offers open access for a fee of about 2500 euros. What does this cover? I do all the research and writing . I format the paper according to strict guidelines . Peer review costs? I do peer review for other journals without fee . Maybe a total of 1 hour's processing - the 2500 euros is called an article processing fee. That's a pretty good salary for a junior office worker😅 And no, the huge list of what journals do on the scholarly publishing website, isn't convincing.

[Md-xzzb]

As an author, I would like to give my papers to free for interested readers, so, I put it mostly in my research gate and other platforms.

[nidakhan]

When we ask our professors where do download from they shout SciHub.
These same teachers keep us from questioning the government -_-

[pjahamed]

sci hub is like Bible/quran for me ❤️🙏🏻

[BhargavSushant]

Big publishing house made a mafia out of publishing, we have to submit papers into paid journals for tenure, otherwise paper would be published in a shady journal or wait for big journal's process to finish, which could take 18 months or more, that too after paying hefty fee.

[debtochill]

All publisher is the real threat to integrity of academic institutions. I want all publisher pay to researchers!!

[rclrd]

Research institutes are funded by governments; it doesn’t make sense that the publishers of the results from those institutes are not.

[maomelahmaed]

Thanks for help me. I need the solution of problem
to book ((Green energy and technology) ).I wait the Answer.

[KS-wtyg]

I can't access this website. Pls help me with it

[jamesdolph]

oh boo the hell hoo for publishers ... knowledge should be free for every one ...