SCI-HUB: The beginning of the end of publishing as we know it?

scihubUnbeknownst to many academics working in large universities or research institutes, SCI-HUB, ‘the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers’, has made almost every research paper worldwide accessible for free. While spoiled academics in rich countries retrieve almost any paper which they are interested in with a simple mouse click via their institution, an illegal operation is serving an even greater selection of articles to those less fortunate who otherwise might have to pay 20 $ or more per article.This act of piracy is threatening the publishing industry to the very foundation – not unlike Napster or Pirate Bay had threatened the music industry. Meanwhile, the publishing industry is still dancing on volcanoes. Double dipping in the transition phase from institutional subscriptions to a per-article fee based Open Access business model (i.e. charging authors AND libraries for giving access to the same article) the publishing giants still generate profit rates of 20 -40%. But what if a growing number of scientists use SCI-HUB as their portal for downloading articles, and courts can’t stop it? Two recent blogs nicely explain how SCI-HUB works, and what it could mean for you and the publishers. One from an industry perspective, the other celebrating Alexandra Elbakyan, the founder of SCI-HUB, as the Robin Hood of Science. If what happened in the music industry is predictive for publishing, it is quite likely that despite an eventual victory of the establishment over the pirates the business model of the industry will have to dramatically change. With unforeseeable consequences for how we are going to publish our research, and how (or even whether) we will be charged for access to publications.

 

 

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