Sci-Hub claims to “remove all barriers in the way of science”. In its “about us” section, the website proudly announces that it is “the fir...
Sci-Hub claims to “remove all barriers in the way of science”. In its “about us” section, the website proudly announces that it is “the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers”.
In other words, the “shadow library website” – as Wikipedia describes it – provides unrestricted access to research papers and journals that are otherwise behind paywalls.
Academics across the world swear by it. Many, particularly those in the global South and without institutional affiliations, say it would be near-impossible to do what they do if not for the website. This is because of the prohibitive costs of legally accessing most cutting-edge research published in reputed journals. For context: an annual online subscription to a top-notch medical journal costs upward of Rs 15,000 in India.
No wonder then that Sci-Hub often finds a mention in the acknowledgment section of PhD dissertations.
A lawsuit
But in this arrangement of convenience, there is an aggrieved third party: big publishers who insist that what Sci-Hub does amounts to copyright infringement. In the past, publishers have successfully moved court in various parts of the world to win injunctions against Sci-Hub. Several of the website’s domains have stopped working as a result.
On Monday, some of...
