Sci-Hub; the Librarian’s response – UK Copyright Literacy

"So what are our objections to Sci-Hub?

Firstly there is an irony that whilst arguing that academic research should be available freely, the papers that Sci-Hub provides access to are those only available via subscriptions and in the main provided by ‘legacy publishers’ . Enabling access to these papers only serves to reinforce the association that these final, peer reviewed manuscripts are the de facto currency of science.   This perversely enhances the status of prestige publication (or ‘ribbons’ as Jan Veltrop, one of the architects behind the original ‘big deals’ , calls them). It is also completely at odds with DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) which calls for a re-appraisal of how the outputs of research are evaluated and calls for “the need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, in funding, appointment, and promotion considerations”[vi].

This is a very narrow view of what is of value and ignores genuine Open Access publishing and innovations such as the increasing use and visibility of preprint servers. It can be argued that far from being disruptive and being publishing’s ‘Napster moment’ by  providing access to such material, Sci-Hub is stifling the impetus needed to innovate publishing....

[A] major reason Sci-Hub exists is because of the subscriptions we pay for. It is unashamedly illegal and it is parasitic on library subscriptions....

Where a user donates their password to Sci-Hub, it is highly likely that the institution will be unaware of this, but it would still be liable. ...

Our final objection to Sci-Hub is its utter contempt for copyright law....

Academic libraries exist to provide access to knowledge for their communities; we would love that knowledge to be openly available and there are many, many things we would prefer to do instead of managing subscriptions, but until the academy accept their role in the research dissemination process and acknowledge that it is only they who can change it, please stop saying Sci-Hub is free, and that libraries should ‘just stop paying subscriptions’. "