Massive civil disobedience for scholarly open access - TeleRead News: E-books, publishing, tech and beyond

"Online knowledge forum Big Think has shared a profile of the Kazakh woman who’s single-handedly taking on the Goliath of scholarly publishing, and leading a global civil disobedience campaign in support of scholarly open access. Alexandra Elbakyan, born in Kazakhstan, created Sci-Hub in 2011, the online repository of over 48 million scientific papers – nearly every peer-reviewed paper ever published anywhere – available online, for anyone, for free. And this wouldn’t be possible without an anonymous (no, not that Anonymous) global network of academics who are donating paywall access keys to make sure that Sci-Hub stays up to date with the latest in research and learning. Needless to say, Big Publishing isn’t pleased. Reed Elsevier launched and won a case in 2015 in a New York district court, arguing that Sci-Hub contravened their copyrights. However, since Elbakyan and Sci-Hub have no assets in the U.S., the court could do no more than bar the website. Sci-Hub promptly hopped to another domain, and will probably continue to do so every time it has to. Elbakyan claims that in fact she is fully justified, and Elsevier is the one acting illegally, according to Article 27 Clause 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads: 'Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits ...'"