European Commission - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - Speech by Commissioner Carlos Moedas in Amsterdam, NL: "Open science: share and succeed"

"Last week, The Washington Post published an article about Alexandra Elbakyan, a 27 year old student from Kazakhstan and Founder of Sci-Hub, an online database of nearly 50 million pirated academic journal articles. To some, she is 'The Robin Hood of Science.' To others, she is a notorious cyber-criminal. Elbakyan's case raises many questions. To me the most important one is: is this a sign that academic journals will face the same fate as the music and media industries? If so – and there are strong parallels to be drawn − then scientific publishing is about to be transformed. So, either we open up to a new publishing culture, with new business models, and lead the market... Or we keep things as they are, and let the opportunity pass us by. As I see it, European success now lies in sharing as soon as possible, because the days of 'publish or die' are disappearing. The days of open science have arrived ..."