Journal Piracy Is Not [Just] Stealing From the Rich – Speak for Sociology

"In February, ASA became aware that ASA-owned journal content (and that of virtually all scholarly journals published by JSTOR, SAGE, Elsevier and other major journal publishers) had been illegally downloaded and made freely available through 'Sci-Hub.' Elsevier initially led the legal fight against the theft by Sci-Hub (and LibGen) and won an injunction in October 2015 that shut down the U.S.-based domain used by Sci-Hub. The domains were then moved and reopened in Russia. ASA, other scholarly societies, and our publishing partners have been dismayed by some of the published comments about Sci-Hub that present its theft as a kind of 'Robin Hood' fairy tale by characterizing the 'victims' as greedy publishers feasting on the profits of expensive individual article downloads by needy researchers. For the vast number of nonprofit scholarly societies involved in this theft, the reality is starkly different and threatens the well-being of ASA and our sister associations as well as the peer assessment of scholarship in sociology and other academic disciplines ..."