Could Piracy Accelerate Consolidation? — Caldera Publishing Solutions

The recent news that a researcher in Russia running a site called Sci-Hub has downloaded 48 million scholarly articles and is making them available free as a form of protest over the fact that some publishers charge US$32 to buy a single article is a good opportunity to pause and consider exactly who is being hurt in this scenario. From a financial and economic standpoint, collateral damage is entirely possible. In the mind of Alexandra Elbakyan, the Russian researcher behind Sci-Hub who is currently defying a US district court injunction, she and her ilk are mainly hurting large commercial publishers, organizations she thinks are exploiting academic information illegitimately. But is her approach likely to have that effect?  ... Sci-Hub believes its actions are primarily humbling publishers like Elsevier, which are obviously the primary target. However, they are also hurting other participants in the academic publishing economy, some of whom are apparently aiding and abetting:  Authors -- Books are also included in the materials Sci-Hub has purloined through access keys delivered by 'science spies.' When a publisher sells fewer books, royalties fall. While not often huge, these can be a nice supplement to academic pay. If allowed to persist, not only would royalties be lower, but advances would fall. For journal authors, where rewards for publication are indirect, data about their articles' impact and influence will likely be diminished, especially alt-metrics measures.  This is an interesting aspect of the new interlinked impact infrastructure -- piracy undercuts its functioning.  Libraries who pay for site license access -- Despite the public shaming over US$32 articles and continued claims that institutions like Cornell and Harvard can't afford to purchase site licenses (despite multi-billion-dollar endowments, and the fact that Cornell raised more than $11 million to support its $8.8 million dollar library budget in 2015, and that Harvard recently saved $25 million by restructuring staff and eliminating duplications in its system), the reality is that libraries pay very low per-article usage rates for most titles. In any event, the main problem here is that libraries are paying while Sci-Hub is using their access keys and paid access to purloin articles. Both publishers and libraries have a mutual interest in accurate usage reporting. If Sci-Hub ever becomes a significant factor in access to articles, usage becomes inaccurate, and pricing inequities are more likely to emerge or be suspected, which will cause both parties to posture or make pricing adjustments in the blind, which could lead to irrational behavior. Meanwhile, Sci-Hub continues to bleed libraries using their own access keys.  Society publishers and specialty societies -- Focusing solely on commercial publishers like Elsevier and SAGE, and you find dozens upon dozens of society journals within each publishing company. Sci-Hub is not ripping off articles from Elsevier or Wiley or SAGE, per se, but from the societies that use these commercial firms as publishing houses. Go beyond this, and you find the self-publishing non-profits with articles caught in Sci-Hub's scheme. In short, the majority of what is in Sci-Hub is most likely coming from non-profit societies, making this less of a story of Robin Hood robbing from the town's greedy sheriff, and more a story of Robin Hood stealing from the town's hospitals and charities ..."