Sci-Hub vs. Open Access | Scholars Cooperative - Wayne State University Blogs

"If you’ve been following the news in the world of scholarly publishing lately, you’ve probably heard quite a bit about the website Sci-Hub. In brief, Sci-Hub was founded by Kazakhstani researcher Alexandra Elbakyan with the mission of circumventing copyright in order to provide free access to articles appearing in scholarly journals. Despite the fact that Elbakyan has been operating the site since September of 2011 (well over 4 years), it is only recently that we have seen widespread coverage of the site. Buzz has grown to such a point in fact, that a recent Op-Ed piece published in the New York Times has compared Elbakyan to Edward Snowden. Considering that this NYT piece, titled Should All Research Papers be Free?, is the only exposure that much of the non-academia world will have to this situation, it is a shame then that the author draws so direct a line between Sci-Hub and the open access (OA) movement. Even more so, it is unfortunate that some OA activists have seemed to come out in unreserved support for Elbakyan and her mission, a fact which outlets such as Scholarly Kitchen were quick to point out. It is unfortunate because, according to Peter Suber (as quoted in the NYT article), 'Unlawful access gives open access a bad name.' Suber is director of the office of scholarly communication at Harvard, and is one of the OA movement’s pioneers. In a follow-up piece posted to his Google+ page, Suber expanded on his comments cautioning OA activists from getting too excited in their support of Elbakyan and Sci-Hub: 'Giving support to the false impression that OA requires infringement misleads people about these facts, especially newcomers not familiar with the many kinds of lawful OA. Moreover, it gives anti-OA publishers a propaganda gift. […] The risk of unlawful OA services is that they could trigger a new wave of false assumptions about (1) the lawfulness of OA, (2) the wide range of lawful options for researchers to make their work OA, and (3) the importance of persuading researchers to make one of those lawful choices.' His post and the ensuing comments present an excellent case as to why OA activists should not be backing Sci-Hub, and of the dangers of linking the OA movement with Elbakyan’s activities."