Academic publishers have been raking in huge profits, and their reluctance to giving open access to academic journals without collecting fees limits researchers. One Russian scientist has found a solution, a new website dubbed “the pirate bay for scientists.” Sci-Hub bypasses publishers by simply making papers available to download for free. Alexandra Elbakyan currently hosts 48 million academic papers on the site, taking inspiration from her own thesis. (She needed to pirate journal articles in order to finish her research.)
Pirating Research Papers
Ian MacAllen
Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2022). His writing has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, Southern Review of Books, The Offing, 45th Parallel Magazine, Little Fiction, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He tweets @IanMacAllen and is online at IanMacAllen.com.