Sci-Hub began to play such an important role that the paid model of the work of scientific publishing houses is under threat

About the information resource Sci-Hub, which makes it possible to study for free the materials of reputable scientific journals with a paid subscription too heavy for an ordinary scientist, have been written to Geektimes many times. One of the most interesting materials on this topic is an interview with the creator of Sci-Hub, Alexandra Elbakyan. Recently, news was also published that the scientific publishing house Elsevier did win a lawsuit in a New York court. The verdict of the court - the requirement to pay the injured party (that is, the publisher of about $ 15 million). Elbakyan has already responded to this, that with all her desire she cannot pay, since she does not have such a sum.

There is no continuation of this story yet, Sci-Hub continues to work. Moreover, the site has more and more visitors, so, according to some analysts, the financial well-being of scientific journals and scientific publishing houses, living on paywall , is under threat. Already, not only poor students, but also well-to-do research scientists from famous universities prefer to get the necessary knowledge for free, and not to pay thousands of dollars for a subscription.

The influence of Sci-Hub on subscriptions can not guess, it is really very strong. Recently, a group of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania published the results of their research, which directly reveals this topic. Preprint is available here . As it turned out, Sci-Hub now offers free access to two thirds of the total number of scientific articles. Their number in the resource base is more than expected. According to scientists who estimated the base volume, about 85% of all articles protected by the paywall are available free of charge on Sci-Hub.
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If this is true (and research data shows that yes), then Sci-Hub allows you to access almost any scientific article that a scientist may need in the process. In addition, if there is not even anything in the database, then such material will soon appear on the resource. According to the author of the study, Sci-Hub can be the "beginning of the end" for research published not in open access, but in the form of articles in scientific journals, for which information it is necessary to pay.

The resource itself offers free access to materials of any type, at least for a fee, at least for free. But since most often it turns out that you have to pay for the most relevant information, the “paid” articles are the most relevant. Demand creates supply, and on Sci-Hub there are more copies of materials that are in paid access than articles that you don’t need to pay for. The site is a repository of articles, or, so to speak, a library of scientific knowledge.

How does Sci-Hub get all this licensed, closed paywall literature? First of all, the project team uses leaked authentication data from scientists who have access to paid materials. Someone offers their usernames and passwords on their own, and someone else kidnaps them (no, Sci-Hub has nothing to do with this).



How do scientists determine how much and what materials are in the Sci-Hub database? Here, too, there is nothing particularly difficult. The project team used the DOI database from Crossref. This database was loaded on March 21, 2017. The database, at the time of loading, contained more than 80 million DOI. Accordingly, we can say that the number of scientific articles is similar to the number of DOI. All this can be called articles, since Sci-Hub does not make a difference between real articles, book chapters, documents from conferences and other similar materials.

After analyzing the DOI materials from the Sci-Hub database, it turned out that the service stores articles from 22193 scientific publications.

Experts estimate that of the 57,074,208 articles in the Sci-Hub database, the vast majority of materials were present, more than 80%. The maximum attitude of the articles contained in the database to those materials that are present only in paid access - for articles on chemistry. Minimal - in materials that are relevant to the world of information technology.

Another interesting point. The project participants calculated which articles in the database are the most, if we bear in mind the scientific publishers. As it turned out, the maximum number of "pirated materials" were taken from magazines that are related to the Elsevier publishing house. No wonder the publisher is so worried about this. So, the resource base contains about 97.3% of the articles of the journals of the publishing house. Further descending are publishers such as Elsevier - 97.3%, Springer Nature - 89.4%, Wiley-Blackwell - 94.8%, Taylor & Francis - 96.2%, Wolters Kluwer - 79.2%, American Chemical Society - 98.8%, SAGE -95.3% , and Oxford University Press - 84.9%. In general, Sci-Hub contains materials for journals from 4879 different publishers.



Despite the fact that there are no articles in the database, the resource covers about 99% of user requests. That is, those articles that are not, are not too popular or popular. Going to the site "library" user can find almost everything that he needs. Exceptions to this rule are rare. Scientists who conducted the study believe that most users of Sci-Hub come to the resource in order to bypass the paywall in any way. There are also users who are looking for materials that are already publicly available, but there are not so many of them.

Where does the money come from?

In fact, the resource has a huge user base, which almost every day requests one or another article. In order for the service to be able to withstand the pressure of visitors, we need reliable servers and the participation of network administrators in the work of the resource. Accordingly, the required funds, and considerable. As it turned out, Sci-Hub has money. Elbakyan and earlier said that the site exists through donations. But who pays and in what amount?

Previously, payments were made from various systems, including PayPal, Yandex, WebMoney, QiQi. But now the site accepts donations only in the form of Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Here, the expert’s explanation is not necessary - it is clear that the resource wants its sources of funding and the amount of funds received to remain unknown. Otherwise, funding sources may be blocked by a court decision, and the resource and its administration will be forced to pay money to the plaintiff.

Nevertheless, the approximate amount of donations can be found out by looking at the chain of transactions in the cryptocurrency. The resource has three main wallets. These are 1K4t2vSBSS2xFjZ6PofYnbgZewjeqbG1TM, 14ghuGKDAPdEcUQN4zuzGwBUrhQgACwAyA and 1EVkHpdQ8VJQRpQ15hSRoohCztTvDMEepm. In total, 1037 payments were made to these wallets, the total amount was 92.63 Bitcoins. At the rate at the time of the transaction is $ 60358. At the current rate - $ 175,000. Not so little, but not too much, it is clearly not tens of millions of dollars, which were spoken about by the representatives of Elsevier in court. Sci-Hub receives about 30 payments per month (on average).

Sci-Hub crushed, and the end?

Many scientists who use the resource, and the publishers themselves, who are fighting with Sci-Hub, believe that if you close the service, then everything, there will be no more threats to the subscription journals. In fact, it will continue, and quite serious. The authors of the study say that at the moment Elbakyan is one of the few representatives of the struggle against the "commercialization of scientific knowledge." But now this situation is changing - there are other services. Plus, the Sci-Hub database can be made decentralized, so closing the resource will not give the fighters against "piracy in science" anything, and the users of the resource can continue to work with scientific articles for free.

Scientists are also changing their perception of the model of subscription editions, Elbakyan herself is sure of this. “The long-term effect of the work of Sci-Hub has already proved itself - publishers will have to provide open access to articles, since the closed one will no longer have any value,” said Alexandra Elbakyan.

The authors of the study argue that all this will only be possible if scientists maintain an open model for licensing their materials. In general, the barriers in this matter are of a purely legal nature, and not technological. There is no technological obstacle in spreading scientific knowledge. In that case, if the articles really will be published in open form, with access for all, then resources like Sci-Hub will no longer be necessary. More precisely, they will be needed, but their positioning will change, after all, it will not be necessary to bypass the paywall.