10 November 2021

Jason Parry on Sci-Hub, the Napster of academic papers: “Given the example of Sci-Hub, the easy logistics of internet publication, and the funding structure of academic research, it seems clear that in the absence of the academic publishing industry, scholarship would be more widely available, not less. If the academic publishing industry did not exist, scientists could still do their research—in fact, it would be easier to do so as more people would have access to scholarly literature. The peer-review process could still function normally—though there are good reasons to change that as well. And the resulting papers could simply be posted in a place where anyone could read them. … When several record companies sued Napster in 2001, they could make the legitimate case that the economic well-being of the musicians, producers, and all the people who were needed to distribute recorded music was at stake. No such parallel exists in the case of Sci-Hub. Scientists are not paid by the publishers. Peer reviewers are not paid by the publishers. Distribution itself, as proven by Sci-Hub and its more law-abiding brother arXiv, is cheap enough to be provided to the public for free. It’s not surprising, then, that polls reveal that scientists overwhelmingly support Sci-Hub. … For the academic publishers, it is about extracting rents rather than enforcing ideological or theological orthodoxy. But making scientific journals prohibitively expensive unfortunately achieves the same effect as censoring them.”