The widespread use of Sci-Hub for research papers has fueled one of the most important academic debates in recent times. This interesting information came to us from the London School of Economics and Political Science and their blog post, “The current system of knowledge dissemination isn’t working and Sci-Hub is merely a symptom of the problem.”
Sci-Hub states they are challenging the status quo of academic publishing by providing free access to more than 51 million scientific academic papers and articles. Academics, librarians, and publishers have shared their opinions about the website, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus. They are yet to agree on the exact nature of the problem they are discussing and trying to address.
According to Sci-Hub’s creator, Alexandra Elbakya, the actual problem to be addressed is not the website itself. It is instead the structure of the current academic publishing and knowledge dissemination system that led to the popularity of Sci-Hub.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
