It’s the job of libraries to share information. That may be in the format of books, of magazines, of programs, or of journal articles. If you have done any buying in libraries at all, you know that publishers make all of these more complex than they need to be for us. And that definitely includes charging libraries, and our patrons through us, staggering amounts of money for journals we need.

Yes, this is particularly unfair and unreasonable when we look at articles about research done by people who were supported by taxpayer money. We’ve already paid for the work, the authors do not get paid by the journals (in fact, it’s not unusual for them to have to pay the journals to get published), the people who do peer review to ensure the research is good also do not get paid.

So, why do journal articles cost so much money? Go ahead and search around for something you might find interesting. Can you get it for as little as $30??? Maybe! Could you be asked to pay $500 for a single article? Of course! And if the library wants to subscribe to the journal or to a database? Good grief – the sky is the limit for what this is costing.

So, of course we do not advocate your use of the database website Sci-Hub, where you can find over 79,000 research papers available for free. All those articles your community members need, that you can’t afford? They are probably just sitting there – at no cost and probably easier to find on this site than by using the library’s catalog.

Sci-Hub describes themselves as a pirate database, existing to remove barriers to access of scientific data. “At this time the widest possible distribution of research papers, as well as of other scientific or educational sources, is artificially restricted by copyright laws. Such laws effectively slow down the development of science in human society. The Sci-Hub project, running from 5th September 2011, is challenging the status quo. At the moment, Sci-Hub provides access to hundreds of thousands research papers every day, effectively bypassing any paywalls and restrictions.”

So sure. We are not officially advocating you go there. Or share the link with your community members who need access. Because there is value in the work EBSCO and other academic publishers do.

But, if you also value access to information, you might just take a peek for yourself.

We are sharing an excerpt from an article at TechDirt. You can read the entire thing right here.

“After many years of fierce resistance to open access, academic publishers have largely embraced — and extended — the idea, ensuring that their 35-40% profit margins live on. In the light of this subversion of the original hopes for open access, people have come up with other ways to provide free and frictionless access to knowledge — most of which is paid for by taxpayers around the world. One is preprints, which are increasingly used by researchers to disseminate their results widely, without needing to worry about payment or gatekeepers. The other is through sites that have taken it upon themselves to offer immediate access to large numbers of academic papers — so-called “shadow libraries”. The most famous of these sites is Sci-Hub, created by Alexandra Elbakyan. At the time of writing, Sci-Hub claims to hold 79 million papers.

Even academics with access to publications through their institutional subscriptions often prefer to use Sci-Hub, because it is so much simpler and quicker. In this respect, Sci-Hub stands as a constant reproach to academic publishers, emphasizing that their products aren’t very good in terms of serving libraries, which are paying expensive subscriptions for access. Not surprisingly, then, Sci-Hub has become Enemy No. 1 for academic publishers in general, and the leading company Elsevier in particular. The German site Netzpolitik has spotted the latest approach being taken by publishers to tackle this inconvenient and hugely successful rival, and other shadow libraries. At its heart lies the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI), which was founded by Elsevier and other large publishers earlier this year. Netzpolitik explains that the idea is to track and analyze every access to libraries, because “security”:

“Sci-Hub simply provides free, frictionless access for everyone to existing articles from academic publishers. The articles are still as accurate and ethical as they were when they first appeared. To accuse Sci-Hub of “threatening” the scholarly communications ecosystem by providing universal access is absurd. It’s also revealing of the traditional publishers’ attitude to the uncontrolled dissemination of publicly-funded human knowledge, which is what they really fear and are attacking with the new SNSI campaign.”

You can read the entire article here.