With its massive library of research papers, Sci-Hub has been described as “The Pirate Bay of Science”.
The site is dedicated to providing open access to scientific knowledge, something which millions of individuals truly appreciate.
However, due to the copyrighted nature of much of the content provided by the platform, it has become public enemy #1 among academic publishers.
Site founder Alexandra Elbakyan’s mission is to tear down the paywalls for the good of humankind, a position that has been supported to varying degrees among academics themselves.
“When Sci-Hub became known, I thought that it will provide a good case against copyright law. When the law prevents science to develop, that law must be repealed,” Elbakyan wrote earlier this year.
That challenge to the law has seen Sci-Hub implicated in several copyright suits, including one filed by publishing giant Elsevier, three years ago. However, despite best efforts, Sci-Hub has remained online.
To tackle the site’s resilience, publishers have won ISP blocking orders in several jurisdictions, including Germany and more recently, Sweden. Now it is Russia’s turn to tighten the thumbscrews.
In a case filed recently by UK academic publisher Springer Nature Limited, the Moscow City Court was told that Sci-Hub is infringing the company’s copyrights and should, therefore, be subjected to blocking.
Listing “bulletproof” hosting company Quasi Networks Ltd and US-based CloudFlare as facilitating access to the site, Springer Nature complained that three specific works were being made available illegally by Sci-Hub.
As the above table obtained from the Court shows, the research papers cover topics of interest to the medical community in the spheres of heart and brain health – Effect of glucose-lowering therapies on heart failure, Nitric oxide signaling in cardiovascular health and disease, and Lactate in the brain: from metabolic end-product to signaling molecule.
These would ordinarily sit behind paywalls but thanks to Sci-Hub, their contents are available for everyone to absorb for free. It’s a situation that’s unacceptable to Springer Nature and the Moscow City Court was sympathetic to the company’s complaints.
A decision on preliminary interim measures was handed down last month, which compelled local telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor to take action to undermine “technical conditions that ensure placement, dissemination and other use of the works”.
As a result, several Sci-Hub and Library Genesis domains (gen.lib.rus.ec, www.libgen.io, scihub.unblocked.gdn, lgmag.org, libgen.unblocked.gdn, sci-hub.tw and libgen.io) are now being rendered inaccessible by Russian Internet Service Providers.
“Access to the Sci-Hub site in Russia is closed by Roscomnadzor. It turns out that Springer’s scientific publishing house filed a lawsuit demanding to restrict access to the portal,” Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan announced on social networks VK and Telegram.
Of course, Sci-Hub is no stranger to blocking efforts so has other domains up its sleeve. However, these can also be targeted by rightsholders, so Elbakyan encourages users to check for the latest updates.
“The spare domain sci-hub.se works but for how long, I can not guarantee. Therefore, to access Sci-Hub, use tools to circumvent Internet censorship – which you can search for in Google or by using the bot in Telegram: @scihubot,” Elbakyan concludes.
While Sci-Hub continues its mission to provide open access, it’s interesting to note the indirect effect the site is having on the academic community.
Last month, several prestigious European research councils announced a major push for Open Access publishing, designed to limit the influence of major copyright holders and “tear down” their paywalls.
On Thursday, Sci-Hub appeared to be completely offline everywhere. It is not clear what caused the outage.
