{"id":113438,"date":"2016-02-18T02:50:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T02:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/02\/18\/researcher-illegally-shares-millions-of-science\/"},"modified":"2016-02-18T02:50:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T02:50:13","slug":"researcher-illegally-shares-millions-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/02\/18\/researcher-illegally-shares-millions-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

subtlefire<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

advanced-penguins<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

mindblowingscience<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles – almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published – freely available online. And she\u2019s now refusing to shut the site down<\/a>, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world\u2019s biggest publishers.<\/p>\n

For those of you who aren\u2019t already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub<\/a>, and it\u2019s sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn\u2019t afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it\u2019s since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court<\/a> – a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science. <\/p>\n

\u201cPayment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them,\u201dElbakyan told Torrent Freak last year<\/a>. \u201cEveryone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that\u2019s absolutely legal.\u201d<\/p>\n

If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that\u2019s because it kinda is. But in this story, it\u2019s not just the poor who don\u2019t have access to scientific papers – journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard<\/a> and Cornell<\/a> have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand – with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier<\/a> in part for its excessive paywall fees.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Continue Reading.<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In case you don\u2019t feel like going through the entire article, here are some important points:\u00a0<\/p>\n