The Fight for Open Access: who are the real pirates of scholarly publishing?
The suspension of Donald Trump’s Twitter account on 8th January, 2021, overshadowed another permanent account suspension: that of Sci-Hub.
Sci-Hub, founded by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, is a shadow library website that provides free access to over 84 million scholarly articles. Their mission is “to remove all barriers in the way of science […] regardless of income, social status, geographical location and more”.
The recent suspension of Sci-Hub’s Twitter account and the lawsuit against Sci-Hub by publishers Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society in India, for copyright infringement, has opened up discussions again around whether research should be made a public good. Can you put a price tag on the transmission of knowledge?
To explore this, we need to look at how knowledge becomes a private good, and whether pirate websites like Sci-Hub are helpful in the transmission of knowledge.
Is knowledge a public good?
The model that scholarly publishing uses was initially established by Robert Maxwell at the end of World War II. Before then, “most English-language STM books and journals had been published by learned societies” (Cox, 2002). Maxwell saw the commercial opportunities within the business of scholarly publishing and started charging fees for articles. But should you have to pay for knowledge?
Peter Suber explains copyright law “recognizes that knowledge is a public good. It privatizes only the expression of ideas” (Suber, 2009). This privatisation of ideas suggests knowledge has become a commodity, something which can be exchanged between businesses. Through this it can hinder how knowledge is shared, possibly closing people off from academic spaces.
“Privatizing the expression of idea, such as texts which capture knowledge, seriously impedes the sharing of knowledge” (Suber, 2009)
This control over the “sharing of knowledge” can mean that some people are excluded from the transmission of knowledge because of financial constraints. Through privatising knowledge, it can exclude voices from academic environments, meaning important contributions towards science may not be heard. Sci-Hub’s purpose is to make this knowledge accessible to all, but its utility has been questioned.
Sci-Hub and the publishing landscape
Often called the “pirate bay of science”, Sci-Hub is not only used by students, but by researchers in universities and institutes. Twitter banned Sci-Hub’s account because, according to Elbakyan, Sci-Hub had violated its policy against promoting “counterfeit goods”.
Andersen argues that “what’s genuinely wrong is restricting access to knowledge; copyright piracy as a method of opening up access is not ‘wrong’ — it’s merely illegal” (Andersen, 2018)
While Sci-Hub operates to generate wider access and supports the Open Access movement in science, it could be “symptomatic of a wider problem”. Sci-Hub provides access to research “only available via subscriptions and, in the main, provided by ‘legacy publishers’”. This suggests that articles that go through the peer-reviewed process are of a higher value than those that don’t.
But it is difficult to see how another model could currently operate, as the model of scholarly publishing functions to validate and legitimise research through the process of peer review and journal publication. Illegal websites like Sci-Hub provide this research for free, but they may just be perpetuating this cycle of publishing.
Can you put a price tag on the transmission of knowledge? In the current scholarly business model and our capitalist society, yes you can. Piracy websites, such as Sci-Hub, have sprung out of a desire to make more research Open Access, but it is difficult to ascertain if they are that helpful. Therefore, we will have to wait and see how Open Access initiatives will affect the scholarly publishing landscape. The sharing and distribution of research is vital, in order to build upon knowledge, not hinder it.
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Cox, B. (2002) ‘The Pergamon phenomenon 1951–1991: Robert Maxwell and scientific publishing’, Learned Publishing, 15(4), p.273.
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Suber, P. (2009) ‘Knowledge as a public good’, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 139.
Trivedi, D. (2021) Cases against Sci-Hub and Libgen imply long-term consequences to research and education in India. [Online] Available at: https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/locking-up-research-cases-against-sci-hub-and-libgen-imply-long-term-consequences-to-research-and-education-in-india/article33641506.ece. [Accessed 12/02/2021].
