Sci-Hub is known as the 'Pirate Bay for scientists' for its offering of 48 million peer-reviewed academic papers for free to download. And it has launched a new feature that enables people to search for papers in the encrypted Telegram Messenger app.

All the user has to do is download the Telegram app on to their mobile device, add the Sci-Hub bot @scihubot and then enter the title of the academic paper they want to download, and the bot instantly replies with a PDF version of the paper.

IBTimes UK tried it out with three academic papers that are hidden behind paywalls. We first searched for a paper on 'transparent wood' published in Advanced Materials in May, and the bot said that the paper had not yet been added to its database.

Then we searched for a study on smart contact lenses that was published in ACS Nano in November 2015, and the bot responded in a second with a 6.1Mb PDF file containing the full paper. We also searched for an old paper from 1998 about smart materials, and the bot was also able to find this paper.

While we were writing the story between 2pm- 3.30pm BST, Sci-Hub was offline and the bot did not work, but the website has since gone live again. So if the bot doesn't work for you, the website is probably down.

What is Sci-Hub?

Sci-Hub is the brainchild of Alexandra Elbakyan, a neuroscientist from Kazakhstan who is now based in Russia. Her focus is on making all information free, breaking the monopoly of academic publishers and copyright holders, who often make it difficult for academics to access even their own work.

Most research papers are published in journals that restrict access to paid subscribers, and institutions tend to pay for access to different journals or libraries of journals depending on what they need. There's always a chance that a scientist might need a paper published in a journal that he or she is not subscribed to.

By using Telegram, Elbakyan has found a way to bring Sci-Hub to even more users and make it even simpler for researchers or students on the go to look up papers they might need to reference on a tablet or smartphone quickly.

And since Telegram encrypts all communications, this method of accessing the website is safer than accessing it on the open web, and likely this method is just as safe for end users as accessing the site via the Tor anonymity network, as Telegram features end-to-end encryption, meaning even the app's creators have no way of knowing your identity.

Using encryption to beat copyright-holders

The Tor network, named after The Onion Router project, is used by many people around the world to disguise their web traffic and ensure anonymity. It consists of software that 'anonymises' and redirects internet traffic through a worldwide network of relays, comprised of volunteers who set up their computers as Tor exit nodes, in order to offer at least three layers of encryption, whereby the source and the final destination of the Tor path is completely anonymised.

Although using Tor protects your internet traffic and identity, if law enforcement or any other party tries to trace your IP address, unfortunately this would lead them to the IP address of a randomly assigned Tor exit node, and there have been multiple cases over the last few years of Tor node operators being raided by police and government agencies, accused of stealing state secrets and downloading child pornography.

Academic publisher Elsevier is currently battling to get Sci-Hub's domains shut down, and it would not be a stretch to imagine Elsevier one day issuing Tor node operators with subpoenas if it is unable to take Sci-Hub down and instead turns to hunting down users.