Bahnhof, a Swedish internet service provider, suffered a setback after Elsevier, a publisher of scientific articles and journals, forced it to block access to journals hosted on websites like Sci-Hub and Libgen. In retaliation, Bahnhof has decided to redirect users trying to access Elsevier’s website to a webpage describing the publisher’s allegedly violative attitude while reaffirming its own commitment to continue opposing censorship.

Elsevier is one of the largest publishing companies in the world, producing nearly 2,000 journals. The cost of subscribing to a single journal has soared from $20-50 in 1960 to over $1,000 a year. In the same vein, the publication of scientific research was once the preserve of a community of voluntary editors and researchers. Today, publishing companies have made academic research less accessible to the masses while they have made greater profits themselves.

Websites like Sci-Hub – considered illegal around the world – have stepped in to fix this problem by independently accessing and releasing scientific papers into the public domain, sidelining the publisher’s paywall.

In the past, Bahnhof has allowed its users to access journals listed on aggregators like Sci-Hub and Libgen. The ISP has also repeatedly spoken out against the blocking of pirate sites that provide unfettered access to scientific research.

Reed Elsevier has attempted to go the other way. In May, 2018 several German scientists resigned from the boards of different Elsevier journals as a last resort in the battle between Project DEAL and Elsevier. Project DEAL sought a nationwide licensing deal guaranteeing fair subscription fees and a conversion of all German-based publications to open access. In response, Elsevier – according to several open access advocates – tried to alter the definition of open access to suit its needs.

Also read: Who May Swim in the Ocean of Knowledge?

On October 10, 2018, Elsevier filed a lawsuit against Bahnhof and six other Swedish ISPs and won. As a small company, Bahnhof elected not to proceed with an expensive appeal, which another ISP had lost a year ago in a similar case. As a result, several sites like sci-hub.tw, sci-hub.mw, sci-hub.se, libgen.io and others are being blocked by ISPs in Sweden.

To make a point, Bahnhof banned access to the official Elsevier website in addition to blocking the contentious domains. Instead of reaching the Elsevier website, users subscribed to Bahnhof’s service are now redirected to a 1990s style webpage. It has the domain name ‘this-copyright-syndicate-is-killing-internet-by-blocking-sites.se‘, plays the sounds of a dial-up modem and reads (in part):

Elsevier are working against an open and fair access to information and science, and are prohibiting universities with lesser means from taking part of topical articles and conducting research. Their business model is also constructed in such a way that the universities and research institutes must pay even to access their own papers, because they have been published through Elsevier.

Also read: How Scihub Is at the Forefront of the Quest to Frame Scientific Knowledge as Public Good

As a result, educational institutions with limited means, such as those in South and Southeast Asia and Africa, are kept from accessing those parts of the scientific literature – and the knowledge there – that they simply can’t afford. While the access price needs to be renegotiated to something more agreeable to all stakeholders, a parallel conversation is also underway about the competing priorities of large publishing companies and the scientific community itself.

Carl Malamud, the president of Public.Resource.Org, an American NGO providing access to knowledge in the US and India, has written for The Wire, “Copyright is not an absolute right but is rather a limited grant for a limited time.” Predatory publishers have thus “overstepped this right under the law, to colonise knowledge for their own pecuniary gain”.

On November 5, 2018, two large biomedical research funders – the London-based Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – announced that they were planning to join the ‘Plan S’ initiative, which seeks to make all scientific papers open access immediately upon publication by 2020. Accordingly, no Wellcome-funded work will be allowed to appear in journals unless they are accessible freely, at no cost. However some hybrid-publications will be allowed to publish such work for a transitional period.