Sci-Hub is a copyright-violating site that provides infringing access to scholarly publications that are behind paywalls. Its ethics are problematic but it’s also proving very difficult to stop.

I learned this morning that the largest scholarly publisher in the world, Elsevier, sent a legal threat to Citationsy for linking to Sci-Hub. There are different jurisdictional views on whether linking to copyright material is or is not a copyright violation.

That said, the more entertaining fact is that scholarly publishers frequently end up linking to Sci-Hub. Here’s one I found on Elsevier’s own ScienceDirect site:

One might also consider this article on ScienceDirect, which in earlier versions contained a now-removed Sci Hub link:

The list goes on. Consider this Elsevier article:

Heck, I found too many examples to list them all, but this accepted manuscript (published online by Elsevier on their site YESTERDAY) contains a Sci-Hub link:

Clearly, given that this is supposedly a corporate priority, Elsevier do not very seriously check their own site and publications for links to infringing material, despite these endless “lists of what publishers do” that they trot out every time they come in for criticism. Some of these links provide direct hyperlinks to illegally and freely access the work of other publishers and Elsevier seem to be facilitating this.

I would suggest that before throwing stones, Elsevier may wish to get its own glasshouse in order.

Edit 2019-08-06 - response statement from Elsevier:

After this piece was picked up by Boing Boing, Tom Reller of Elsevier sent the following and requested I add it to this piece: