the free availability of the papers contained in this database, consequences of a Sci-Hub “victory” have been predicted to be

by Alexandra Elbakyan, a Russia-based neuroscientist. She developed Sci-Hub after becoming frustrated in her efforts to access the vast network of science papers stored behind paywalls while attempting to do her research. The publications that she needed for her work were available but simply unaffordable. As a result, she engineered this database and is making it available at no cost to the entire worldwide community (not just researchers). While many have

. Let’s be clear from the outset: this portal is illegal as it violates international copyright law as well as the

any of the scientific publications in its database (supposedly, some 47 million articles). An explanation about how it operates can be found

If you are not familiar with it, Sci-Hub is a new online portal that allows users to download for



This dissatisfaction regarding the unaffordability of much of the scientific literature is not unique to scientists in underfunded countries. Five years ago I described the problem of

that plagues U.S. scientists at startups and smaller biotech companies. It also affects doctors and other healthcare providers as well as people who want to research diseases that they have, or that affect friends or family members. Not everyone recognizes that an access problem exists. Gordon Nelson, President of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents,

several years ago when asked if there are alternatives to solving the public access problem, “

Frankly, I am unclear what the public access challenge is. Who does not have access?

”



Access, for many people, means affordable access, and the affordability issue is what drives consumers into the arms of the digital pirates. Anger over high journal prices led to a call to

back in 2012, and thousands of people

in support of this. While this led to some minor changes in Elsevier’s business practices, the boycott does not appear to have had a huge impact on the publishers business. The price of its stock has more than doubled since the call for the boycott was announced.



Those who work in the ivory towers of academia likely don’t understand the problem either because they don’t confront it on a daily basis. Their institutions pay big bucks to journal publishers to provide access to students, faculty, and staff. Scientists at Merck, Pfizer, Amgen, and other large pharma and biotech companies may also not understand what all the fuss is about. These folks also have easy workplace-enabled access to the world’s scientific literature. Outside of these institutions, however, obtaining affordable access to the latest scientific journals is much more problematic. While articles published in

journals are available at no cost to the consumer (about 20% of science articles in 2008 were published in open access journals), the vast majority of journal articles cost $30 to $35 each to download. If you’re beginning work on a new research project (the definition of what most start-ups do) and want to bring yourself up to speed on what’s already known, it’s easy to run up a sizeable bill in a hurry. Compounding the problem is the fact that the

of scientific literature is growing at an overall rate of 2.8 percent each year.





Why Are Journal Costs So High?



Science journals are published by scholarly organizations for the benefits of their members (e.g. FASEB, published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) as well as by large, for-profit publishing houses. This latter category of scientific journal publishers enjoys a virtual monopoly over their content, and as a result their profit margins are enormous (often in the range of

). How can they achieve such lofty profit margins? There are three primary reasons. First and foremost are the enormous subscription costs of the journals themselves, many of which charge libraries thousands of dollars per year per journal. The second reason for their colossal profits is that, unlike most books and magazines (as well as music), the content they publish is acquired for free. Scientists don’t get paid for writing journal articles, and the peer review vetting of these pieces is often done at no cost to the publishers as well. An analysis of the industry by Deutsche Bank suggested, “

the publisher adds relatively little value to the publishing process

.” Finally, the journals have no real competition for any particular periodical. If you want an article from Cell, Science, or Nature, you must buy it from that publisher; there are no secondary sources available.



The cost of journal articles has risen in recent years at a rate far in excess of inflation (i.e. the consumer price index). In fact, in some ways the situation resembles the

seen with prescription drugs over that same period of time. This is not surprising since both enterprises enjoy monopoly pricing. The prices set in both industries are untethered from the direct costs for their products. Biopharma companies frequently trot out the “

” argument, which is meant to assure us that their products are indeed worth what they are charging. I expect the journal publishers to follow suit at some point when their pricing structures are questioned.





Sci-Hub Pits the Science Publishing Empire Against the Science Rebels



For science journal publishers big and small, Sci-Hub represents a direct threat to their business models. For many scientists and lay people, however, Sci-Hub offers an opportunity to climb over the dreaded journal paywall and obtain some degree of scientific enlightenment. The battle lines have been drawn, and the ultimate winner is likely to be the Empire, not the rebels. Let me explain why.



Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of science journals, has already taken

against Sci-Hub. They got a N.Y. district court order to have the site taken down. All this seems to have accomplished so far was to drive the location of the web-hosting site to Russia, where it is presumably a bit further beyond the reach of Western authorities. To date I have not found any examples of Elsevier (or any of the other large publishing groups, such as JSTOR and Springer) going after any scientists for downloading Sci-Hub hosted papers. If the publishers can’t legally reach Sci-Hub, however, they may start suing the downloaders, assuming that they can identify whom those folks are. A few headlines screaming, “

scientist hit with $50,000 in fines for illegal paper downloads

” would probably go a long way towards curbing this practice. This approach, of course, is the same one that was (somewhat) successfully used by the

against those who illegally downloaded songs from peer-to-peer networks.



There are some distinct elements to the economic model used by the science publishers that are not shared with other industries. In the case of science journal access at most research universities and institutions, “

he who orders does not read, and he who reads does not order

.” Journals are chosen by library staff (with input, of course, from the local research community) and are paid for by grant money that is aggregated from the individual researcher’s grants. A good percentage of the journals are made available as part of specifically packaged bundles, the cost of which is negotiated on a case-by-case basis and which are protected by

. As with cable TV channels, universities are forced to pay for some content that they don’t want in order to gain access to specific journals that they do want. Researchers are generally not directly involved in this negotiating process.





So Who Is Using Sci-Hub?



The short answer is: we don’t know for sure. It’s not like Sci-Hub is a conventional business that’s likely to brag about its user metrics with the general public. And while large journal publishers like Elsevier have already starting filing lawsuits against Sci-Hub, I don’t think they are actually too concerned about its use by third world scientists. These researchers simply don’t have the financial resources to pay for many journals. Large pharma companies and research universities, with their large and costly subscription bundles, will likely continue their current purchasing practices. This means that the largest fraction of the biomedical research community has no need to tap into Sci-Hub. Since these journal subscriptions provide the lion’s share of the profits for the publishers, the revenue lost to the rebel Sci-Hub users may not actually be all that large. One can easily envision that Elsevier and the other large publishers are standing ready to sue any university or company that allows their researchers to access Sci-Hub. So far, academics I have spoken with haven’t been told by their research institutions to avoid Sci-Hub, but at this point many of them hadn’t even heard of it.



So who, exactly, are the likely customers for Sci-Hub?



This database will appeal to five distinct groups:

1) Scientists at small biotechs and startups who can’t afford to purchase their own subscriptions, nor access to existing medical libraries.

2) Doctors and other healthcare professionals without easy access to a medical library.

3) Patients and their families who want to learn about disease causes and treatments.

4) Scientists in third world countries.

5) DIY scientists pursuing science “for the fun of it”.





So Why Isn’t Sci-Hub a Real Threat to the Empire?



The total number of people in the above groups represents a very small percentage of the total customers interested in obtaining and reading journal articles on an ongoing basis. Put simply, the papers in the Sci-Hub database are being pilfered (for the most part) by people that would never buy the articles as they are currently priced (often $30-$35 each). Therefore, the Empire is not losing much in the way of sales revenues to these pirates; the thieves were never going to buy the articles anyway. This is a very different situation from the music and film industries, where 1) IP pirates are giving away or selling content (songs and movies) at a price that most consumers can readily afford to pay, and 2) the size of their customer base dwarfs that seen for those wanting to read journal articles by a huge margin.

put the fear of God into music publishers when it launched since they immediately recognized the danger of massive numbers of their existing consumers illegally downloading their products on their home computers. I don’t expect Sci-Hub will have the same effect on the journal publishers for the reasons outlined above.



Several years ago I wrote some articles (see

and

) about the problem of a lack of affordable access to science journals, and I pointed out how the industry could be ripe for systematic disruption. I wasn’t actually thinking of theft as the answer to the problem. One potential

that I put forth involved the creation of

, an accessible and affordable catalog of science journal articles, modeled after iTunes, that would enable consumers to buy individual articles for a modest price without needing to subscribe to journals. I was hopeful that the rise of free (to the end user) open access journals might light a spark for change. By making the downloading of science documents relatively easy and inexpensive, iPubSci could attract many customers to this service. After all, Apple was able to lure large numbers of customers away from free (but illegal) file sharing sites by making iTunes easy to use, the content reasonably priced, and enabling users to download only the exact content that they wanted.



I had hopes the same thing could happen with the scientific literature, where users may only want to read just two out of the 35 articles in a particular journal issue. Why should they be forced to buy the other 23 articles they’re not interested in? Journal publishers could still make additional money on top of the income they’d earn from iPubSci. A number of publishing companies offer other value-added products that make it easier to gather or collate information from various newsletters and databases. For example, Elsevier sells access to its Scopus (citations) and Inteleos (drug tracking) databases. This “value-added” or

model is used in a number of other businesses to generate revenue when the primary product is provided at either no cost or at a very low price. With the current scientific journal-publishing model, however, you pay a high price for both the journals themselves as well as the value-added extra content.







While scientists that I spoke with liked the concept of iPubSci, implementation of the concept went nowhere. I believe there were several reasons for this. First, there were no financial incentives that would lead the existing large science publishers to abandon the current model that’s putting huge amounts of money in their pockets. Any new entrants into the space would be forced to deal with the current publishers to make this content available on iPubSci, and there was no reason for the these publishers to cooperate. Second, the majority of scientists (i.e. those at large research institutions or big companies) were satisfied with the status quo because they weren’t paying for their journal subscriptions out of their own pockets. Change comes much quicker when it’s the rich who aren’t satisfied, not the poor.





Other Options for Getting Around the Dreaded Paywall



There are many different ways for getting around the dreaded online paywall, as I’ve previously

. These include asking for pdf reprints via email, sharing journal subscriptions among large groups of people, and renting articles at a reduced cost. Special resources for accessing journals have been put together for patients and their families, as well as for scientists living in poorer countries. Signing up for online classes or journal clubs, or joining some university alumni associations, are other ways that the scientific literature can be accessed on the cheap.



The winds of economic change that were blowing lightly through the journal publishing industry have now become a potentially destructive cyclone. As we know, most violent storms pass quickly, and any damage that’s done is rapidly repaired. I’m predicting that’s exactly what we will see with Sci-Hub. The current publishing infrastructure is too solidly constructed to be significantly damaged by the storm. Or to put it another way, the Empire need not defeat the paper-downloading rebels. It just needs to make sure their numbers stay small, which will enable it to maintain its iron grip on the science-publishing universe. They will holler and bluster about how they are being financially ruined by the pirates, but will never put forth any actual data in support of that claim. Expect to see the Empire rattle more legal sabers to keep the rebels in check. They don’t want the infidels thinking that they’ve got a chance to succeed in their mission to free up the scientific literature for the masses. If possible, they will also take the approach seen with music piracy, where they went after the folks downloading the files as well as those who posted them.



The rebel movement won’t gain much traction unless researchers at Yale, Stanford, Oxford, Pfizer, and Genentech, etc. begin to switch over to Sci-Hub, and that’s not going to happen. These organizations will block this behavior because, though they hate paying for overpriced journals (e.g. Harvard paid

in 2012 for these), they will stand firm in support of intellectual property rights. They will not be part of the revolution. It’s therefore unlikely that the scattered IP rebels will be able to mount a sufficiently large assault on the Empire to win. They may capture our hearts and imaginations, but they will not be able to defeat a well-financed army of intellectual property lawyers. The Empire always strikes back, and it is very strong.



If the publishers really want to see Sci-Hub go away, here’s what they should do: put forward a workable plan for how they can better meet the needs of the underserved groups that I defined above. The situation could parallel what’s seen with worldwide drug pricing. People in poorer countries (or for that matter, Europe) often pay only a tiny fraction of what folks in the U.S. pay for the exact same medicines. Set up a similar system for journal availability and affordability. It’s time to move beyond the status quo, publicly acknowledge that the current system isn’t working for everyone, and support the greater good. Or as Spike Lee once simply put it, “

Do the Right Thing