The industry watched closely as Sci-Hub use grew, with more than 150,000 stolen papers downloaded per day, according to Elbakyan. Although publishers say those downloads represent a small fraction of all papers legally obtained, the industry decided to fight back last year.
Elsevier, the world’s largest journal publisher, sued Elbakyan in federal court in New York, alleging copyright infringement and computer fraud. The company says that she and others operate “an international network of piracy and copyright infringement by circumventing legal and authorized means of access.” Elbakyan was offered help to retain an attorney, but she never got one, instead writing a letter to the court explaining her actions.
“Elsevier,” she wrote, “operates by racket: if you do not send money, you will not read any papers. On my website, any person can read as many papers as they want for free, and sending donations is their free will. Why Elsevier cannot work like this, I wonder?”
A judge issued a preliminary injunction against Sci-Hub. Elbakyan simply switched domains, keeping the database available.
Publishers acknowledge that they probably can never catch up with Elbakyan, yet they are adamant that Sci-Hub will not harm them or evolve into a future business model the way that Napster ultimately led to Apple’s iTunes — and dramatic revenue losses for record labels.
But the risk for publishers is that if library funding struggles continue, forcing deep cutbacks on subscriptions, professors will turn to Sci-Hub more, causing a slow erosion of the industry. A recent survey by University of Southern California and California State University librarians of more than 250 academics found that 41 percent “don’t care” about copyright. Thirty percent think that “information should be free.”
Publishers and experts on academic publishing acknowledge that the industry has a tougher story to sell these days.
“People often say to me, ‘You don’t pay the authors. You don’t pay the reviewers. You hardly print anymore. The Web is free. Why do you charge?’ ” said H. Frederick Dylla, the former director of the American Institute of Physics and board member of the Association of American Publishers. “It sounds like a compelling argument. But it actually isn’t.”
Albert Greco, a publishing expert at Fordham University who is working on a book about scholarly publishing, said those making that argument are forgetting everything they learned or should have learned in economics class.
“There are costs,” he said. “Does The Washington Post have a paywall?”
Yes.
“So is it fair then if some high school student wants to really follow the Supreme Court and doesn’t have the money to pay?” Greco said. “Life is a bitter mystery. We can’t give everything away for free. It’s not that kind of country.”
Even with the shift away from print, publishers say they provide valuable services. Kent Anderson, an academic publishing consultant, has posted a list of “96 things publishers do” on the blog Scholarly Kitchen — from training and managing peer reviewers to preventing plagiarism to building interactive components into digital versions.
Anderson said in an interview that the controversy over academic publishing has become “an emotional and social crusade” that bends the facts. Sure, there are more journals and articles being published, but he said the increases are in line with the growth in federal research funding. The real problem: Library budgets haven’t kept up.
“Ultimately,” he wrote in a post on Scholarly Kitchen, “the root cause of larger information expenditures is a growth in research funding, researcher numbers, and research-driven careers.”
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