Gerakopoulou, Elli and Founti, Christina and Foster, Christopher (2018) Removing all barriers in the way of Science: A case study on Sci–Hub’s usage in Europe. In: iConference, 2018-07-11 - 2018-07-12.
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Abstract
Sci- Hub is the world’s largest pirate academic library. This case study explores its usage in Europe based on the website’s log data for the 6-month period between September 2015 and February 2016. A quantitative analysis of the log data was conducted followed by a qualitative interpretation of the results. The analysis revealed the European countries with the largest number of download requests, emerging download trends across disciplines and academic publishers. Financial crises impact, academic publisher regimes and user behavior studies are used to explain the results. In addition, hacktivism and Open Access are explored and suggest Sci-Hub’s alignment with hacktivism and the formation of a unique digital social movement.