American Chemical Society granted Sci-Hub injunction and damages
08-11-2017
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A study has found that 69% of scholarly materials, articles written by experts in academic or professional fields, are available for free through a website called Sci-Hub despite being paywalled.
Sci-Hub aims to “remove all barriers in the way of science” by providing users with access to thousands of downloadable material for free.
The study, which was posted on open access peer review website PeerJ Preprints, also found that over 90% of chemistry journal papers are available for free.
It added that the American Physical Society has had 99.9% of its scholarly content made available, while the Royal Society of Chemistry has had 94% of its papers opened up.
Academic publisher Elsevier has the highest number of papers on the site at over 13 million from 3,356 journals, the study added.
In June, TBO reported that both Sci-Hub and LibGen, which runs a similar service, were ordered to pay $15 million between them at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to Elsevier for copyright infringement.
Most of the material studied is usually behind a paywall, but is often free for educational institutions, mainly universities.
Sci-Hub bypasses these paywalls by offering a proxy service.
Chemistry, scholarly articles, proxy, Sci-Hub, American Physical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, publishing, copyright
