From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 09:30:25 +0000

This is interesting, but the numbers need to be put into context
(always a good idea with numbers - to put them in context). I have no
idea, for example, how many articles are being downloaded from Science
Direct, JSTOR, or other platforms and repositories in order to gauge
whether SciHub's 28 million is 'small', 'medium' or 'large'. For what
it's worth, OECD Publishing's downloads last year were 28 million (so
we're running at around 50% of SciHub) but our catalogue is much, much
smaller - we have around 200,000 items on our platform, a far cry from
SciHub's 50 million. Does anyone (STM, perhaps?) have data on journal
article downloads worldwide?

However, this data does support a conjecture that we have at OECD: the
potential audience is always far larger than one thinks. I recently
had one of our authors say her latest paper would have an audience of
'200' and she swore blind that it wouldn't be any larger. Based on our
past performance with similar papers, I reckon we'll reach twice or
three times that number. This thinking is quite widespread. I was
recently challenged at a conference, at which I had shared data on the
growth in accesses to our content following the introduction of our
freemium publishing model, by someone arguing that OECD content was
somehow different from scholarly content published in journals and was
bound to have a larger audience. I countered by stating that 40% of
OECD populations are now educated to first-degree level as are many in
non-OECD countries, especially in places like Iran, China and India.
Therefore, the potential audience that has the skill and ability to
read a journal article is really very large indeed. The data from
SciHub seems to be proving the point.

The final anecdote about ease of discovery and access is sobering . .
. If we (publishers and librarians together) can't get this right,
especially at subscribing institutions, then we're failing badly. But,
this brings me back to the first point - the context of this data.
What is the share of SciHub downloads at subscribing institutions? If
it becomes significant, then we are failing, if it isn't, then we're
not.

Toby Green
Head of Publishing
OECD


> On 29 Apr 2016, at 06:19, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Gary Price <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 3:11 PM
>
> From a New Article in Science (No Paywall For This Article).
> .
> From Science (NO Paywall):
> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated-papers-everyone
>
> "But in increasing numbers, researchers around the world are turning
> to Sci-Hub, which hosts 50 million papers and counting. Over the 6
> months leading up to March, Sci-Hub served up 28 million documents.
> More than 2.6 million download requests came from Iran, 3.4 million
> from India, and 4.4 million from China. The papers cover every
> scientific topic, from obscure physics experiments published decades
> ago to the latest breakthroughs in biotechnology. The publisher with
> the most requested Sci-Hub articles? It is Elsevier by a long
> shot—Sci-Hub provided half-a-million downloads of Elsevier papers in
> one recent week.
>
> These statistics are based on extensive server log data supplied by
> Alexandra Elbakyan, the neuroscientist who created Sci-Hub in 2011 as
> a 22-year-old graduate student in Kazakhstan. I asked her for the data
> because, in spite of the flurry of polarized opinion pieces, blog
> posts, and tweets about Sci-Hub and what effect it has on research and
> academic publishing, some of the most basic questions remain
> unanswered: Who are Sci-Hub’s users, where are they, and what are they
> reading?
>
> [Clip]
>
> The Sci-Hub data provide the first detailed view of what is becoming
> the world’s de facto open-access research library. Among the
> revelations that may surprise both fans and foes alike: Sci-Hub users
> are not limited to the developing world. Some critics of Sci-Hub have
> complained that many users can access the same papers through their
> libraries but turn to Sci-Hub instead—for convenience rather than
> necessity. The data provide some support for that claim. The United
> States is the fifth largest downloader after Russia, and a quarter of
> the Sci-Hub requests for papers came from the 34 members of the
> Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the wealthiest
> nations with, supposedly, the best journal access. In fact, some of
> the most intense use of Sci-Hub appears to be happening on the
> campuses of U.S. and European universities."
>
> The article includes the following charts/graphs/maps:
>
> Sci-Hub Traffic Over Six Months
> Sci-Hub Traffic, Globally
> Top Five Cities Where Most Requests Come From (U.S.)
> Top 10 Most Downloaded Papers on Sci-Hub
> Most Downloaded Publishers
>
> Full Text
> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated-papers-everyone
>
> Coverage in the Washington Post
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/04/28/whos-reading-millions-of-stolen-research-papers-on-the-outlaw-site-sci-hub-now-we-know/
>
> "[John] Bohannon [author of the Science article] quoted a George
> Washington University student saying it was sometimes difficult to
> access journals his school subscribes to from Google Scholar, a tool
> viewed as the easiest way to surface relevant papers. But if he puts
> the paper’s title into Sci-Hub, he said, “It will just work.”
>
> __gary
>
>
> Gary D. Price, MLIS
> Co-Founder and Editor, Library Journal's infoDOCKET
> Research Director, Global Investigative Journalism Network
> Information Industry Analyst
> Librarian