From: Tony Sanfilippo <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 08:11:18 -0400 Carl Straumsheim at Inside Higher Ed, reports on a new paper published in College & Research Libraries looking at who uses these sites and why. Preprint of the paper in C&RL: http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2016/02/25/crl16-840.full.pdf+html Story in Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/16/study-explores-peer-peer-research-sharing-communities From the C&RL paper: “If our sample is representative of the sharing population, the typical user is not a scientist toiling away in the developing world locked out of the scholarly community due to ‘the cost of knowledge.’ Rather, she is a social or hard science researcher who has academic library privileges but prefers crowdsourced methods of obtaining access ….” From the IHE story: "Most of the survey respondents said they turn to peer-to-peer sharing to obtain research because of its convenience. Access and speed registered as the top reasons, while only 11 of the 148 respondents said they were motivated by ideology. The respondents who said they provide pirated articles were slightly more likely to cite ideology -- 32 of 104 picked that option -- though more respondents (58) said they were motivated by a sense that they were giving back to the peer-to-peer sharing community." So here's my question about all this. If SciHub starts diluting library metrics on the use of STEM journal content, will library budgets start moving back to more spending on Humanities books and journals? Tony Sanfilippo, Director Ohio State University Press 1070 Carmack Road Columbus, OH 43210-1002 ohiostatepress.org