From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:47:42 -0500 Sci-Hub of course is entirely parasitic on paywall subscription publishing, and if that ceases to exist because Sci-Hub succeeds, then Sci-Hub will cease to exist also. Perhaps that is Elbakyan's goal. But then the question arises: is driving everything into a Gold OA model going to be better? If the largest commercial publishers continue to find a way to profit from Gold OA and stay in business, how does this benefit academe? It will no doubt be a boon to researchers and the general public not attached to universities, but universities will be bearing the lion's share of the cost for this new system through the payment of APCs. Yes, there are other approaches to OA besides APC models, but those too cost money to run and those costs will principally be borne by universities also. This could turn out to be just a gigantic shell game where the money to run the system just comes out of different pockets in the university. And since the largest research universities will have the most faculty publishing, they will undoubtedly continue to bear the greatest financial burden, as they do now in supporting university presses on which other universities free-ride. The challenges for those presses will increase also. Under the present system, presses that publish journals sold by subscription use the surpluses earned by journals to subsidize the publication of monographs, which on the whole lose money. (I speak from experience in having directed a medium-sized press for twenty years.) Many also rely on Project Muse for e-publishing of journals, and Muse needs to sell subscriptions to survive. If a HSS version of Sci-Hub arises, and those toll-access journals programs fail, the survival of many university presses will be at risk--unless university administrators step up to the plate and agree to fund an OA model, which so far almost no administrations have agreed to do, besides a few experimental programs at the margins. (Amherst College Press is an exception.) As it is, university press monograph programs are suffering from the piracy of Lib-Gen. Sandy Thatcher