Bohannon (2016)
Contents
Source Details
Bohannon (2016) | |
Title: | Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone |
Author(s): | Bohannon, J. |
Year: | 2016 |
Citation: | Bohannon, J. (2016). Who is downloading pirated papers? Everyone. Science, 352 (6285), 508-512. doi: 10.1126/science.352.6285.508 |
Link(s): | Definitive |
Key Related Studies: | |
Discipline: | |
Linked by: | Bodo, Antal and Puha (2020), Till et al. (2019) |
About the Data | |
Data Description: | Sci-Hub download data: every download event over a 6-month period starting 1 September 2015, including the digital object identifier (DOI) for every paper. These data include 28 million download requests. Users’ geographic locations were aggregated to the nearest city using data from Google Maps to protect Sci-Hub users’ privacy. IP addresses were excluded from the data set. The data set is public available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q447c. |
Data Type: | Secondary data |
Secondary Data Sources: | |
Data Collection Methods: | |
Data Analysis Methods: | |
Industry(ies): | |
Country(ies): | |
Cross Country Study?: | No |
Comparative Study?: | No |
Literature review?: | No |
Government or policy study?: | No |
Time Period(s) of Collection: |
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Funder(s): |
Abstract
“In increasing numbers, researchers around the world are turning to Sci-Hub, the controversial website that hosts 50 million pirated papers and counting. Now, with server log data from Alexandra Elbakyan, the neuroscientist who created Sci-Hub in 2011 as a 22-year-old graduate student in Kazakhstan, Science addresses some basic questions: Who are Sci-Hub's users, where are they, and what are they reading? 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. Over the 6 months leading up to March, Sci-Hub served up 28 million documents, with Iran, China, India, Russia, and the United States the leading requestors.”
Main Results of the Study
The study suggests that:
1. Different from what many people believe, Sci-Hub users are not limited to the developing world. For example, the United States is the fifth largest downloader, and a quarter of the Sci-Hub requests for papers came from the 34 members of the OECD. In the United States and Europe, users are concentrated where academic researchers are working, such as New York, Michigan, and Virginia;
2. By design, Sci-Hub’s content is driven by scholars’ requests. If someone requests a paper and the paper is not already on Sci-Hub, it looks for a copy and adds it to the repository;
3. Many researchers use Sci-Hub as their all-in-one portal for papers. Therefore, they use it to download papers even from open access journals, such as PLOS. Furthermore, there are cases where researchers turn to Sci-Hub even when they can legally access the academic papers through their institutions;
4. Sci-Hub users live on every continent except Antarctica. During the period the data was collected, download requests came from 3 million unique IP addresses. However, the number of users can be much higher, since thousands of people on University Campus can share the same IP address. Besides that, in some cases, such as in Tehran, users can use programs to automatically download a huge number of papers to create local sites similar to Sci-Hub. Therefore, illegal downloads can be five to six times higher in some places.
Policy Implications as Stated By Author
No policy implications implied or stated by the author.
Coverage of Study
Datasets
Sample size: | 28 million"million" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 28. |
Level of aggregation: | download requests |
Period of material under study: | 2015-2016 |