TY  - JOUR
A1  - Himmelstein, Daniel S.
A1  - Rodriguez Romero, Ariel
A1  - McLaughlin, Stephen Reid
A1  - Tzovaras, Bastian Greshake
A1  - Greene​, Casey S.
T1  - Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature [v2]
T2  - PeerJ preprints
N2  - The website Sci-Hub provides access to scholarly literature via full text PDF downloads. The site enables users to access articles that would otherwise be paywalled. Since its creation in 2011, SciHub has grown rapidly in popularity. However, until now, the extent of Sci-Hub’s coverage was unclear. As of March 2017, we find that Sci-Hub’s database contains 68.9% of all 81.6 million scholarly articles, which rises to 85.2% for those published in toll access journals. Coverage varies by discipline, with 92.8% coverage of articles in chemistry journals compared to 76.3% for computer science. Coverage also varies by publisher, with the coverage of the largest publisher, Elsevier, at 97.3%. Our interactive browser at greenelab.github.io/scihub allows users to explore these findings in more detail. We find Sci-Hub preferentially covers popular, paywalled content, containing 96.2% of citations to toll access journals since 2015. For recently requested articles by Unpaywall users, oaDOI provided access to 48.8% whereas Sci-Hub contained 81.5%. Together, oaDOI and Sci-Hub covered 94.1%, demonstrating that gaps in Sci-Hub’s coverage, especially for open access articles, can be filled using licit services. For the first time, nearly all scholarly literature is available gratis to anyone with an Internet connection. Sci-Hub’s scope suggests the subscription publishing model is becoming unsustainable.
KW  - Sci-Hub
KW  - publishing
KW  - literature
KW  - piracy
KW  - data-science
KW  - LibGen
KW  - journals
KW  - copyright
KW  - paywalls
KW  - open-access
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/43920
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-439207
SN  - 2167-9843
N1  - This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
N1  - Erster Preprint erschienen in: PeerJ preprints, 5.2017, e3100v1, doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.3100v1; dritter Preprint erschienen in: PeerJ preprints, 6.2018, e3100v3, doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.3100v3; finale Fassung erschienen in: eLife, 7.2018, e32822, doi:10.7554/eLife.32822
VL  - 5
IS  - e3100v2
PB  - PeerJ Inc.
CY  - Corte Madera, CA [u. a.]
ER  -