Mapping The Scientific Discipline Newspaper Pirates

Sci-Hub is an online repository of pirated scientific academic papers as well as articles. It allows researchers as well as students to access expensive pay-walled academic content. Content that is normally exclusively available from expensive academic mag publishers.

Perhaps 1 of the strongest arguments inwards back upwards of the illegal pirating of scientific papers is that the acquaint arrangement is prohibitively expensive, specially for struggling students as well as researchers from developing countries. It has been claimed that the popularity of Sci-Hub inwards countries such every bit India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Pakistan as well as Islamic Republic of Iran proves that Sci-Hub is providing access to scientific query to those who wouldn't otherwise last able to afford it.

In an article on the Science website, Who's Downloading Pirated Papers?, John Bohannon has created an interactive map showing where pirated scientific academic papers as well as articles convey been downloaded from Sci-Hub to a greater extent than or less the world. In lodge to brand the map Bohannon contacted Alexandra Elbakyan, the Sci-Hub creator, to asking the geographic place of every user who has downloaded an academic newspaper from Sci-Hub. In lodge to protect the privacy of Sci-Hub users the information was aggregated to the nearest city.

Bohannon's article on Science likewise includes a link to the opened upwards information behind the map. The information includes '28 meg download asking events from the server logs of Sci-Hub from 1 September 2015 through 29 Feb 2016'.