[LIS-Forum] An anti-science lawsuit - The Hindu

[madhan muthu]

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/an-anti-science-lawsuit/article33405250.ece
(toll access)

By Prof. Rahul Siddharthan https://www.imsc.res.in/rahul_siddharthan

"In 2011, Ms. Elbakyan stepped into this mess with Sci-Hub, enabling
scientists to search for academic papers from any publisher and freely
download them. It is an efficient and easy-to-use site and extensively
archives published scientific literature. Sci-Hub violates many copyrights
owned by journals. But it is also a vast repository of open access,
out-of-copyright, and public domain material, which a blanket injunction
would disable. For scientists stuck at home in 2020, Sci-Hub has made
literature accessible without navigating institutional VPNs. For
journalists and the public, given the obscene per article charges levied by
journals, Sci-Hub is the easiest and often only option."

.....Sci-Hub’s “piracy” benefits the very people who create that content.
This is the opposite of the situation in the creative arts where “pirating”
music or films deprives creators of royalties; scientific authors get no
royalties, and they and their funders want their work to be shared freely.
But the keys to this largely taxpayer-funded work are held by private
corporations overseas which have chosen to pursue a defendant from
Kazakhstan in an Indian court......

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