Abstract
Shadow libraries, also known as “pirate libraries”, are online collections of copyrighted publications that have been made available for free without the permission of the copyright holders. They have gradually become key players of scientific knowledge dissemination, despite their illegality in most countries of the world. Many publishers and scientist-editors decry such libraries for their copyright infringement and loss of publication usage information, while some scholars and institutions support them, sometimes in a roundabout way, for their role in reducing inequalities of access to knowledge, particularly in low-income countries. Although there is a wealth of literature on shadow libraries, none of this have focused on its potential role in knowledge dissemination, through the open access movement. Here we analyze how shadow libraries can affect researchers' citation practices, highlighting some counter-intuitive findings about their impact on the Open Access Citation Advantage (OACA). Based on a large randomized sample, this study first shows that OA publications, including those in fully OA journals, receive more citations than their subscription-based counterparts. However, the OACA has slightly decreased over the seven last years. The introduction of a distinction between those accessible or not via the Sci-hub platform among subscription-based suggest that the generalization of its use cancels the positive effect of OA publishing. The results show that publications in fully OA journals are victims of the success of Sci-hub. Thus, paradoxically, although Sci-hub may seem to facilitate access to scientific knowledge, it negatively affects the OA movement as a whole, by reducing the comparative advantage of OA publications in terms of visibility for researchers. The democratization of the use of Sci-hub may therefore lead to a vicious cycle, hindering efforts to develop full OA strategies without proposing a credible and sustainable alternative model for the dissemination of scientific knowledge.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abbasi, Z., Shekofteh, M., Shahbodaghi, A., & Kazemi, E. (2019). Citation indicators’ comparison of LIS open access and subscription publications based on Scopus. Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, 68(4/5), 288–299. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-02-2018-0016
Archambault, É., Côté, G., Struck, B. and Voorons, M. (2016) ‘Research impact of paywalled versus open access papers’, Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc. [Preprint]. Retrived from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/29.
Banks, M. (2016). What Sci-Hub is and why it matters. American Libraries, 47(6), 46–49.
Bodó, B., Antal, D., & Puha, Z. (2020). Open access is not a panacea, even if it’s radical–an empirical study on the role of shadow libraries in closing the inequality of knowledge access. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3628326
Bohannon, J. (2016). The frustrated science student behind Sci-Hub. Science, 352(6285), 511–511. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.352.6285.511
Boudry, C., Alvarez-Muñoz, P., Arencibia-Jorge, R., Ayena, D., Brouwer, N. J., Chaudhuri, Z., Chawner, B., Epee, E., Erraïs, K., Fotouhi, A., Gharaibeh, A. M., Hassanein, D. H., Herwig-Carl, M. C., Howard, K., Kaimbo, D. K. W., Laughrea, P.-A., Lopez, F. A., Machin-Mastromatteo, J. D., Malerbi, F. K., … Mouriaux, F. (2019). Worldwide inequality in access to full text scientific articles: the example of ophthalmology. PeerJ, 7, e7850. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7850
Campos, J. L. A., Sobral, A., Silva, J. S., Araújo, T. A. S., Ferreira-Júnior, W. S., Santoro, F. R., Charll, G., dos Santos, U., & Albuquerque, P. (2016). Insularity and citation behavior of scientific articles in young fields: the case of ethnobiology. Scientometrics, 109(2), 1037–1055. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2067-2
Clements, J. C. (2017). Open access articles receive more citations in hybrid marine ecology journals’. FACETS, 2(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2016-0032
Correa, J. C., Laverde-Rojas, H., Tejada, J., & Marmolejo-Ramos, F. (2022). The Sci-Hub effect on papers’ citations. Scientometrics, 127(1), 99–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03806-w
Daza, S., (2012) ‘Raking weights with R’, Sebastian Daza. Retrived December 7, 2021, from https://sdaza.com/blog/2012/raking/
Deville, J.-C., & Särndal, C.-E. (1992). Calibration estimators in survey sampling. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 87(418), 376–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1992.10475217
Deville, J.-C., Sarndal, C.-E., & Sautory, O. (1993). Generalized raking procedures in survey sampling. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 88(423), 1013–1021.
Dorta-González, P., González-Betancor, S. M., & Dorta-González, M. I. (2017). Reconsidering the gold open access citation advantage postulate in a multidisciplinary context: an analysis of the subject categories in the Web of Science database 2009–2014. Scientometrics, 112(2), 877–901. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2422-y
Greshake, B. (2017). Looking into pandoras box: the content of Sci-Hub and its usage. F1000Research, 6, 541. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.11366.1
Himmelstein, D. S., Romero, A. R., Levernier, J. G., Munro, T. A., McLaughlin, S. R., Tzovaras, B. G., & Greene, C. S. (2018). ‘Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature. eLife, 7, e32822. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.32822
Hudson, M. A., Heerssen, H. M., Curristin, S. M., & Storey, A. (2019). Citation rates for open-access versus pay-to-access articles in clinical journals specializing in paediatric medicine. Current Medical Research and Opinion, 35, 34–34.
Judge, T. A., Cable, D. M., Colbert, A. E., & Rynes, S. L. (2007). What causes a management article to be cited—article, author, or journal? Academy of Management Journal, 50(3), 491–506. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.25525577
Karaganis, J. (ed.) (2018) Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education. The MIT Press. Retrived November 26, 2022, from https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/26038
Langham-Putrow, A., Bakker, C., & Riegelman, A. (2021). Is the open access citation advantage real? A systematic review of the citation of open access and subscription-based articles. PLoS ONE, 16(6), e0253129. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253129
Lawrence, S. (2001). ‘Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact. Nature, 411(6837), 521–521. https://doi.org/10.1038/35079151
Leydesdorff, L., & Opthof, T. (2010) Remaining problems with the “New Crown Indicator” (MNCS) of the CWTS, ar**v:1010.2379 [physics] [Preprint]. Retrived October 19, 2020, from http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.2379
Lin, S.-K. (2007). ‘Non-open access and its adverse impact on international journal of molecular sciences. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 8(7), 686–687. https://doi.org/10.3390/i8070686
Maddi, A., & David, S. (2022) On the culture of open access: The Sci-hub paradox. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2357492/v1.
Maddi, A., & Sapinho, D. (2022a). Article processing charges, altmetrics and citation impact: Is there an economic rationale? Scientometrics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04284-y
Maddi, A. and Sapinho, D. (2022b) ‘Does Open Access Really Increase Impact? A Large-Scale Randomized Analysis’. Granada, Spain: Zenodo. Retrieved September 7, from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6975354.
McNutt, M. (2016). ‘My love-hate of Sci-hub. Science, 352(6285), 497–497. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf9419
Mikki, S., Ruwehy, H. A. A., Gjesdal, Ø. L., & Zygmuntowska, M. (2018). Filter bubbles in interdisciplinary research: A case study on climate and society. Library Hi Tech, 36(2), 225–236. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-03-2017-0052
Miller, G. W., Stoner, R., Boissaud-Cooke, M. A., Lim, J., Furness, H., Putt, O., & Lewis, T. L. (2021). Open access availability of anatomy papers presented at meetings of the American and british associations of clinical anatomists. Clinical Anatomy, 34(5), 660–667. https://doi.org/10.1002/ca.23580
Mimouni, M., Barak, Y., Shapira, Y., Beiran, I., Blumenthal, E. Z., & Zayit-Soudry, S. (2017). Citation rates of open-access and non-open access clinical studies in leading ophthalmology journals. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, 58(8), 5716.
Nature’s 10 (2016) Ten people who mattered this year., Nature. Nature Publishing Group. Retrieved April 19, 2022, from https://www.nature.com/articles/540507a.
Nazim, M., & Ashar, M. (2018). Do open access journals have greater citation impact? A study of journals in health and medical sciences in India. Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, 15(3–4), 149–164. https://doi.org/10.1080/15424065.2018.1554464
Nelson, G. M., & Eggett, D. L. (2017). Citations, mandates, and money: Author motivations to publish in chemistry hybrid open access journals. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(10), 2501–2510. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23897
Nicholas, D., Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Jie, X., Herman, E., Clark, D., Abrizah, A., Rodríguez-Bravo, B., & Świgoń, M. (2019). Sci-Hub: The new and ultimate disruptor? View from the front. Learned Publishing., 32(2), 147–153. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1206
O’Kelly, F., Fernandez, N., & Koyle, M. A. (2019). Predatory publishing or a lack of peer review transparency?-A contemporary analysis of indexed open and non-open access articles in paediatric urology. Journal of Pediatric Urology, 15(2), 159.e1-159.e7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpurol.2018.08.019
Peidu, C. H. (2020). An empirical examination of citation in life science. Journal of Scientometric Research. https://doi.org/10.5530/jscires.9.1.8
Sotudeh, H., Ghasempour, Z., & Yaghtin, M. (2015). The citation advantage of author-pays model: the case of Springer and Elsevier OA journals. Scientometrics, 104(2), 581–608. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1607-5
Till, B. M., Rudolfson, N., Saluja, S., Gnanaraj, J., Samad, L., Ljungman, D., & Shrime, M. (2019). Who is pirating medical literature? A bibliometric review of 28 million Sci-Hub downloads. The Lancet Global Health, 7(1), e30–e31. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(18)30388-7
Tonia, T., Van Oyen, H., Berger, A., Schindler, C., & Künzli, N. (2016). If I tweet will you cite? The effect of social media exposure of articles on downloads and citations. International Journal of Public Health, 61(4), 513–520. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-016-0831-y
Valderrama-Zurián, J.-C., Aguilar-Moya, R., & Gorraiz, J. (2019). On the bibliometric nature of a foreseeable relationship: Open access and education. Scientometrics, 120(3), 1031–1057. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03175-z
Waltman, L., & Traag, V. A. (2021). Use of the journal impact factor for assessing individual articles: Statistically flawed or not. F1000Research, 9, 366. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.23418.2
Wang, X., Liu, C., Mao, W., & Fang, Z. (2015). The open access advantage considering citation, article usage and social media attention. Scientometrics, 103(2), 555–564. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1547-0
Yan, E., Wu, C., & Song, M. (2018). The funding factor: a cross-disciplinary examination of the association between research funding and citation impact. Scientometrics, 115(1), 369–384. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2583-8
Zhang, Y. (2006). The effect of open access on citation impact: a comparison study based on web citation analysis. Libri, 56(3), 145–156. https://doi.org/10.1515/LIBR.2006.145
Acknowledgements
The present paper is a substantially extended version of the contribution (Maddi and Sapinho, 2022b) presented at the 26th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI 2022), Granada, Spain, 7–9 September 2022. A pre-print version of this manuscript is available on the Research Square platform at: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-2357492/v1. The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions that have contributed to the improvement of the quality of the present paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Maddi, A., Sapinho, D. On the culture of open access: the Sci-hub paradox. Scientometrics 128, 5647–5658 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04792-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04792-5