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title: 'Sci-hub: the intervention'

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# Sci-hub: the intervention

## About the lecture
Open appraisals of communism in many contexts today are seen as provocation and an intervention in public. Alexandra Elbakyan does it often. This lecture was done in a context where the international audience in United States at University of North Texas are supporters of Sci-hub through their support of Open Access. Still, openly advocating communism provoke some tensions which one could witness only during the Q&A session.

It is interesting how in Q&A session main concerns are about privacy and security. Or how Sci-hub gets its access to the university repositories.

Another interesting point is how Alexandra Elbakyan introduce the aspect of *"stealing knowledge"* as something inseparatable from the production of knowledge at any given time in history. Her examples are: Adam & Eve myth with stealing from "the tree of knowledge", ancient Greek myths of Prometheus and Hermes (god of all thiefs) etc.


## Lecture: Why Science is better with Communism? The case of Sci-Hub.


> *The University of North Texas's [Open Access Symposium 2016](https://openaccess.unt.edu/symposium/2016/) included a [presentation via Skype by Alexandra Elbakyan](https://openaccess.unt.edu/symposium/2016/why-science-better-communism-case-sci-hub), the founder of Sci-Hub. Elbakyan's slides (and those of other presenters) have been archived in the UNT Digital Library, and [video of this presentation](https://youtu.be/hr7v5FF5c8M) (and others) is now available on YouTube and soon in the UNT Digital Library.*

> *The presentation was entitled "Why Science is Better with Communism? The Case of Sci-Hub." Below is an edited transcript of the presentation produced by Regina Anikina and Kevin Hawkins, with a translation by Kevin Hawkins and Anna Pechenina.* 

> [VIDEO](https://youtu.be/hr7v5FF5c8)

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> [PDF slides](https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc850001/m2/1/high_res_d/sci-hub-oa-unt.pdf)

# <a href="javascript:void callPlayer(&quot;seekTo&quot;,[&quot;195&quot;])">SLIDE_01</a>
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First of all, thank you for inviting me to share my views. My name is Alexandra. As you might have guessed, I represent the site Sci-Hub. It was founded in 2011 and immediately became popular among the local community, almost immediately began providing access to about 40 articles an hour and now providing more than 200,000. It has to be said that over the course of the site’s development it was strongly supported by donations, and when for various reasons we had to suspend the service, there were many displeased users who clamored for the project to return so that the work in their laboratory could continue. This is the case not just in poor countries; I can say that in rich countries the public also doesn’t have access to scholarly articles. And not all universities have subscriptions to those resources that are required for research. A few of our users insisted that we start charging users, for example, by allowing one or two articles to be downloaded for free but charging for more, so that the service would be supported by those who really need it. But I didn’t end up doing that because the goal of the resource is knowledge for all. Certain open-access advocates criticize the site, saying that what we really need is for articles to be in open access from the start, by changing the business models of publishers. I can respond by saying that the goal of the project is first and foremost the dissemination of scholarly knowledge in society, and we have to work in the conditions we find ourselves in. Of course, if scholarly publishers had a different business model, then perhaps this project wouldn’t be necessary. We can also imagine that if humans had wings, we wouldn’t need airplanes. But in any case we need to fly, so we make airplanes.

# <a href="javascript:void callPlayer(&quot;seekTo&quot;,[&quot;540&quot;])">SLIDE_02</a>
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Scholarly publishers quickly dubbed the work of Sci-Hub as piracy. Admittedly Sci-Hub violates the laws of copyright, but copyright is related to the rights of intellectual property. That is, scholarly articles are the property of publishers, and reading them for free turns out to be something like theft according to the current law. The concept of intellectual property itself is not new, although it can seem otherwise. The history of copyright goes back to around the 18th century, although the first mentions of something similar can be found in the Talmud. It’s just that recently copyright has been found at the center of passionate debate since some are trying to forbid the free distribution of information in the internet. However, the central focus of the debate is on censorship and privacy. The defense of intellectual property in the internet requires censorship of websites, and that is consequently a violation of freedom of speech. This also raises a question of interference in private life – that is, when the government in some way monitors users who violate copyright. In principle this is also an intrusion in communication. However, the very essence of copyright – that is, the concept of intellectual property – is almost never questioned. That is, whether knowledge can be someone’s property is rarely discussed.

# <a href="javascript:void callPlayer(&quot;seekTo&quot;,[&quot;745&quot;])">SLIDE_03</a>
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However, our ancestors were even more daring. They did not just question intellectual property but property in general. That is, there are works in which we can find the appearance of the idea of communism. There’s Thomas More’s Utopia from the 16th century, but actually such works arose much earlier, even in Ancient Greece where these questions were already been discussed in 391 BCE. If we look at the slogans of communism, we see that one of the core concepts is the struggle against inequality, the revolt of the suppressed classes, whose members don’t have any power against those who have concentrated basic resources and power in their hands, with the goal of redistributing these resources.

# <a href="javascript:void callPlayer(&quot;seekTo&quot;,[&quot;879&quot;])">SLIDE_04</a>
![](/images/scihub_slides-3.jpg)
We can see that even today there is a certain informational inequality, when, for example, only students and employees of the most wealthy universities have full access to scholarly information, while access can be completely lacking for institutions at the next lower tier and for the general public. An idea arises: if there isn’t private property, then there’s no basis for unequal distribution of wealth. In our case as well: if there’s no private intellectual property and all scholarly publications are nationalized, then all people will have equal access to knowledge.

# <a href="javascript:void callPlayer(&quot;seekTo&quot;,[&quot;960&quot;])">SLIDE_05</a>
![](/images/scihub_slides-4.jpg)
However, a question arises: if there is no private property, then what can stimulate a person to work? One of the ideas is that under communism, rather than greed or aspiration for wealth being a stimulus for work, a person would aspire to self-development and learning for the betterment of the world. Even if such values can’t be applied to society as a whole, they at least work in the world of scholarship. Therefore in the Soviet Union there was a true cult of science – statues were even erected to the glory of science – and perhaps thanks to this our country was one of the first to go into space.

# <a href="javascript:void callPlayer(&quot;seekTo&quot;,[&quot;1070&quot;])">SLIDE_06</a>
![](/images/scihub_slides-5.jpg)
However, it’s one thing to have a revolution, when there’s a mass redistribution of property in society, but an act of theft is another thing. This, of course, is not yet a revolution, but it’s a small protest against the property rights and the unequal distribution of wealth. Theft as protest has always been welcomed and approved of in all eras of society. For example, we all know about Robin Hood, but there have actually been quite a few noble bandits in history. I’ve listed just a few of them. I think that if the state works well, then accordingly it has a working tax system and a certain system of redistribution of wealth, and then, accordingly, there’s no cause for revolution, for example. But if for some reasons the state works poorly, then people begin to solve the problem for themselves. In this way, Sci-Hub is an appropriate response to the inequality that has arisen due to lack of access to information. Pictured is Aldar Köse, a Kazakh folk hero who used his cunning to deceive wealthy beys and take possession of their property. It’s interesting to note that beys are always depicted as greedy and stupid. And if you look at what’s written in the blogosphere today about scholarly publishers, you can find these same characteristics.

# SLIDE_07
![](/images/scihub_slides-6.jpg)
There’s also the interesting figure of the ancient Greek god Hermes, the patron of thieves. That is, theft was a sufficiently respected activity that it had its own god. There’s a researcher named Norman Brown who wrote an academic work called Hermes the Thief: The Evolution of a Myth. It turns out that this myth is related to a certain revolution in ancient Greek society, when the lower classes, which lacked property, began to rise up. For example, the poet Theognis of Megara wrote that “those who were nothing became everything” and vice versa. This is essentially one of the most well-known communist slogans. For the ancient Greeks this was related, again as Brown says, to the appearance of trade. Trade was identified with theft. There was no clear distinction between the exchange of legal and illegal goods – that is, trade was just as much considered theft as what we call piracy today.

# SLIDE_08
![](/images/scihub_slides-7.jpg)
Why did it turn out this way? Because Hermes was originally a god of boundaries and transitions. Therefore, we can think that property is related to keeping something within boundaries. At the same time, the things that Hermes protected – theft, trade and communication – are related to boundary-crossing. If we think about scholarly journals, then any journal is first of all a means of communication, and therefore it’s apparent that keeping journals in closed access contradicts the essence of what they were intended for. This is, of course, not even the most interesting thing.

# SLIDE_09
![](/images/scihub_slides-8.jpg)
Hermes actually evolved – that is, while he was once an intellectual deity, he later came to be interpreted as the same as Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge, and further came to oversee such things as astrology, alchemy, and magic – that is, the things from which, you might say, contemporary sciences arose. So we can say that contemporary science arose from theft. Of course, someone can object, saying that contemporary science is very different from esoterica, such as astrology and alchemy, but if we look at the history of science, we see that contemporary science differs from the ancient arts in the former being more open. That is, when the movement towards greater openness appeared, contemporary science also appeared. Once again this is not an argument in support of scholarly publishers.

# SLIDE_10
![](/images/scihub_slides-9.jpg)
Indeed, in the cultural consciousness science and the process of learning have always been closely associated with theft, beginning with the legend of Adam and Eve and the forbidden tree, which is called simply “the tree of knowledge.” And it’s interesting that Elsevier’s logo depicts some kind of tree, which, accordingly, raises associations with this tree in the Garden of Eden – the tree of knowledge – from which it was forbidden to eat the fruit.

# SLIDE_11
![](/images/scihub_slides-10.jpg)
Likewise we can recall the well-known legend of Prometheus, a part of our cultural consciousness, who stole some knowledge and brought it to humans. Once again we see the connection between science and theft.

# SLIDE_12
![](/images/scihub_slides-11.jpg)
Nowadays, many scholars have described science as the knowledge of secrets. However, if we look closely, we have to ask: what is a secret? A secret is something private, in essence private property. Accordingly, the disclosure of the secret signifies that it ceases to be property. Once again we see the contradiction between scholarship and property rights.

# SLIDE_13
![](/images/scihub_slides-12.jpg)
We can recall Robert Merton, who studied research institutes and revealed four basic ethical norms that in his opinion are important for their successful functioning. One of them is communism – that is, knowledge is shared. Accordingly, if we look at certain traditional communities, then we find that those communities that function within a caste system (dividing people by occupation) usually turn out to have certain castes of people with intellectual occupations, and if you look at the ethical norms of such castes, you find that they are also communistic. You can find this, for example, in Plato. Or even if you look at India, you find the accumulation of wealth is usually the occupation of another caste.

# SLIDE_14
![](/images/scihub_slides-13.jpg)
To sum up, we have the following take-aways. Science, as a part of culture, is in conflict with private property. Accordingly, scholarly communication is a dual conflict. What open access is doing is returning science to its essential roots.

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