PAPER PIRATE

Abstract

It is copyright-breaking on a grand scale - and has brought Elbakyan praise, criticism and a lawsuit. Few people support the fact that she acted illegally, but many see Sci-Hub as advancing the cause ofthe open-access movement, which holds that papers should be made (legally) free to read and reuse. "What she did is nothing short of awesome," says Michael Eisen, a biologist and open-access supporter at the University of California, Berkeley. "Lack of access to the scientific literature is a massive injustice, and she fixed it with one fell swoop."