(Data: Sci-Hub); (Images: Adapted by G. Grullón/Science)

The $10 billion world of academic publishing has been roiled in recent months by Alexandra Elbakyan, a 27-year-old grad student from Kazakhstan who set up an online database of 50 million stolen academic research papers for anyone to download for free.

Scholars have long denounced a publishing system in which they provide their research for free to companies that sell it at high rates of return. Some view Elbakyan as a modern-day Robin Hood. The publishers say she is simply a criminal, relying on a system that uses stolen passwords to access data.

[This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free.]

Depending on where one falls on the Robin Hood-to-pure-criminal spectrum, an extraordinary story published (for free)  today in the journal Science shows just how much damage (or progress) Elbakyan has made.

Using data provided by Elbakyan, writer John Bohannon shows that Sci-Hub is being used frequently and widely around the world, not just in developing countries unable to afford expensive journal subscriptions, but in Silicon Valley, the Washington, D.C., region, and near major research universities.

“The Sci-Hub data provide the first detailed view of what is becoming the world’s de facto open-access research library,”  Bohannon writes.

Where are Sci-Hub users? Everywhere.

The map at the top of the story shows massive use in India, Iran, Russia and China, supporting Elbakyan’s view that researchers in developing or politically fractured countries — as was hers,  growing up in Kazakhstan — are hungry to tap into the world’s knowledge.

But the map below shows heavy use around the United States, too. Bohannon writes that a “quarter of the Sci-Hub requests for papers came from the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the wealthiest nations with, supposedly, the best journal access. In fact, some of the most intense use of Sci-Hub appears to be happening on the campuses of U.S. and European universities.”

Is convenience the new access?

Maybe. That would explain why Sci-Hub users in the United States tend to congregate around universities, whose database systems are often clunky to operate and require security hoops when logging in off campus. Bohannon quoted a George Washington University student saying it was sometimes difficult to access journals his school subscribes to from Google Scholar, a tool viewed as the easiest way to surface relevant papers. But if he puts the paper’s title into Sci-Hub, he said, “It will just work.”

Another explanation is that universities don’t always have access to the journals researchers need. There are 28,100 journals publishing 2.5 million articles a year. Expenses for journals and other subscriptions have risen 456 percent since 1986, according to the Association of Research Libraries. Some universities have cut back on journal expenses.

“Full-scale modal wind turbine tests: comparing shaker excitation with wind excitation”

Most of the world’s reading population probably has doubts about whether they know what shaker excitation means, but that’s the title of the most widely downloaded article in the period Bohannon looked at, proving just how narrow — but important —  research is to scholars.

Other popular titles: “Comprehensive, Integrative Genomic Analysis of Diffuse Lower-Grade Gilomas,” “Photosensitive field emission study of SnS2 nanosheets,” “Griffiths effects and quantum critical points in dirty superconductors without spin-rotation invariance: One-dimensional examples,” and “Iron deficiency: new insights into diagnosis and treatment.”

Bohannon, with Elbakyan’s help, was even able to narrow down specific downloads to specific cities. “Someone in Benghazi,” he writes, “is investigating a method for transmitting data between computers across an air gap.”

The genie is out of the bottle

As I wrote last month: “Elsevier, the world’s largest journal publisher, sued Elbakyan in federal court in New York, alleging copyright infringement and computer fraud. A judge issued a preliminary injunction against Sci-Hub. Elbakyan simply switched domains, keeping the database available.”

But even if some government somewhere was able to shut down Sci-Hub, Elbakyan told Bohannon that the 50 million stolen papers have  already been copied many times, presumably stored somewhere on the dark web.

Elbakyan seems like she will do anything to keep the database growing. Bohannon wrote, “She even asked me to donate my own Science login and password — she was only half-joking.”