Yesterday, academic social media went into overdrive as many
intellectuals discovered LibGen (“Library Genesis”) for the first time,
thanks to
It is quite amazing to me that people have only just come to this. There has been a substantial volume of academic literature on the subject for several years now and, as it affects all disciplines, I would expect some engagement with these meta-subjects for access to academic research.
I suppose what is interesting is that most of the backlash that I saw
against the “revelations” in
In any case, here’s a secondary reading list of some of the material
that’s out there on LibGen (the books platform) and Sci-Hub (articles
and journals). As a technical point: LibGen also acts as the backing
store for Sci-Hub, Finally, more recent platforms like Anna’s Archive
are not that well covered in the secondary literature yet. Some of these
links may, by now, be dead. You may also want to keep a lookout for
publications resulting from
That said, if you want the really short version, have a read of:
Bodó, Balázs, ‘The Genesis of Library Genesis: The Birth of a
Global Scholarly Shadow Library’, in
Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Lessons from the Library: Extreme Minimalist
Scaling at Pirate Ebook Platforms’, Digital Humanities Quarterly,
16.2 (2022)
Andersson, Jonas, and Stefan Larsson, ‘The Justification of
Piracy: Differences in Conceptualization and Argumentation Between
Active Uploaders and Other File-Sharers’, in
Banks, Marcus, ‘What Sci-Hub Is and Why It Matters’,
Barok, Dušan, and others, ‘In Solidarity with Library Genesis
and Sci-Hub’, http://Custodians.Online, 30 November 2015
Bodó, Balázs, ‘Coda: A Short History of Book Piracy’, in
——, ‘Library Genesis in Numbers: Mapping the Underground Flow
of Knowledge’, in
——, ‘The Genesis of Library Genesis: The Birth of a Global
Scholarly Shadow Library’, in
Cheney, Matthew, ‘Supporting Openness Should Not Mean
Supporting Piracy’,
Dulong de Rosnay, Melanie, ‘Open Access Models, Pirate
Libraries and Advocacy Repertoires: Policy Options for Academics
to Construct and Govern Knowledge Commons’,
Elbakyan, Alexandra, ‘How The Chronicle Is Trying to Malign
Sci-Hub’,
——, ‘Why Sci-Hub Is the True Solution for Open Access: Reply to
Criticism’,
——, ‘Sci-Hub Is a Goal, Changing the System Is a Method’,
Erkal, Esra, ‘Allegations Linking Sci-Hub with Russian
Intelligence’,
Eve, Martin Paul, ‘Lessons from the Library: Extreme Minimalist
Scaling at Pirate Ebook Platforms’,
——, Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (punctum books, 2021)
Faust, Jeremy S., ‘Sci-Hub: A Solution to the Problem of
Paywalls, or Merely a Diagnosis of a Broken System?’,
Green, Toby, ‘We’ve Failed: Pirate Black Open Access Is
Trumping Green and Gold and We Must Change Our Approach’,
Greshake, Bastian, ‘Correlating the Sci-Hub Data with World
Bank Indicators and Identifying Academic Use’,
Himmelstein, Daniel S, and others, ‘Sci-Hub Provides Access to
Nearly All Scholarly Literature’, ed. by Peter A Rodgers,
Hoy, Matthew B., ‘Sci-Hub: What Librarians Should Know and Do
about Article Piracy’,
Machin-Mastromatteo, Juan D, Alejandro Uribe-Tirado, and Maria
E Romero-Ortiz, ‘Piracy of Scientific Papers in Latin America: An
Analysis of Sci-Hub Usage Data’,
Martin, John D., ‘Piracy, Public Access, and Preservation: An
Exploration of Sustainable Accessibility in a Public Torrent
Index’,
Masnick, Mike, ‘Academic Publishers Get Their Wish: DOJ
Investigating Sci-Hub Founder For Alleged Ties To Russian
Intelligence’,
Maxwell, Andy, ‘Meet the Guy Behind the Libgen Torrent Seeding
Movement’,
Reisner, Alex, ‘Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That
Meta Used to Train AI’,
Russell, Carrie, and Ed Sanchez, ‘Sci-Hub Unmasked: Piracy,
Information Policy, and Your Library’,
Sar, Ernesto Van Der, ‘Sci-Hub, BookFi and LibGen Resurface
After Being Shut Down’,
Schiermeier, Quirin, ‘Pirate Research-Paper Sites Play
Hide-and-Seek with Publishers’,
Till, Brian M., and others, ‘Who Is Pirating Medical
Literature? A Bibliometric Review of 28 Million Sci-Hub
Downloads’,