I am a statistician. I work on a lot of different projects, some for corporations and others for public good. While I was in university I had fantastic access to research and papers. I didn’t realize how hard it would be once I left. Historically, I’ve relied on sci-hub heavily to stay up to date on the latest research in my field – without sci-hub I almost certainly would have made “damaging” mistakes, not intentionally but simply do to having to operate off decade old knowledge. I realize that I could pay for many articles ; however , I spend 30 - 50 % of my days reading papers. Probably 1/8 of the papers I read are actually what I am looking for but I need to do the diligence of covering a broad swath of papers in my area of interest to make sure I am not missing anything. As someone who works independently, this level of research would cost a huge amount of money and honestly be preventative. Opening up this information is power. It is empowering. It is how we build a better society and equip people with knowledge. Gating it through universities is straight up dumb. If anything is a public utility , it should be this type of information. Luckily more and more people/universities are aware of this problem. Some universities now publish papers directly onto their university press pages and I’ve had a huge amount of success emailing professors directly asking if they will send me their research – this is a huge pain but often has unexpected benefits (I’ve had several calls with profs that published papers where I’ve been able to ask questions). All that being said , I shouldn’t have to email profs – they are busy, I am busy.
I am a statistician. I work on a lot of different projects, some for corporations and others for public good. While I was in university I had fantastic access to research and papers. I didn’t realize how hard it would be once I left. Historically, I’ve relied on sci-hub heavily to stay up to date on the latest research in my field – without sci-hub I almost certainly would have made “damaging” mistakes, not intentionally but simply do to having to operate off decade old knowledge. I realize that I could pay for many articles ; however , I spend 30 - 50 % of my days reading papers. Probably 1/8 of the papers I read are actually what I am looking for but I need to do the diligence of covering a broad swath of papers in my area of interest to make sure I am not missing anything. As someone who works independently, this level of research would cost a huge amount of money and honestly be preventative. Opening up this information is power. It is empowering. It is how we build a better society and equip people with knowledge. Gating it through universities is straight up dumb. If anything is a public utility , it should be this type of information. Luckily more and more people/universities are aware of this problem. Some universities now publish papers directly onto their university press pages and I’ve had a huge amount of success emailing professors directly asking if they will send me their research – this is a huge pain but often has unexpected benefits (I’ve had several calls with profs that published papers where I’ve been able to ask questions). All that being said , I shouldn’t have to email profs – they are busy, I am busy.