<story><title>Sci-Hub downloads show countries where pirate paper site is most used</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00556-y</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mohammad_ali85</author><text>PhD student here. Aside from difficulty of accessing articles who don&amp;#x27;t have institutional access, it&amp;#x27;s significantly easier to obtain an article from sci-hub. Enter title or DOI - done. To get the same article using uni logins you need to search via database e.g. Medline, then click on the source button. This takes you to different resources you can download from. Once you click through, you can then download the pdf, unless they&amp;#x27;ve decided ePub is the default option in which case you have change this. Rarely, I&amp;#x27;ve had to sign up to attempt to download an article but find once I&amp;#x27;ve done this, my institution doesn&amp;#x27;t actually have access. The steps are reduced if you&amp;#x27;re on campus but not much better to be honest. Absolute mess.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sci-Hub downloads show countries where pirate paper site is most used</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00556-y</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>maxmalkav</author><text>My opinion is solely based on my personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt.&lt;p&gt;I was enrolled in a PhD program (engineering) around the time Sci-Hub started, we were lucky enough to have access to most papers we needed thanks to the University agreements with Elsevier, IEEE, etc. I did not hear about Sci-Hub until a bit later, when I needed access to some academic papers but remote access to my university network was very cumbersome. I ended up downloading my OWN papers from Sci-Hub out of pure convenience. I have to say I always had mixed feelings (if not just hostility) towards the academic publishing industry, so I was actually happy my papers were available there.&lt;p&gt;During pandemic time I decided to enrol in a MBA in the fields of Humanities (because why not). My experience is that Humanity folks are not very aware of Sci-Hub, probably because they are not so tech-savvy in general, but those that discover it are more than happy to count with this extra resource.&lt;p&gt;Said this, my personal impression is that places like my country are not higher in the chart .. just because Sci-Hub is not better known yet.</text></comment>