%0	Journal Article
%A	Himmelstein, Daniel S.
%A	Romero, Ariel R.
%A	McLaughlin, Stephen R.
%A	Tzovaras, Bastian Greshake
%A	Greene​, Casey S.
%D	2017
%J	PeerJ Preprints
%K	subscription publishing model sustainability
%K	Sci-Hub
%K	paywall users
%K	open access movement
%K	open access articles
%P	1-40
%R	10.7287/peerj.preprints.3100v2
%T	Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature
%U	https://peerj.com/preprints/3100/
%V	5
%X	The website Sci-Hub provides access to scholarly literature via full text PDF downloads. The site enables users to access articles that would otherwise be paywalled. Since its creation in 2011, Sci-Hub has grown rapidly in popularity. However, until now, the extent of Sci-Hub’s coverage was unclear. As of March 2017, we find that Sci-Hub’s database contains 68.9% of all 81.6 million scholarly articles, which rises to 85.2% for those published in toll access journals. Coverage varies by discipline, with 92.8% coverage of articles in chemistry journals compared to 76.3% for computer science. Coverage also varies by publisher, with the coverage of the largest publisher, Elsevier, at 97.3%. Our interactive browser at https://greenelab.github.io/scihub allows users to explore these findings in more detail. We find Sci-Hub preferentially covers popular, paywalled content, containing 96.2% of citations to toll access journals since 2015. For recently requested articles by Unpaywall users, oaDOI provided access to 48.8% whereas Sci-Hub contained 81.5%. Together, oaDOI and Sci-Hub covered 94.1%, demonstrating that gaps in Sci-Hub’s coverage, especially for open access articles, can be filled using licit services. For the first time, nearly all scholarly literature is available gratis to anyone with an Internet connection. Sci-Hub’s scope suggests the subscription publishing model is becoming unsustainable.
%8	10/2017
%*	no
%>	https://www.oerknowledgecloud.org/archive/peerj-preprints-3100.pdf