The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)
I am part of a well-funded university, so I have access to all the papers without using Sci-Hub.<p>Nevertheless, I prefer this platform because I disagree with the publishing model of  most publishers. Let&#x27;s not get into the details here, but there is all kinds of shoddy editorship happening all over the place---I have seen at least one blatant case of plagiarism in an Elsevier journal: no one cares. I have experienced very strange &#x27;reformatting&#x27; queries; my highlight being a journal that forces you to convert your lovingly-crafted vector graphs into JPG just &#x27;because&#x27;.<p>On top of all that, add the fact that the interface of many publishers is egregiously bad to use. It takes a lot of clicks to download a single PDF, often opening multiple windows for that purpose or redirecting you a few times. Sci-Hub streamlined this process: you put in a DOI, and you get a PDF. Not an ePDF that is super laggy (looking at you, Wiley!), but a normal PDF that I can download, annotate, print, decorate my wall with.<p>Thus, I disagree with the article: the single minimalist interface is definitely something that contributes to Sci-Hub&#x27;s popularity.