The Sci-Hub Effect: Sci-Hub downloads lead to more article citations
The econometric term for what this paper lacks is &quot;identification strategy&quot; -- a way for assessing the impact of x (downloads on sci-hub) on y (citations) which _identifies_ a source of variation in x that is independent of y.<p>A randomized controlled trial would be ideal. Second-best would be something that, say, suddenly caused some papers to be available or not available on Sci-Hub, or a &quot;plausibly exogenous&quot; (to y) cutoff around which papers would be either available on Sci-Hub or not.<p>This paper offers nothing. I think we can say the relationship is &quot;not identified.&quot; Doesn&#x27;t mean the conclusion is wrong, just that this paper doesn&#x27;t produce meaningful evidence on the question.<p>For more see Angrist and Krueger (2001) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;economics.mit.edu&#x2F;files&#x2F;18" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;economics.mit.edu&#x2F;files&#x2F;18</a><p>(In Pearl&#x2F;DAG language, the underlying quality or appeal of the paper is, as others have noted, an obvious confound&#x2F;backdoor path).