I don&#x27;t get it - some commenters are suggesting that the authors of those papers aren&#x27;t paid, but the publisher is. Why would the author want to limit the spread and accessibility of his work in such a way?<p>As an outsider who doesn&#x27;t have any experience with scientific papers and how to get them, it seems very obvious to me that there should be a huge demand for an open platform to publish and read those papers - from authors and readers alike. Why does this role need to be filled by an at best semi-legal party like SciHub?<p>The fact that users with legitimate access to those papers actually opt for SciHub to get them confirms that the current solutions just aren&#x27;t working for their users. So why would authors rely on them?