[afpx]

Remember that a lot of us don't work for research universities, and we can't afford $199 per paper just to read the details that are summarized in the abstract.

Also, many landmark papers are several decades old. A lot of time I just want to read the details of an influential paper just to see if I agree with how it is portrayed in popular culture. For example, I recently wanted to read the Dunning Kruger paper to see if it really says what people think it says. And, when James Damore cited research for his Google manifesto - I wanted to see if his conclusions held up.

I'm not sure how an average person can make informed judgments without access to these papers. Without Sci-Hub, we must just believe what is fed to us. Since its creation, Sci-Hub has become an essential part of my life.

[vixen99]

Ditto for http://sci-hub.cc/. Another example: for those of us (just about everybody) concerned about our health, how do we access authoritative papers on pharamceutical drugs, nutrition, medical conditions etc., Or do we rely on some journalist's piece which is more often than not biased and patronizing? And the irony is that this is almost entirely tax-payer funded research.