[hctaw]

Has anyone ever paid the individual price for an article?

And setting aside the principle for a second - how many non-academic taxpayers are trying to read articles that don't have institutional access through their employer or local public library?

[pixelface]

I'm a non-academic taxpayer trying to read articles and don't have access through my employer or public library. I know other people in the same situation. Emailing the authors directly to request a copy is a known legitimate workaround, but in cases where I'm trying to read a paper on fungal propagation from 1971 (most recent example, from last week) the options are limited.

I would also imagine that if these things were more readily available people would be more likely to use them.

[enriquto]

> Has anyone ever paid the individual price for an article?

Before the existence of sci-hub, I spent several hundred taxpayer euros to download taxpayer-funded research from journals that my library was not subscribed to. I was not aware that asking the library for a single pdf cost about 30 or 40 EUR, until the librarian told me. Then I stopped because it was obviously ridiculous.

[tchalla]

> how many non-academic taxpayers are trying to read articles that don't have institutional access through their employer or local public library?

A different question to ask. Why should taxpayers not have access to the articles which they funded for? It doesn't matter whether they read it or not. They pay, they have access.

[Dan_JiuJitsu]

I frequently read research I do not have institutional access to. I'm in this situation fairly frequently, tbh.

[dorfsmay]

Isn't the amount of traffic to sci-hub the answer to that question?

[carbonguy]

> Has anyone ever paid the individual price for an article?

I would be very interested to see statistics on this, because I suspect the answer is "almost nobody" - as I assume your question was meant to imply.

> ... [How] many non-academic taxpayers are trying to read articles that don't have institutional access through their employer or local public library?

Count me in this population, although to be honest it literally never occurred to me to check if the local public library had journal access.

[htnsao]

> Has anyone ever paid the individual price for an article?

For various business interests I have paid full price to read scientific studies quite a few times. And I felt foolish about it later once I learned about Sci-Hub. I'm sure there are many other entrepreneurs that could admit the same. Sci-hub is great and a very important service.