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by lr1970 489 days ago
Should sci-hub take arXiv under its wing? A great way to gain legitimacy.
1 comments

> A great way to gain legitimacy.

Is that sarcastic? arXiv is legal and mainstream, used by professionals; sci-hub is illegal.

sci-hub is still used by professionals even though it is illegal
Professionals in wealthy countries have access to licensed, legal sources. Do you mean people in other countries?
When I had access to academic journals through my (western, wealthy) institution I would still mostly use scihub.

The simple reason was that I got conditioned to doing that because the login wall to doing it legitimately was often too painful. At a certain point my workflow switched to checking scihub first, then going the legal path if scihub failed.

It saves a lot of time, and I suspect it is a lot more common than most people think.

I'm gonna guess they meant the other direction.
Acquiring a massive library of unlicensed IP, the best-known such library in the world, would also seem to destroy arXiv's credibility with those in power and I expect would be the end of arXiv.
sci-hub's legitimacy.