Introduction
Sci-Hub is a well-known pirate repository that allows users to circumvent paywalls and download academic articles relating to various health sciences and STEM subjects. While Sci-Hub may increase access to information in a timely manner and may flag issues in established publishing practices, there are ethical, legal and security risks associated with the platform's use. This research uses data made public by Sci-Hub to better understand Canadian Sci-Hub user behaviour, which can help inform potential approaches for discussing Sci-Hub usage with users in need of health sciences and biomedical information.
Methods
This research analyzed the Sci-Hub download log for 2017. IP information was used to identify Canadian downloads. Other information analyzed includes the date of download, user city, and DOI of the accessed article. The DOIs of top articles were loaded into Zotero to retrieve publication dates and titles for further analysis.
Results
Results will showcase top Canadian cities for Sci-Hub use, temporal trends for 2017, and bibliographic information of frequently accessed articles.
Discussion
This research provides some of the first data-driven insights into Sci-Hub user behaviour in a Canadian context. Currently, only the 2017 data is publicly available, but Sci-Hub is clear about its intentions to make full download logs available in the future. The preliminary analyses shown here provide a blueprint for others who may be interested in conducting their own analyses on Sci-Hub usage in their own contexts.