Alexandra Elbakyan and the Open Access Science Humanities Scholarship
Alexandra Elbakyan is a prominent figure in the movement for open access to academic knowledge, particularly in the sciences and humanities. As the founder of Sci-Hub, a platform that has revolutionized access to scientific literature by bypassing publishers' paywalls, she has become a symbol of the fight against paywalls and restricted academic publishing.
The Open Access Movement and Its Challenges
The increasing cost of academic journals and research papers has long been a barrier for many scholars, limiting their ability to engage with cutting-edge research. "In late XX century scientific literature has been becoming increasingly inaccessible due to growing subscription costs, leading to a crisis in scholarly communication system." This inaccessibility has spurred the growth of the open access movement, advocating for free and unrestricted access to scholarly work. The Budapest declaration of 2001 outlined two general approaches, or pathways towards implementing open access: self-archiving and publishing in open journals.
Since 2001, an active debate has been ongoing in the academic literature on the topic of open access. In this discussion, the following categories of open access projects have been mentioned: green, gold, platinum or diamond, gratis and libre, bronze, hybrid, guerilla and black. These categories are by no means equal: while green and gold approaches are considered classic and have been discussed in many publications, other categories such as gratis/libre and bronze OA were proposed by a prominent researchers, but remain scarcely used.
In late 2000s there existed numerous online forums dedicated to sharing and gaining access to academic literature, that brought together students and researchers, such as myescience, TechYou, expaper and others. Furthermore, there were sections of the forum where scientific literature could be uploaded and requested. Another type of online communities that blossomed in late 2000 were professional forums for researchers, such as MolBiol or ChemPort that brought together students and researchers in molecular biology and chemistry fields. The actual impact and scope of these new developments remain to be estimated.
Alexandra Elbakyan: From Neuroscience to Open Access Advocate
Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan, a Kazakhstani graduate student, computer programmer, and internet activist, completed her studies in Almaty and honed her computer hacking skills. Growing up in the Soviet republic, she witnessed firsthand the limitations on access to information and the internet, shaping her ideology and preference for open access to information for all.
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Elbakyan's journey began with a passion for neuroscience. "I studied various questions of neuroscience, and took interest in neuro-computer interfaces," she explains. "This technology makes it possible to control the mouse on the screen and typing through a special device which is worn on the head." Majoring in information security, she explored the possibility of using electric potentials read from the surface of the head to authenticate users, envisioning a fingerprint technology for the brain.
After leaving Kazakhstan and working in Moscow to move a little near to her dream she used her earnings to gain admit in the University of Freiburg, Germany in 2010. While studying there she came across the idea of a brain-computer interface project. Fascinated with this, she wanted to work and build the theory into reality. But unfortunately, nobody accompanied her in this project and due to lack of enthusiasm she had to leave the idea unattended.
However, she encountered barriers due to a lack of access to required papers. The publishers’ paywall was a major issue for both scientists and students alike. Even the solution to this issue was complex and weird. Alexandra wanted to come up with a more feasible and accessible solution. As she already pirated papers for her and others, several requests were piling up.
The Genesis of Sci-Hub
The project started with an online forum of molecular biology, so when I began working on Sci-hub, it already had an audience. I just created a service for automating the work previously done manually, that is sending out articles to the different users of the forum. As soon as I announced the project on the forum, it became a great success: my post about it gained 300 “Thank yous”, a prototype of the “Like” function. I hadn’t considered its popularity at an international level, but I knew from the outset that it was in demand.
Sci-Hub was founded in Kazakhstan by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011, in response to the rising costs of research papers behind paywalls. Addressing these limitations, in 2009 I proposed creating a decentralized network for sharing access to scientific journals, that could be built upon an existing open source P2P-software such as eMule. The application would be installed on a student or researcher’s device, and listen for requests from other members connected to the network. If requested journal was accessible through university subscription, the application would automatically provide access to it. Two years later I came up with a different design for an application that could also provide automatic access to paywalled research publications, built upon an anonymization and censorship-circumvention technology. The application is installed on a centralized web server, accepting requests; the requested content is then downloaded through a proxy server, and provided to the user. Sci-Hub was an extension of this censorship-circumvention methodology to the domain of scientific journals, where access is restricted by paywall.
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Alexandra Elbakyan has put forth that papers are primary sources necessary for research. This ultimately makes them an important part of the study. Hence, necessary to gain the easy availability of these research papers. However, Alexandra considers that these laws are restricting the development of science in human society. The motive behind establishing Sci Hub project was to remove all the barriers in the way of science.
Sci-Hub is a shadow library that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. Unlike Library Genesis, it does not provide access to books. Users can access works from all sources with a unified interface by entering the DOI in the search bar on the main page or in the Sci-Hub URL (like some academic link resolvers), or by appending the Sci-Hub domain to the domain of a publisher's URL (like some academic proxies).
Sci-Hub's Impact and Usage
According to The Scholarly Kitchen, Sci Hub’s usage has grown 80% a year, measured both by the Google search interest and download logs. In 2017, Sci Hub granted access to around half a million PDF downloads which was 20 times more than the University of Pennsylvania. The University’s libraries spent $13 million for their access. But now is provided free via scihub.
Server log data gathered from September 2015 to February 2016 and released by Elbakyan in 2016 revealed some usage information. A large amount of Sci-Hub's user activity came from American and European university campuses, and when adjusted for population, usage of Sci-Hub was high for developed countries. A 2021 study conducted by the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, and Banaras Hindu University on the use of Sci-Hub in India, 13,144,241 out of 150,575,861 download requests in 2017 were found to have come from Indian IP addresses. Of the research papers downloaded in India, 1,050,62, or 18.46%, of these are already available in some form of open access.
Aside from academic researchers, another large niche of Sci-Hub users are medical professionals outside of university hospitals, who usually do not have access to original publications in medical journals. A 2016 analysis of 28 million requests to Sci-Hub published in Science with the title Who's downloading pirated papers?
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By 2018 Sci-Hub was estimated to provide access to more than 90% of paywalled scientific journals, but these estimations were indirect. Up to 2016 there were no serious obstacles that could prevent the growing usage of Sci-Hub. It has been argued that some part of Sci-Hub usage can be attributed to convenience, not need, since the number of Sci-Hub users was estimated to be larger around US universities, where access is already provided through library subscriptions: while Sci-Hub’s convenient interface enables user to access PDF of the required paper immediately, subscriptions access from off campus is much more cumbersome, as it requires user to pass through a sophisticated authentication system. Not only research was transformed: black open access also had impact on medical practice.
Legal Challenges and Controversy
Alexandra’s project has also brought the efforts of Aaron Swartz to light. Big publishing houses hinted that they were unharmed with the popularity of Sci Hub. However, the world’s largest journal publisher-Elsevier sued Alexandra in New York federal court. She was sued for copyright infringement and computer fraud.
In 2015, Elsevier filed a lawsuit against Sci-Hub, in Elsevier et al. v. Following the lawsuit by Elsevier in March 2019 in France, Elsevier, Springer, John Wiley, and Cambridge University Press filed a complaint against Proximus, VOO, Brutélé, and Telenet to block access to Sci-Hub and LibGen. In December 2020, Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Sci-Hub and Library Genesis in the Delhi High Court.
"This is definitely not going to happen," Elbakyan asserts regarding the possibility of the project closing. "The most pessimistic scenario is that the project will continue running in the Tor network, where it is very difficult to close anything. As for the conventional internet, we will have to see if they manage to close our domains."
Presently, due to the legal war between the publishers and Alexandra, her location is untraceable. and Europe. Generally, researchers do not get paid for their work by the publishers. In several interviews with Alexandra, she has stressed on the same issue. Correspondingly, researchers have to pay the publishers for their hard work and dedication.
Ethics of Sci-Hub is an interesting and intricate matter; a number of authors have argued that the project unethical. Taking all this into consideration it is not surprising that in numerous publications, black open access is perceived as a competitor or an adversary to classic approaches: green and gold/diamond; some authors have even argued that black OA can negatively impact other types of open access in the long term. That perception is not completely unjustified, given that Sci-Hub has technically achieved the goal that open access movement initially aimed for (e.g., to make every published research paper available online free of charge). However, a more careful analysis would reveal that black open access in fact operates within a completely different domain than classic OA. The domain includes those research articles that have been published in subscription journals, and do not have preprint version deposited in repository. The primary impact of black OA was in opening this previously ignored domain of published knowledge; at the same time, it does not provide any solution for publishing new research articles in open access. Therefore, black and green, gold and diamond OA are indeed complimentary to each other, rather than competitive.
The Alexandra Elbakyan Open Access Science Humanities Scholarship
The Alexandra Elbakyan Open Access Science Humanities Scholarship is an initiative aimed at supporting students and researchers who are passionate about open access and wish to advance their studies in the fields of science and humanities. Given Alexandra Elbakyan’s background and influence, this scholarship not only provides financial support but also encourages recipients to engage with the broader mission of democratizing knowledge.
The Alexandra Elbakyan Open Access Scholarship program typically offers various types of scholarships to cater to different academic needs and career stages:
- Tuition Scholarships: These scholarships cover the entire cost of tuition fees for eligible students pursuing graduate or postgraduate studies in disciplines related to science and humanities.
- Research Grants: Research grants are provided to scholars who require funding to carry out specific research projects that align with the goals of open access.
- Travel Scholarships: Travel scholarships enable recipients to attend conferences, workshops, or seminars related to their academic work and the open access movement.
The application process for the Alexandra Elbakyan Open Access Scholarship usually involves submitting several documents to showcase the applicant’s qualifications and motivations. Applicants are encouraged to carefully follow instructions and deadlines to increase their chances of success.
Alexandra Elbakyan’s pioneering efforts have not only challenged the traditional publishing industry but have also inspired educational institutions, non-profits, and funding bodies to rethink how they support students and researchers. Winning the Alexandra Elbakyan Open Access Scholarship requires more than just good grades. Applicants must demonstrate their genuine passion for open access and show how they plan to contribute to this movement.
Future Plans and Vision
"I want to assemble a complete collection of scientific articles," Elbakyan states, "add to it not only modern science, but also historical manuscripts, such as alchemy, magic - everything that was regarded as science in the past." She also envisions creating an AI-powered system similar to IBM Watson, capable of analyzing the vast collection of scientific articles to make new discoveries.
In 2025, a new project by Sci-Hub and Alexandra Elbakyan, called Sci-Net, was launched. This project is a social network for requesting and uploading scientific papers. As of May 2025, it is invite-only, with invite codes being given out randomly in the sidebar of the Sci-Hub pages for scientific papers.
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