This is public and traceable to my real identity right now. I've always had legal access to the content I need personally, so I've never had to actually use sc

This is public and traceable to my real identity right now. I've always had legal access to the content I need personally, so I've never had to actually use sci-hub -- but I appreciate that it's a huge equalizer for those less fortunate. It's generally considered a bad idea to publicly admit to copyright infringement, or else you might see sci-hub in paper acknowlegments [1]. In the first relevant survey I could find, however [2] > 62.5% of participants affirmed that Sci-Hub contributes to scientific investigation; only 2.2% reported that Sci-Hub does not contribute to science. More broadly, the open access movement has been around for years, and has made huge progress IMO considering that academia doesn't turn on a dime. I should probably also point out that if sci-hub is napster, we've had a sneakernet for literally centuries. If you see a paper you like, just email one of the authors and they're very likely to send it to you. Prior to email, the same thing was done through regular mail -- to the point that many departments probably have a stack of "reprint request" postcards somewhere in the basement. They look like this [3]. See also the #ICanHazPDF hashtag for the social media version. [1] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115621/is-it-wise-for-researchers-to-thank-alexandra-elbakyan-founder-of-sci-hub-in-t https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115621/is-it-wi... [2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185673 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [3] http://blog.chembark.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/reprintcards_big.jpg http://blog.chembark.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/reprintc...