Yes, few facts to support this claim: the french are big consumers of SciHub content (biggest in the EU [1]) and the CNRS (one of the main french national scien

Yes, few facts to support this claim: the french are big consumers of SciHub content (biggest in the EU [1]) and the CNRS (one of the main french national scientific organization) has boycotted traditional publishers on several occasions (e.g. Springer [2]). The CNRS also supports Hal which is the french equivalent of arXiv. I think this has more to do with the copyright lobby than anything else. [1] https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/visuel/2016/05/10/edition-scientifique-geopolitique-d-un-piratage_4916792_1650684.html https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/visuel/2016/05/10/edition-sc... (in french) [2] https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/french-universities-cancel-subscriptions-to-springer-journals-29882 https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/french-universities... [3] https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/