Yes, the Internet Archive already used those URLs, or tried to. Bryan was so kind as to share some statistics about it: https://groups.google.com/g/unpaywall/c/

Yes, the Internet Archive already used those URLs, or tried to. Bryan was so kind as to share some statistics about it: https://groups.google.com/g/unpaywall/c/AbNwXdyWZfE/m/OVoVmxOTAQAJ https://groups.google.com/g/unpaywall/c/AbNwXdyWZfE/m/OVoVmx... Having an URL to something that is supposed to serve a PDF doesn't mean that you actually get it. Publishers like Elsevier or Wiley require a cookie/JavaScript dance and/or place heavy rate limits; whatever PDF hosted by them is never really accessible, even if it's ostensibly open access. The "youtube-dl for papers" would do what youtube-dl does, i.e. take the URL and execute whatever JavaScript or other trickery the target page/website requires before it serves the content.