What started as a satirical post on LinkedIn concerning the ban of Sci-Hub and Libgen in India ended up leading to an interesting interview for C&EN Magazine. I was asked for my comments on the new court verdict to block Sci-Hub in India.
The C&EN piece features a truncated set of responses, here are my responses to the interview questions in their entirety (written while I was still an employee at Nazareth University in Rochester, NY, and a few weeks away from moving to India):
1. Please can you send me your reaction to this ruling? - This ban quite clearly makes it less feasible for the “One Nation One Subscription” (ONOS) to be thought of as a “choice” for universities in India. Moreover, it places a lot of responsibility in the hands of INFLIBNET. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing: the ONOS initiative has a noble goal and (arguably has) the resources to secure that goal, but its greatest strength (centralization) is also a potential flaw: It turns INFLIBNET’s infrastructure into (what could be) a single point of failure and completely changes the kind of threat model that India’s research ecosystem has known until now. There’s a lot riding on its success, and any enduring disruptions could translate into significant losses for researchers and universities in the country.
ONOS has built a beautiful, well-stocked library, but in its current Phase 1 rollout it functions as an exclusive, members-only club for public institutions. Right now, if you’re a student at a private university, a doctor in a clinic, an independent researcher, or just a curious citizen, you’re on the outside looking in. The door is locked because you don’t have the specific institutional ID required to get in. You’re effectively treated as if you have no right to that knowledge. Future phases promise to extend coverage to private institutions and even the general public, but until then, access remains uneven. For now, shadow libraries like Sci-Hub and Libgen are the practical answer to that locked door. Shadow libraries like Sci-Hub have been the de facto public library for many people who don’t have institutional or economic access to academic publications for a very long time now. They cater to everyone left behind by these “walled gardens.” Quite simply, when an official system denies access, people will find another way. Shadow libraries are that other way, operating on the principle that knowledge shouldn’t have a guest list.
On that note, it should be easy enough to use this case to deduce that a ban indicates a very specific, unattended demand. The ban here is also a backhanded acknowledgement that shadow libraries have become integral to academic practice. If they were marginal, there would be little pressure to block them. This ban is less of a solution and more of an admission that formal access models have failed to meet researchers’ needs. Shadow libraries don’t just indicate piracy; they are infrastructures of resistance to the enclosure of knowledge. Moreover they also function as a commons, sustained by a global “gift economy” of researchers sharing with each other. The free circulation of knowledge underpins open debate and democratic participation. When that access becomes restricted, the very conditions for that debate are weakened.
2. How will you access scholarly papers in the future? - In the same way that I’ve accessed them in the past: Most likely via shadow libraries, unless ONOS or another official system makes it more convenient for me to access those papers through an alternative system that’s easier to use, and more reliable.
3. Does your institution subscribe to papers that you will need access to? - Not always. Subscriptions to journals and publications in certain disciplinary (or interdisciplinary) niches are hard to come by, unless you pay the academic society/publisher in question the fees that they’re asking for. There have been times when library infrastructure like “Interlibrary loan” (ILL) have been incredibly valuable to me over the past several years; ILL has helped me access papers/books that my institution hasn’t had access to, but it doesn’t guarantee instant access of course. University libraries might take several hours (or even several days) to get access to a certain resource. And while digital resources are almost always easier to acquire than a print resource, not everything can be digitized in its entirety (on account of restrictions on fair use), nor can everything be digitized right away. Moreover, when the option to digitize is made available, it could come at a price and with limitations on how much of that resource can be digitized, especially if the resource isn’t already in the public domain. In the light of all these barriers, why wouldn’t anyone in my place just use a shadow library instead? While ONOS may eventually expand access to private universities and the general public in later phases, these delays and restrictions mean that shadow libraries remain the more immediate solution and that the ban on them is nothing but premature. I’ve been fortunate enough to study at both well-funded private institutions in India and public institutions abroad, and even then, I’ve learnt that the best way to get what you need to do research in both places is to focus on being self-reliant. And self-reliance for me in this case has always been associated with access to shadow libraries. Without Libgen or Sci-Hub, I might not have been able to finish my MA or PhD theses in time, nor would I have been able to publish research on the timelines that I have in the past.
4. Anything else you’d like to say? - DELNET has been around in India since 1988, and it operates on a significantly more inclusive membership model. It’s a little puzzling to me that (as far as I know) they didn’t receive a similar, or even remotely significant infusion of public funding. Any library (be it public, private, academic, or corporate) can essentially join them by simply paying up a relatively modest fee. Their democratic approach fosters a truly national (and more decentralized) network, thus preventing the creation of an “information elite” that could act as a gatekeeping force between citizenry and academic resources. Funding for DELNET would have possibly empowered a more diverse range of institutions, directly benefiting many more students and researchers, at least until the later phases of ONOS had been operationalized. Moreover, funding DELNET enhances core, long-term assets: databases and catalogues, inter-library loan platforms, and possibly even professional training for librarians. It could strengthen the foundational “plumbing” of the nation’s information system by promoting the sharing of materials already owned by Indian libraries. Additional funding for them would have amplified a system that is already in place, and alleviated any financial pains that they might have been facing. On the other hand, ONOS will be spending a vast budget on subscription fees that are subject to the whims of international publishers and annual price hikes. This creates a cycle of dependency that is arguably beyond their control. Moreover, if government funding priorities shift, the nation could potentially lose access to crucial resources, leaving nothing permanent behind. In that sense, shadow libraries have so far proven more resilient in practice, and I’m hoping that students, researchers, and citizens don’t shy away from using them for now.
Additionally, in the face of this ban, DELNET is likely to face an exponential increase in inter-library loan requests. This would likely overwhelm the capacity of lending libraries, leading to massive delays and a collapse (or lag) in fill/delivery rates. I’m assuming that their system wasn’t designed to be the primary access method for the entire country, and that the strain would quite possibly threaten its operational model. This in turn, might threaten research productivity on a national level.