{"doi":"10.7287/peerj.preprints.3100v3","title":"Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature","abstract":"The website Sci-Hub enables users to download PDF versions of scholarly articles, including many articles that are paywalled at their journal’s site. Sci-Hub has grown rapidly since its creation in 2011, but the extent of its coverage was unclear. Here we report that, as of March 2017, Sci-Hub’s database contains 68.9% of the 81.6 million scholarly articles registered with Crossref and 85.2% of articles published in toll access journals. We find that coverage varies by discipline and publisher and that Sci-Hub preferentially covers popular, paywalled content. For toll access articles, green open access via licit services is quite limited, while Sci-Hub provides greater coverage than a major research university. Our interactive browser at  https://greenelab.github.io/scihub allows users to explore these findings in more detail. For the first time, nearly all scholarly literature is available gratis to anyone with an Internet connection, suggesting the toll access business model will become unsustainable.","journal":"Publication Server of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Goethe University Frankfurt)","year":2018,"id":3537,"datarank":0.10397207708399181,"base_score":0.6931471805599453,"endowment":0.6931471805599453,"self_citation_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":22.178386323199504,"corpus_rank":9377,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":1,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":true,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9357,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2018-02-02","fair_score":44.7917,"fair_percentile":34.87858719646799,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":36686,"name":"Ariel Rodriguez Romero","orcid":"0000-0003-2290-4927","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36688,"name":"Thomas Anthony Munro","orcid":"0000-0002-3366-7149","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36689,"name":"Stephen Reid McLaughlin","orcid":"0000-0002-9888-3168","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36690,"name":"Bastian Greshake Tzovaras","orcid":"0000-0002-9925-9623","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":308,"name":"Casey S. Greene","orcid":"0000-0001-8713-9213","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36691,"name":"Jacob G Levernier","orcid":"0000-0003-1563-7314","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1208,"name":"Daniel S. Himmelstein","orcid":"0000-0002-3012-7446","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":"gold","license":"cc-by","views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":45.0,"fair_a":55.0,"fair_i":37.5,"fair_r":41.6667,"fair_zscore":-0.4003,"fair_rationale":{"fair_score":44.79,"has_llm":true,"dimensions":{"F":{"name":"Findable","score":45.0,"criteria":[{"key":"f_has_doi","label":"Has a persistent DOI","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"DOI present","rationale":null},{"key":"f_repository_presence","label":"Indexed in repositories / literature DBs","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"datacite=0, pmcid=False, pmid=False","rationale":null},{"key":"f_persistent_ids","label":"Resolvable scholarly identifiers (OpenAlex)","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no OpenAlex id","rationale":null},{"key":"f_metadata_richness","label":"Rich, machine-readable metadata","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.5,"signal":null,"rationale":"The paper itself includes author ORCIDs and a DOI, but the underlying data and code are only described at a high level without structured, machine-readable metadata."}]},"A":{"name":"Accessible","score":55.0,"criteria":[{"key":"a_open_access","label":"Open Access / files deposited","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.5,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"Open Access","rationale":null},{"key":"a_retrievable","label":"Free full text retrievable","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"0 OA location(s)","rationale":null},{"key":"a_access_protocol","label":"Clear data/code access protocol","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.5,"signal":null,"rationale":"The text mentions GitHub repositories and figshare deposits, but does not provide clear, step-by-step access protocols or stable, unique identifiers for all data and code."}]},"I":{"name":"Interoperable","score":37.5,"criteria":[{"key":"i_linked_data","label":"Linked datasets / DataCite relations","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"linked_datasets=0, datacite=0","rationale":null},{"key":"i_standard_ids","label":"References data via standard accessions","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"accessions=0, trials=0","rationale":null},{"key":"i_standards","label":"Standard formats, vocabularies & identifiers","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.75,"signal":null,"rationale":"The study relies on standard identifiers (DOIs, ISSNs) and formats (TSV, JSON, SQL), but the use of domain-specific controlled vocabularies is not detailed."}]},"R":{"name":"Reusable","score":41.67,"criteria":[{"key":"r_license","label":"Clear, open reuse license","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no license","rationale":null},{"key":"r_downloads","label":"Demonstrated reuse (downloads)","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"downloads=0","rationale":null},{"key":"r_version","label":"Versioned / maintained","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no version chain","rationale":null},{"key":"r_dataset","label":"Classified as a data resource","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"is_dataset","rationale":null},{"key":"r_reusability","label":"Data-availability statement, license & reproducibility","kind":"llm","weight":2.0,"fraction":0.667,"signal":null,"rationale":"The paper has a data-availability statement, uses CC BY 4.0 license, and provides code repositories, but reusability is limited by incomplete access protocols and lack of full provenance for all external datasets."}]}},"suggestions":["Add machine-readable metadata (e.g., DataCite XML or schema.org JSON-LD) describing the datasets and code.","Provide a stable, citable link (e.g., Zenodo or figshare DOI) for all code and data, with explicit access instructions.","Publish a formal data management plan that documents data formats, vocabularies, and identifiers used.","Include explicit license information for each dataset and code repository (e.g., CC0, MIT).","Document the full provenance of all derived datasets and third-party sources to enhance reproducibility."],"model":"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash","agent_version":"fair_agent_v2","fulltext_source":"unpaywall_pdf"},"fair_model":"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash","fair_agent_version":"fair_agent_v2","fair_fulltext_source":"unpaywall_pdf","fair_has_llm":true,"fair_computed_at":"2026-06-18T06:42:16.990571Z","clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}