Academic Publishing Faces Down an Unrepentant Pirate

Alexandra Elbakyan is a 27 year old graduate student exploring the history of science. She’s also making that history herself, as the creator and administrator of Sci-Hub.org, a searchable database of tens of millions of scholarly articles. The articles are from a huge variety of disciplines, and they’re free to access, making them a treasure trove for the advancement of human knowledge.

The only downside? They’re all stolen.