Publishing Community Efforts and Solutions to Mitigate the Risks Sci-Hub Poses to Researchers, Librarians, and Publishers

Sci-Hub has been referred to as the “Robin Hood” of science, but in reality, it is not. Sci-Hub is a disruption to the entire scholarly publishing research cycle. Over the last three years, the amount of licensed e-content that has been illegally obtained by Sci-Hub has grown significantly. This content has been acquired through stolen institutional staff and student credentials. Acquiring and misappropriating these credentials creates serious risks for an institution’s systems and users as well as publishers. What can libraries and publishers do to minimize or eliminate these infractions? This discussion about the collective efforts of publishers, libraries, and other organizations will cover how to protect electronic resources, personal data, and adopting best practices in order to better defend from cyberattacks that compromise our organizations. We will discuss how these attacks can occur and steps you can take to protect your library. While, unfortunately, there is no one single solution for this problem, we will also look at a case study of a library that successfully implemented some of these practices to combat the cyberattacks. Through this we will demonstrate that together we can reduce the risks facing researchers, librarians, and publishers created by Sci-Hub.