Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Aug 24, 2020)
Date Submitted: Feb 27, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Open access redefined: Survey data and literature review on the impact of Sci-Hub in orthopedic research
ABSTRACT
Background:
Since Alexandra Elbanyan founded Sci-Hub in 2011, the website has been used by a growing number of researchers worldwide. Sci-Hub is a so-called shadow library or guerilla open access format bypassing publishers’ paywalls, giving everyone free access to scientific papers. Until today, there are no publications about orthopedic and trauma surgeon usage Sci-Hub or other “pirate-sides” and how it may influence their work.
Objective:
The goal of this study was to objectify Sci-Hub’s use and potential impact to research the field of orthopedic and trauma surgery.
Methods:
Orthopedic and trauma surgeons of four university hospitals in Germany and Europe were consulted using a standardized questionnaire containing multiple items about the use and evaluation of Sci-Hub. In addition, the Medline and Cochrane databases were screened for all studies related to Sci-Hub. Two reviewers independently reviewed all articles and the references of these articles.
Results:
69% of all orthopedics knew Sci-Hub and 66,7% used it on a regular basis. 77% of younger participants (<45 years old) knew the webpage, while only 25% older participants (>45 years old) knew the webpage. 90% found the quality of their citation and research was enhanced since using Sci-Hub. On a scale of 1 to 10, user friendliness was rated with a mean rating of 7.58 (95%; CI: 7.262 – 7.891). Ethical or legal concerns among users seem mixed. On a scale of 1 (no concerns) to 5 (many concerns), the mean score was 2.39 (95%; CI: 2.154 – 2.615). 89% of doctors using Sci-Hub would recommend it to other colleagues.
Conclusions:
The quality and number of articles in Sci-Hub is outstanding, and the rate of young researchers using the website is high. The most important shift in literature research for decades is a phenomenon mostly used by young researchers and is not the subject of current research itself. Sci-Hub has already and will further change how orthopedic research works.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.