Archivists illegally released more than 5,000 coronavirus studies

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In the midst of the 2019-nCoV virus epidemic, a group of archivists has published a database listing more than 5,000 scientific studies related to coronaviruses, reveals Motherboard January 3, 2020. Everything is free and freely accessible on The-Eye, an archiving project managed by a Reddit user named "-Archivist".

The aim is to make as much information as possible available to scientists and non-scientists alike to study the Chinese virus, which was classified as "a global health emergency" by the World Health Organization on January 30, 2020. "These articles have always been written with the aim of being shared with as many people as possible.said a Reddit archivist before adding that "from all angles, paid research is an immoral situation and an ongoing tragedy".

Save lives

Archivists say they clicked when they wanted to read a new scientific article on the coronavirus and that the site asked them to pay $ 39.95 to access it. At first, they searched for all articles related to coronaviruses on "Sci-Hub", a platform allowing via a script to freely access the content of scientific articles normally paying by providing the URL or DOI of Article. This research tool has been at the center of numerous legal battles with the major scientific publishing companies, mainly Elsevier, for copyright infringement. They searched for all publications linked directly or indirectly to coronaviruses between 1968 and 2020.

Archivists then compiled the 5,200 articles found in a directory hosted on The-Eye. "With this first step, we are moving towards the compilation of a catalog of open access research on coronaviruses for scientists, journalists and virology experts around the world to save lives"they said.

In late January 2020, some publishers, including Elsevier, Wiley and Springer Nature, announced the removal of their "paywalls" for certain studies related to coronaviruses. Elsevier communications director Chris Capot said the publisher will soon release more than 2,400 research articles on several strains of the coronavirus on ScienceDirect, a large scientific and medical research database owned by the Dutch publisher and usually requires a subscription. The group of archivists applauded this approach but nevertheless regretted that it had not been decided before.

Open access to copyright

This debate between open access and copyright in the scientific publication sector has existed for a long time. Scientific publishing houses sign contracts with scientists who give them the right to reproduce and represent their articles exclusively. In a position of strength, the publishers have only increased their tariff by "200% to 300% being 1975 and 1995 and 22% to 57% between 2004 and 2007"(report of the Scientific and Technical Information Committee). Despite this increase, sales are not falling because researchers cannot do without articles to work. Faced with these sometimes aggressive practices, those involved in scientific research have promoted open access. Its clearest sign is the emergence of the platform arXiv.

Platforms that publish articles without authorization are very often attacked by scientific publishers. In June 2017, in United States, the sharing sites Sci-Hub and LibGen were ordered to pay a fine of $ 15 million to the Dutch giant Elsevier. In France, the situation is similar. In March 2019, the Paris tribunal com grande instance ordered the blocking of the two platforms and their mirror sites. However, for archivists, it is absolutely scandalous that copyright takes precedence over free access to scientific knowledge, all the more so in times of an epidemic when medical research is essential to save lives.

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