Chemistry's piracy problem
‘Black’ open access is forcing a shake-up of chemistry journal publishing
Open access (OA) is, depending on your viewpoint, either the hottest debate in academia or a painful exercise in publishers, researchers and libraries passing around a rather hefty bill. Impatient for a resolution, some researchers opt for a third route of questionable legality: black open access. Here, obtained library credentials are used to grab papers behind a paywall and stick them up for free. A study of one such site has found that chemistry has a piracy problem – and one that it can’t ignore.