Sci-Hub, The Repository Of 'Infringing' Academic Papers Now Available Via Telegram

We've been covering the saga of Sci-Hub for a while now. It's the search engine for academic papers that includes a few tricks to access more paywalled academic papers for free, using the academic logins that have been shared with the site for the sake of retrieving more research. Academic journal publishing giant Elsevier has been waging a war with the site, first getting an injunction against its original domain back in December, only to have it quickly pop up elsewhere. Just a little while ago, we noted that the site had lost another domain, though it was still available in a few more places -- as well as directly at its IP address and at a Tor hidden site.

And now Sci-Hub has announced that it's available via the popular messaging app Telegram as well:

Now you can use Sci-Hub in Telegram @scihubot to access full-text articles pic.twitter.com/eEJDoKfm1Z

- Sci Hub (@Sci_Hub) May 14, 2016

From the looks of it, you can just send it a message with the title you want, and it sends you back a download link -- within seconds. From a researcher's standpoint, this seems like it must be quite handy, and certainly again feels a lot like the fairly standard #icanhazpdf process used on social media by academics all the time. Just a little more automated.

Now, I'm sure Elsevier won't be happy at all about this, but the ability to share academic knowledge for the purpose of learning was supposed to be something that copyright law encouraged, rather than shut down. And the more Elsevier freaks out about this, the more people become aware of the service.

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