Sci-Hub Document Request Logs Over Six Months

Packed with server log data from Sci-Hub, detailing 28 million document requests served over a 6-month period leading up to March 2016. It was provided by Alexandra Elbakyan, the neuroscientist who founded the platform, to analyze user demographics and document access patterns.

Use Cases

• Analyze geographic distribution of requests using country-level user location data to identify leading requestor nations like Iran, China, and the United States.
• Investigate document access patterns to understand what specific research papers users are reading from the collection of 50 million hosted papers.
• Examine user behavior data to assess claims that Sci-Hub is used for convenience over necessity, even in regions with institutional library access.

Strengths

• Covers 28 million document requests, providing a large-scale view of global research access.
• Offers a detailed view of Sci-Hub usage over a defined 6-month period.
• Data originates directly from the Sci-Hub platform founder, Alexandra Elbakyan.

Limitations

• Specific column structure, sample data, and file formats are unknown, complicating direct analysis.
• The data is from 2016 and may not reflect current usage patterns or the platform's expanded corpus.

Provenance

Source

Alexandra Elbakyan, founder of Sci-Hub.

Collection Method

Server log data from the Sci-Hub platform.

Time Range

6-month period leading up to March 2016.

Freshness

Last updated in August 2021, but the core data covers activity up to March 2016.

Geography

Global, with leading requestors including Iran, China, India, Russia, and the United States.