Analysis and news


Working together to reduce cyber impact Nick Fowler and Steven Inchcoombe introduce SNSI, an initiative to solve the cyber challenges facing the scholarly communications industry


Last year TheWashington Post and several other media outlets reported that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was investigating pirate website Sci-Hub. According to the newspaper, the


investigation, which has both criminal and intelligence-gathering elements, is being undertaken because there is a suspicion that the founder of Sci-Hub, Alexandra Elbakyan, may be working with Russian intelligence to steal US military secrets from Department of Defense (DoD) contractors. Why does the activity of an illegal website, supposedly operating in just academic research, warrant investigation by the DoJ? The answer is simple – cybercrime,


to which the higher education sector is particularly vulnerable. In fact, the education sector is the third largest target of cyberattacks, ahead of retail, with library systems routinely storing a tremendous amount of personal data, making them dangerously attractive targets. Rutgers University has reportedly had to spend $3m on cybersecurity. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre last year published its first report on the cyber threat to UK universities, noting that some of the effects of state-sponsored espionage include damage to the value of research, notably in STEM subjects, a fall in investment by public or private sector in affected universities, and damage to the UK’s knowledge advantage. In the specific case of Sci-Hub,


academic content (journal articles and books) is illegally harvested using methods such as abusing legitimate login credentials to access the secure computer networks of major universities and by hijacking “proxy” credentials of legitimate users that facilitate off-campus remote access to university computer systems and databases. These actions result in a door opened up to universities’ networks through which Sci-Hub, and potentially others, can gain access to other valuable institutional databases, such as personnel and medical records, patent information, and grant details. This can cause significant damage. It


24 Research Information April/May 2020


can result in slowing IT systems, attacks and phishing; loss of access to electronic resources; personal profiles accessed and amended, including changing mobile/cell numbers; skewed usage metrics; virus and/or monitoring personal computers – not to forget unnecessary time and effort of staff analysing, then dealing with this activity. Such activities threaten the scholarly


communications ecosystem and the integrity of the academic record. Sci-Hub has no incentive to ensure the accuracy of the research articles being accessed, no incentive to ensure research meets ethical standards, and no incentive to retract or correct if issues arise. As this issue goes beyond illegal accessing of academic research,


“Such activities threaten the scholarly


and made available across a range of platforms faster than music or film content. Open access articles are immediately accessible and sharable by anyone who wishes to read them. Most publishers have policies that allow authors to post articles to publicly accessible platforms, such as author websites and institutional repositories, and most fully support pre-print servers, which allow researchers to post preliminary versions of articles, to share breaking developments. Publishers worked together to create


communications ecosystem and the integrity of the academic record”


publishers cannot tackle it alone, but with librarians, university network security officers and others responsible for cybersecurity in academic institutions. A new pan-publisher initiative has been set up to encourage that. The Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI) brings together publishers and institutions to solve cyber challenges threatening the integrity of the scientific record, scholarly systems and the safety of personal data. The group will explore, for example, how the dangers related to Sci-Hub use can be included in information literacy and other library outreach programmes. This action shouldn’t, however,


be seen in isolation and is designed to complement other activity from publishers to address Sci-Hub’s supposed USP – all research from all publishers can be accessed in one place. Academic research was digitised


Crossref so research outputs could be easy to find, cite, link, assess and reuse. Publishers have also been working together as part of RA21, now called seamlessaccess.org, to make access to articles easier for researchers using their institutional logins when not on campus. Once implemented, it will negate the need for researchers to log in again, each time they move between publishers’ websites. Most recently, a group of publishers came together to develop GetFTR (Get Full Text Research), a new, free-to-use solution that will enable faster access for researchers to the published journal articles they need from a wide variety of discovery tools that already use. A combination of forces are needed to


protect institutions from cyberattacks, and ensure researchers are presented with the best user experience, safe in the knowledge the work they are accessing is correct, up-to-date and properly connected to the scientific record. Awareness of the damage Sci-Hub is inflicting on institutions and academia needs to be increased. Law enforcement efforts to address the site’s illegality need to be supported. And publishers need to continue making their platforms more interactive and interconnected, so that our communities can access the research we publish how they want. We need to demonstrate that Sci-Hub is not only harmful to the research community, but that it is also redundant.


Nick Fowler is chief academic officer at Elsevier, Steven Inchcoombe is chief publishing officer at Springer Nature; they are co-chairs of the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI)


@researchinfo | www.researchinformation.info


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