Why I use Sci-Hub

Journals publishing scientific articles come in two flavours: i) the open access journals where the researcher pays a fee to the journal on acceptance of the article; and ii) the older traditional model where the researcher do not pay the journal any fee but if a person wants to access the article, they have to pay a fee.  Generally, universities pay the journals a fee that makes the articles accessible to their scientists.
The articles published in open access journals are freely available to every one because the author(s) have paid the journal.  There is huge push for scientists to publish in open access journals but it is associated with a hefty fee.  In India, no agency gives us a publication money.  If we want to publish in an open access journal, then the payment comes out of our overhead or our consumable.  In JNU, we have been lucky so far because the University got large grants which could be used for publication fee.
In contrast, the journal that follow the traditional model are not freely available to every one.  Unless the University pays the journal, it is a closed door.  The problem is that the fee charged by the journals to access their content is exorbitantly expensive.  The other problem is that most of the research is actually funded by the taxpayer and yet, it is unavailable to them.
Till last year, we were one of those lucky Universities in India that was able to subscribe to many traditional journals.  That stopped last year. Since last year we have had no access to the traditional journals because the University  does not have money to pay them. 
So what do I do if I want to read an article published in the traditional journal like Journal of Biological Chemistry?
I turn to Sci-Hub, the website that provides all such articles for free.  I do not know how these articles are accessed by the owner of the website but I do know I am grateful for it.  The traditional journal do not like Sci-Hub for obvious reasons and of course, it is a copyright violation.  I know it. I also know that it is not correct but I have no choice. Not unless traditional journals make available their contents to all scientists.Or the University finds money to subscribe to these journals once more.

The emperor of all maladies- Siddhartha Mukherjee

I think this is an appropriate post for World cancer Day.

I purchased the book couple of years back in the Book Fair and it languished in my book shelf (rather on my bed) as I found one excuse after another to read it.  But with my mother not well, I have been going back and forth between Delhi and Chennai and the book was perfect for the airplane.

The emperor of all maladies is of course Cancer and Siddhartha Mukherjee takes us through a journey spanning centuries.  The journey starts with leukemia and the discovery of the first set of chemotherapeutics- a starring role is played by  Yellapragada Subbarow whom I know as the person behind Fiske-Subbarow method for estimating phosphate (I spent my Ph.D. days measuring phosphate released from ATP hydrolysis using this very technique).  Then there was of course Gertrude Elion who synthesized a huge number of drugs for treatment of leukemia and for which she was awarded Nobel Prize.  The landscape shifts to sold tumors, especially breast cancer.  The earliest treatments were radical surgery that eventually gave way to surgery augmented with chemotherapy.  Discovery of X-rays by Roentgen paved the way for radiation treatment to destroy tumors.

What causes cancer?  Carcinogens versus virus theory.   And finally, the discovery of proto-oncogenes or genes present within our genome that help the cell to grow and divide.  When these become rogue due to mutations or changes in sequences, they lead to the transformation of a normal cell into a cancer cell.

But stuck me most as I read through the book was the stellar role played by individuals- doctors, professional fund raisers, activists- in this journey.  They pushed the political establishment (Government) to not only establish/provide funds for cancer research but also pushed for prevention as well as cure.  This is something that we do not see in India.  The nearest example would be polio campaign that successive governments pushed for and we now have been declared polio-free.  But the kind of activism that Mary Lasker and Sidney Farber pushed or the campaign that occurred during AIDS epidemic (something that stuck me when I read And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts) is not something we see in India.  I do not see celebrities, newspapers, television, scientists doing these kinds of campaign in India.  It is not that causes are not taken up- they are taken up and dropped very quickly. There is no sustained campaign.  There is no pushing the government.  Even during the Nipah virus epidemic in Kerala, there was no sustained campaign to ensure that money is given for research in this area.  Ultimately, that hurts the science in India.