Announcing PeerJ-SciHub

“You’re just not Open Access enough” is how the conversation started. This was a bit confusing, after all, we are an OPEN ACCESS publisher. Everything is already free to read and download. Right?

“Yes, true.” She continued, “However, what people really want is to feel like they’re getting something of value for free. Maybe even feel a little naughty about getting it for free. But these are also academics, so they want to feel that they’re part of something bigger than themselves. A just cause that they can participate in that is changing the world. Like Robin Hood.” At that point, the VOIP call was breaking up, and so we ended the conversation with our Russian colleague.

We sat there thinking to ourselves about the requirements for the new PeerJ:

– We have to more Open Access somehow – faster and direct to PDF?
– We need to give people a cause to believe in. Something that feels bigger than themselves
– And they want to feel a little bit naughty participating in it (for giggles we assumed)

This wasn’t going to be easy, but we decided to hack ourselves, or in business terms, cannibalize our own product, to give the reader a direct, no nonsense I.V. injection of PDFs. To complete that endorphin high requirement we took inspiration from our Russian friend; thus was born “PeerJ-SciHub.”

To use PeerJ-SciHub click the gif below or bookmark https://peerj-scihub.com

Some search tips:
– Surround a search with double quotes “coral bleaching” for exact phrase matching
– Filter by citations, e.g. coral bleaching AND maxcitations:>5
– Filter by downloads, e.g. coral bleach AND downloads:>10000
– Filter by publication date, e.g. crispr AND published:[2018-01-01 TO 2019-04-01]
– Filter by author institution, e.g. authorInstitutions:Cambridge

From all of us at PeerJ – Have a great April 1st!