The Library Publishing Forum 2021 was held on Zoom, May 10-14. Below, we publish the text of Mikael Böök’s presentation ”How to cooperate with Sci-Hub and Libgen (if at all)?”:
Hi, my name is Mikael Böök, and I live in Finland. The subject of my presentation is the extrajudicial publishing of scientific articles and books, which is also called piracy. I thought I would begin with a little song. It’s a cover of a hit from the nineteen sixties by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. It was called Little Red Riding Hood, but I have have written some new lyrics for my band:
Who’s that I see walking in these woods? Why, it’s the Scholarly Library:
Hey there Scholarly Library
You sure are looking good
You’re everything a Big Tech Clan could want!
Scholarly Library!
I don’t think that a library should
go walking with this spooky crowd alone.
Is copyright a human right? Oh no!
But knowledge is a human right
and science is a commons, too
like Merton said and Sci-Hubs do
I sure think you ought to admit
that science is not property
so give it all with no delay
for everybody free to share
Hey there Scholarly Library
You sure are looking good
You’re everything a Big Tech Clan could want!
(The song can be listened to via Youtube https://youtu.be/Z55Jd-JZbGQ )
See the presentation below: