Copyright-infringing downloads of radiology journal articles impact nearly all top journals, with a majority of activity coming from China, according to new research published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
“In recent years, the nature of academic publishing—more broadly as well as within radiology—has undergone profound change,” wrote first author Gelareh Sadigh, MD, of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and colleagues. “Journals have shifted from traditional print to new digital subscription offerings, and the business models surrounding that transition remain in evolution. Whether or how publication pirating involves scholarly radiology journals is yet unknown. As such, an understanding of the characteristics of downloaded pirated radiology journal manuscripts might help radiology journal publishers identify and implement strategies to ensure financial sustainability."
Sadigh and colleagues sought to determine the download characteristics of internationally pirated radiology journal articles using Sci-Hub, which the authors described as “the world’s largest scholarly literature pirate website.” Sci-Hub, the authors noted, hosts more than 60 million scientific manuscripts and permits readers to bypass journal paywalls and duplicate copyrighted content.
The researchers retrieved download requests between Sept. 2015 to Feb. 2016 from Sci-Hub’s public server logs. They focused specifically on “high-impact factor” radiology journals including Radiology, NeuroImage, the American Journal of Roentgenology, European Radiology and the European Journal of Radiology, among others.
“Although pirated manuscript downloading impacted nearly all studied journals, they were most frequent for Radiology, NeuroImage, and the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology and involved review articles much more frequently than original scientific research manuscripts,” the researchers noted.
Sadigh et al. found less than 1 percent of all pirated article downloads were from 49 radiology journals with high impact factor. Total monthly downloads ranged from 6,715 to 24,449.
Almost 10 percent of radiology downloads were from Radiology, 9.6 percent were from NeuroImage, 7.6 percent were from the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, and 7.3 percent were from the American Journal of Roentgenology.
About 17 percent of all downloads were from China, 7.6 percent from India, and 6 percent from Iran. The researchers noted Portugal, Chile and Tunisia topped the list in terms of per capita downloads.
Only 4 percent of download requests were from the U.S., with California accounting for 35 percent of those requests.
The researchers noted that publishers may have to adapt to other business and access models to maintain their profitability, much like the music industry did with streaming services.
“In many ways, Sci-Hub is to the scholarly publishing industry as Napster was to the record industry,” the researchers wrote. “We thus believe that it would be wise for Elsevier and other publishers to study the history of what did—and did not—work in other industries. The sustainability of many academic journals may be at stake.”
As a senior news writer for TriMed, Subrata covers cardiology, clinical innovation and healthcare business. She has a master’s degree in communication management and 12 years of experience in journalism and public relations.