Recently, the concept of DeSci has become a hot topic and sparked widespread discussion, following nominations by Vitalik and CZ. Literally, DeSci refers to “decentralized science.” It aims to address the centralized issues inherent in traditional academic research processes by changing the publishing and dissemination models of academic activities in a decentralized way, making the research field more open and equitable.

The traditional academic research and dissemination system has deep-rooted structural issues. A few publishers, such as Elsevier and Springer, control top-tier journals and effectively monopolize the distribution channels for high-quality papers, resulting in severe negative effects. Furthermore, due to the inadequacies of the traditional academic evaluation system and other factors, much of the research in recent years has become “paper-based decoration” and “paper supremacy,” stifling innovation and practicality in research. On the other hand, unequal resource distribution has intensified the academic “marginalization” of developing countries, leading to a global imbalance in the research system.

Against this backdrop, we urgently need to rethink: Should academic papers really be behind a paywall? Where lies the key to the challenges in academia? In light of recent public discussions around hot topics like Sci-Hub, we can begin to explore DeSci and look forward to the potential openness and progress that the integration of Web3 and the research field could bring to academia.

Monopoly of Publishers Over Academic Journals

Journals are an important carrier of academic research成果 and a medium for advancing scientific progress. However, one of the biggest problems in today’s traditional academic world is precisely related to journals. From Nature and The Lancet to Cell, the influence of top-tier journals goes beyond publishing and dissemination; they have become the core of the scientific evaluation system. The level of journals where one has published and the number of achievements published in them serve as important credentials in the distribution of academic influence. This has inevitably intertwined the operational model of academic journals with fame and profit, making them commercialized, which is the essence of the current traditional academic system.

From submission to publication, papers must go through a complicated process of editing, peer review, and final publication. There are many areas that can be manipulated. For example, peer review, which is mainly conducted by experts in the field, involves inviting relatively authoritative scholars to evaluate submitted papers. However, these experts typically do not receive financial compensation for their reviews. As a result, this “free” step has become one of the selling points for publishers to increase pricing, leveraging the authority of reviewers as a marketing tool and charging high subscription fees from those who wish to access the journals.

People are not unaware of this operating model, but due to the strong market monopoly of academic publishers, they have no choice but to accept it. A few publishing giants—such as Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley—control nearly 70% of global scientific journals. This monopoly gives publishers strong bargaining power, treating academic journals as high-end commodities, pricing them based on impact factors and prestige, rather than actual operating costs.

Institutions and individuals are forced to pay high fees for journal subscriptions. In some cases, to access specific journals, they must buy bundled packages of hundreds of journals. This unscrupulous bundling sales model is known as “Big Deal.” RELX Group, the parent company of Elsevier, had a profit margin of 30%-40% in the tech sector in 2022, surpassing tech giants like Apple and Google.

These anomalies all point to one issue: the academic world has become highly marketized, and it is a monopolized market. Monopoly creates negative externalities, with the monopolistic profits being harvested by a small group. The ultimate beneficiaries of the academic market are undoubtedly the publishers, who represent capital, while the negative externalities are borne by the researchers and readers in the academic community. \
Impact Factor and Price Elasticity of Demand \
In the traditional academic world, the impact factor plays a crucial role, and the journal’s impact factor is one of the key indicators used to measure its influence. The calculation method for the impact factor is as follows:

For example, if a journal’s impact factor in 2024 is 5.0, it means that each article published in 2022 and 2023 was, on average, cited 5 times in 2024. This is considered a relatively objective measure. Journals with high impact factors have significant prestige and academic influence, often referred to as “top journals.”

Publishing giants often acquire and integrate these top journals into their networks. For example, Elsevier owns The Lancet, Cell, and others; Springer owns Nature and its related journals. These publishers then use the resources they control to monopolize profits in various ways. In addition to subscription fees, publishers also charge authors submission fees. This dual-fee model has created a highly profitable commercial model.

Because publishers “hold the goods,” they can earn monopolistic profits. For instance, RELX Group, the parent company of Elsevier, had over $8 billion in revenue in 2022, with the largest portion coming from STM (Science, Technology, and Medicine) publishing, which had a profit margin of 30%-40%. In contrast, global tech giants like Apple and Google have profit margins of only about 20%-25%, highlighting the vast profit potential of academic publishing. In comparison, subscription fees for academic journals in universities increase by 5%-7% annually, far outpacing inflation rates.

From RELX Group’s 2022 financial report

Such massive profit margins make publishers unwilling to give up this “academic cake.” Coupled with the rigid demand for high-impact journals in academia, publishers use their monopolistic position to maintain high pricing strategies while converting researchers’ intellectual property into their own commercial assets through copyright agreements. This business model has transformed academic journals from bridges for knowledge dissemination into tools of capital, hindering the openness and fairness of scientific research.

In 2019, the University of California system, unable to afford Elsevier’s exorbitant fees, suspended its subscription service for two years. Even at globally renowned top universities, the phenomenon of “researchers being unable to afford papers” exists, let alone the research difficulties faced by smaller institutions.

China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) faces similar issues. In 2016, the Wuhan University of Technology library announced that the price of CNKI had increased by 132.86% from 2010 to 2016. The university considered the price hike too steep and decided to suspend its use of CNKI’s database services. In 2021, Nanjing University announced the suspension of CNKI subscriptions, citing the continued rise in subscription fees, which placed a significant financial burden on the institution. In April 2022, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Literature and Information Center announced the suspension of CNKI database use due to its renewal fees reaching tens of millions of yuan.

To date, CNKI has been fined multiple times for monopolistic and illegal practices, accumulating over 130 million RMB in fines. This also provides an indirect estimate of the scale of profits it gains from its reliance on academic resources.

From “Luzhong Morning News”

At the root of academic resource monopolies lies the high rigidity of demand for research resources among researchers. The sensitivity of market demand to price changes is referred to in economics as “price elasticity of demand.” The more essential a good is, the lower its elasticity, such as food, medicine, and utilities like water and electricity. Conversely, the elasticity is higher for non-essential goods, such as luxury items and fast-moving consumer goods. The demand curves for these two types of goods are illustrated below.

Compared to the general e-book market, the academic publishing market is characterized by being smaller in scale but having high stickiness, resulting in extremely low price elasticity of demand. Since research institutions and scholars are highly dependent on specific journals, publishers face little market competition when it comes to pricing. In such a “must-have market,” once a supplier gains a monopoly position, with few or no substitutes available, monopoly prices can be raised as much as possible, keeping subscription and submission fees at high levels. This academic publishing system has, in turn, exacerbated the inequality in the global distribution of academic resources. Developing countries and smaller institutions often struggle to afford the high costs of journal subscriptions, which limits their academic development. Even medium-sized institutions in developed countries face the same challenges. Prestigious universities and top institutions typically sign “Big Deal” agreements to access comprehensive academic resources, while smaller institutions are often limited to purchasing a few journals or rely entirely on public resources. The more this happens, the harder small countries and small institutions find it to attract talent and funding, trapping them in a vicious cycle.

Academic papers are public goods

From an economic perspective, knowledge itself is non-excludable and non-rivalrous, making it a natural public good. Much of scientific research relies on public funding, especially in the case of basic science, which is typically funded by government grants or non-profit organizations. This means that the process of producing scientific knowledge is a communal effort funded by society as a whole. Therefore, research outcomes should be considered a public resource for all of humanity to share, rather than being monopolized by a few publishers through their various market advantages.

Publishers commodify scientific findings, setting high price barriers to access and using copyright agreements to restrict authors’ freedom to share their work in other contexts. This closed model clearly contradicts the idea of public goods and, further, is at odds with the spirit of modern scientific collaboration. The free access to academic papers is of significant importance in narrowing the resource gap between research entities with different economic capabilities.

Currently, many universities and research institutions in developing countries cannot afford expensive academic journal subscriptions due to budget constraints, making it difficult for researchers to keep up with international cutting-edge research. This further marginalizes their scientific capabilities. If academic papers were freely accessible, it would greatly improve the research conditions in these countries, allowing more researchers to equally participate in global scientific exchanges.

More importantly, if papers are made freely available to a wider group of researchers, educators, and the public, it would accelerate the dissemination and innovation of knowledge. This would have a significant impact in preventing direct societal losses. For example, after Hurricane Katrina, updated meteorological research significantly reduced casualties in subsequent hurricanes; the flood control design concepts used in the “Delta Works” of southwestern Netherlands were based on academic research, preventing a repeat of the 1953 disaster; and timely updates of medical research have saved countless lives.

Sci-Hub: An Attempt to Break Through Publishing Barriers

In the context of high academic journal subscription fees and the massive knowledge barriers in traditional industries, the emergence of Sci-Hub in 2011 can be seen as a revolution. As the world’s largest “shadow library,” Sci-Hub not only challenged the monopoly of publishing giants but also redefined the way knowledge is disseminated. Some have even compared Sci-Hub’s significance to Prometheus stealing fire to bring light to humanity, or to the Renaissance freeing knowledge from the monopoly of the Church. Since its establishment, Sci-Hub has gained increasing recognition, becoming widely known across the internet starting in 2018.

The data comparison in the above chart suggests that the metaphorical comparison of Sci-Hub may not be far off. Even non-specialized researchers, and certainly anyone with a master’s degree or higher, can understand the immense value of a free repository of academic papers. Furthermore, Sci-Hub is not a government entity, nor does it receive any public funding or subsidies; it is entirely created and operated by private individuals, which makes it even more remarkable.

Sci-Hub is a free academic paper access platform founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, a Kazakhstani (formerly Soviet) national. Elbakyan’s original intention was to break the monopoly of academic publishers over knowledge dissemination and allow everyone to equally access academic resources. She has stated, “Scientific knowledge should be a common wealth of all humanity, not a private resource seized by a few.” As of now, Sci-Hub has indexed nearly 90 million academic papers, covering the content of most major global journals.

As a free platform, Sci-Hub obtains academic papers through several methods:

The first method is by utilizing academic resources subscribed to by universities and research institutions, accessing papers through authorized access. Universities and research institutions typically subscribe to databases from major publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley. Sci-Hub gains access to these resources by using accounts provided by academic users and then uses scripts to automatically download papers in bulk within the authorized range, saving them on its own servers. This approach, which “steals” from mainstream publishers, has, of course, been met with resistance. In 2016, a legal document from the Southern District Court of New York revealed that Sci-Hub used legitimate academic accounts to illegally mass-download Elsevier’s papers, leading to a copyright lawsuit filed by Elsevier.

The second method is that once Sci-Hub gained some recognition, it received spontaneous support from many academic users. These could be scholars, students, or research institution staff, who voluntarily provided access or uploaded academic resources to Sci-Hub. This helped Sci-Hub quickly amass a large number of papers. Alexandra Elbakyan, Sci-Hub’s founder, mentioned in interviews that many academic users contacted Sci-Hub, expressing their willingness to contribute accounts or papers to support knowledge sharing.

The third method is somewhat special. Sci-Hub may use certain means to exploit or cause leaks of account information from universities or institutions to gain access to subscription resources.

Reports suggest that some account leaks may have originated from phishing emails targeting university libraries or database users. Sci-Hub used these leaked accounts to download papers in bulk. Some university or institutional users had weak or repeated passwords (such as “123456” or their account name), which made accounts easy to crack. Sci-Hub or its supporters may have used automated scripts to test passwords, finding weak ones and logging in in bulk. Additionally, actions like not updating passwords or failing to deactivate accounts after leaving a position could provide opportunities for Sci-Hub. At this point, it is clear that the known ways Sci-Hub obtains academic resources are highly controversial but still within a debatable range. The more important question is whether Sci-Hub has used extreme illegal means to obtain papers. Although Elbakyan, the founder of Sci-Hub, has repeatedly denied using hacking techniques to directly attack publisher databases, emphasizing that Sci-Hub primarily relies on voluntary account sharing and exploiting technical loopholes, reports from some publishers and security experts suggest that some account leaks may indeed involve hacking techniques, such as using automated tools to crack weak passwords or attacking university or research institution internal networks to steal user login information.

Despite the controversy surrounding Sci-Hub’s methods of acquisition, and its being considered an infringement and illegal by publishers, many scholars and supporters see this behavior as the strongest evidence of Sci-Hub’s resistance to traditional academic monopolies. It is viewed as an inevitable revolution in knowledge sharing and a necessary counterattack against the current publishing system’s monopoly and high pricing model.

At this point, we can see that the attitude of ordinary researchers toward Sci-Hub is the complete opposite of that of publishers. Why? As a non-profit platform, Sci-Hub has opened up access to academic knowledge for hundreds of millions of researchers, students, and ordinary people worldwide. In many developing countries, Sci-Hub is even the only option for researchers to access the latest research results. Statistics show that Sci-Hub has been downloaded over 650 million times, with a significant portion coming from developing countries. For instance, in 2017 alone, Iran and India contributed 25 million and 15 million downloads, respectively. In the shadow of knowledge monopolies, Sci-Hub has benefited almost all researchers, especially enabling access to scientific knowledge for those who are excluded due to economic, geographic, or other reasons, injecting new vitality into the fair dissemination of knowledge.

However, despite Sci-Hub’s significant role in breaking down knowledge barriers, it has, of course, stirred up opposition due to its impact on the interests of others. Its operation faces challenges from various fronts. The first challenge is compliance issues. Sci-Hub poses a direct threat to the commercial models of publishing giants and faces continuous lawsuits and blockages from them. Publishers like Elsevier and Springer have repeatedly sued Sci-Hub, accusing it of copyright infringement. Court rulings typically order Sci-Hub to cease operations, and its domain names have been blocked multiple times. For example, in 2017, a U.S. court ruled in favor of Elsevier, and multiple Sci-Hub domains were forced to shut down. Since its inception, Sci-Hub has been blocked more than 10 times. In countries like India and Russia, publishers have attempted to block access to Sci-Hub through legal means, but users often circumvent this by using VPNs and mirror sites.

The second challenge is a common problem for public goods—the issue of funding. Sci-Hub’s operation entirely depends on user donations and academic accounts, with no stable revenue sources, which makes the platform’s sustainability a major challenge. A 2020 report showed that Sci-Hub’s main source of income was Bitcoin donations, with annual donations totaling around $120,000, which is far from enough to cover the platform’s server and operational costs. However, in 2024, some users launched a memecoin named after Sci-Hub, and after the memecoin became popular, they donated 20% of the total token supply to Sci-Hub, which amounted to approximately $5 million at its current market value, significantly easing Sci-Hub’s financial difficulties.

In summary, while Sci-Hub has achieved significant success in knowledge sharing, its model is not without limitations. First, Sci-Hub’s legal status is unstable, and the platform’s long-term survival is under serious threat. Second, Sci-Hub addresses the issue of knowledge access but does not fundamentally change the commercial model or power structure of academic publishing. Perhaps blockchain technology could offer a better solution to break the academic monopoly. The concept of Decentralized Science (DeSci) can leverage blockchain to enable transparent sharing of academic papers, decentralized management of intellectual property, and fair distribution of funds. Compared to Sci-Hub’s passive access model, DeSci offers a more legalized and systematic approach to knowledge sharing.

DeSci: The Future Path to Solving Academic Monopolies

As the monopolistic nature and high costs of traditional academic publishing become increasingly apparent, Decentralized Science (DeSci) is emerging as a promising solution to these challenges. The core vision of DeSci is to leverage blockchain technology and decentralized principles to create a new research ecosystem that does not rely on a few publishers or funding institutions. In this ecosystem, researchers can receive direct funding, results are openly accessible, and intellectual property is transparently managed, ensuring that all contributors receive fair compensation.

Blockchain offers a fundamental advantage in solving financial-related issues, and DeSci leverages this advantage to streamline the academic publishing process. By recording the publishing, citation, and review processes on the blockchain, DeSci ensures transparency and credibility. Using technologies like smart contracts, it can significantly reduce costs and increase researchers’ income, helping them overcome financial challenges. Tokens, as the core product of blockchain, can provide researchers with diversified income sources.

In the vision of the DeSci platform, papers can be published for free, and researchers are rewarded directly with Tokens based on metrics such as readership and citation counts. Platforms like Arweave have already experimented with combining open access with blockchain, ensuring permanent preservation and fair access to literature. For researchers, DeSci reduces costs while increasing revenue, effectively achieving both “open source and saving.”

Moreover, new organizational structures like DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) bring greater transparency to the DeSci research system. In DeSci, research funding can flow directly to specific research projects, minimizing intermediaries. With DAO decision-making mechanisms based on community votes, funders can choose to support projects they are interested in, while also monitoring the usage of funds in real-time.

A core challenge in knowledge goods, such as papers and research data, is the clarification of intellectual property (IP) rights. In traditional academic publishing, the ownership of IP and profit distribution is often controversial. For example, most academic journals require researchers to transfer the copyright of their papers to publishers, limiting their ability to benefit from the subsequent distribution of their work. While open access (OA) makes papers available for free, the high article processing fees still transfer the economic burden onto researchers.

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are naturally suited to solve IP/ownership clarification issues. DeSci uses IP-NFTs (Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens) to digitize and record the ownership of research outcomes on the blockchain, ensuring transparent and immutable IP ownership, thus facilitating patenting. Researchers can directly own and control their intellectual property without transferring copyright to publishers. Additionally, revenue distribution is automatically handled by smart contracts. Every time a paper is cited or research data is used, the revenue is distributed in real-time to the relevant contributors.

This model not only solves the issues of copyright transfer and unfair profit distribution in traditional publishing systems but also incentivizes the sharing and collaboration of research data. Projects, such as the decentralized biomedical research platform Molecule, have already begun experimenting with this approach. Research teams can transform drug patents into IP-NFTs, using a transparent distribution mechanism that allows both funders and team members to benefit. This mechanism brings new fairness and efficiency to intellectual property management, making it a key element of DeSci’s mission to promote open and shared science.

In summary, compared to Sci-Hub, which creates a shaky academic oasis through non-mainstream methods within the logic of the traditional internet, DeSci is more like an attempt to innovate or even “revolutionize” from the ground up, offering a completely new system and platform for academic resources.

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