Inside Higher Education – Sci-Hub, a repository for pirated research papers, is widely acknowledged to be illegal. But is sharing a link to the site illegal, too? “There is little dispute that Sci-Hub, the website that provides free access to millions of proprietary academic papers, is illegal. Yet, despite being successfully sued twice by major American academic publishers for massive copyright infringement, the site continues to operate. Some academics talk openly about their use of the repository — a small number even publicly thank Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan for her contribution to their research. Most academics who use the site, however, choose to do so discreetly, seemingly aware that drawing attention to their activities might be unwise. Just how careful academics should be about using Sci-Hub has become a topic of concern in recent weeks, with many questioning whether sharing links to Sci-Hub could in itself be considered illegal. The discussion started when the team behind Citationsy, a bibliography management tool based in Europe, tweeted that lawyers for Elsevier, a major publisher of academic journals, had threatened to pursue legal action if Citationsy did not remove a link to Sci-Hub from Citationsy’s website. The link formed part of a blog post titled “Hacking Education: Download Research Papers and Scientific Articles for Free.”…