Phys.org – “Two independent studies looking at two aspects of paywalls versus free access to research papers suggest that trouble may lie ahead for traditional journals that continue to expect payment for access to peer-reviewed research papers. In the first study, a small team of researchers from the U.S. and Germany looked at the number of freely available papers on the internet using a web extension called Unpaywall—users enter information and the extension lists sources online for free. In the second study, a team with members from Canada, the U.S. and Germany looked at the popularity of a website known as Sci-Hub that collects and freely distributes research papers. Both groups have written papers describing their studies and results and have uploaded them to the PeerJ Preprints server. Free access to research papers is a hot topic in the research community, perhaps indicating coming changes to the status quo…”

• Himmelstein DS, Romero AR, McLaughlin SR, Greshake Tzovaras B, Greene CS. (2017) Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3100v1 doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3100v1 , peerj.com/preprints/3100v1/
• Piwowar H, Priem J, Larivière V, Alperin JP, Matthias L, Norlander B, Farley A, West J, Haustein S. (2017) The State of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3119v1 doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3119v1, peerj.com/preprints/3119/