Alexandra Elbakyan

“I have a lot of supporters but they are not well organized. They send me donations but for the most part, their commitment is not really serious.”

“I perceive Sci-Hub as a practical side of my research.”

“I've always considered myself to be Russian: my native language is Russian.”

“I think that whether I can be a Russian spy is being investigated by U.S. government since they learned about Sci-Hub, because that is very logical: a Russian project, that uses university accounts to access some information, of course that is suspicious. But in fact Sci-Hub has always been my personal enterprise.”

“It's useful to know how to go around domain blocking.”

“What was especially surprising for me is that there are many people who view Sci-Hub as some kind of a tool to change the system. Like changing the system was a goal, and Sci-Hub was a tool to achieve it.”

“There should be no obstacles to accessing knowledge.”

“There is the possibility to be suddenly arrested for hacking.”

“Journal paywalls are an example of something that works in the reverse direction, making communication less open and efficient.”

“Elsevier operates by racket: if you do not send money, you will not read any papers. On my website, any person can read as many papers as they want for free, and sending donations is their free will. Why Elsevier cannot work like this, I wonder?”