This changes absolutely nothing about how I use sci-hub. As long as I can find the front page and search for a DOI, I don't care how many search results Google censors.
If I go to a particular Sci-Hub mirror and it's down, I often go to the Wiki page to see the different TLD options. Same for checking some of my favorite Torrent trackers. I don't use Google for any controversial searches anymore, but if Wiki continues to degrade in quality, I'll really be SOL.
I'd wager few people would use Google to search content on Sci-Hub. The normal usage is simply entering the DOI of the paper you want on Sci-Hub's front page.
Note: you can still search for Sci-Hub itself on Google, and find plenty of pages listing active mirrors.
They could censor that in Chrome as well, in multiple ways. That's one reason why having your DNS services provider, browser provider and search provider as the same entity is an extra risk.
I really like yep.com, as per https://www.searchenginemap.com/ it's one of only four search engines that run their own web crawlers. Results are slow but incredibly high-quality.
On this one particular issue. There are certainly things blocked by Russian search engines which have to comply with a rather lengthy list of banned sites since about 2012.
If by more open you mean not easily censored by anybody but Putin. But it's hard to imagine that it's actually more open by any reasonable definition of that word.
By open, they mean fewer results censored. The west censors more results overall than Russia, kind of like how more UK citizens are arrested for speech crimes than Russians, or kind of like how abortion is more legal in Russia than it is in half of the USA.
Which isn't to say Russia is a bastion of free speech, it's not, you still can't go hold an LGBTQIA2s+ pride parade or publicly march demanding you be given the right to hold the parade in the future without being thrown in prison, but they're a poor case study for authoritarianism when the west is rapidly turning more authoritarian than Russia is, while Russia hasn't really changed much in that regard in the last quarter century or so.
“Practical freedom” is a very important measure of freedom. If you are generally more free to do what you want, how much does it matter that you live in a dictatorship? If I live in a democracy with 10,000 laws I can’t meaningful affect with 1 vote, am I free?
You are recommending a search engine that is operating from Russia under one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. The Russian state monitors usage and is definitely censoring all sorts of stuff on it.
Of course Sci Hub was developed by a Russian, which is probably why Yandex is not censoring it. Also, I don't think the Russian government cares much for intellectual property rights of companies in NATO countries, for obvious reasons. But they are definitely censoring a wide range of other topics.
If I was looking for something that is against the interests of Russian oligarchs I wouldn't use yandex.
In the same way it has become obvious that you should not use Google if you are looking for something that is against the interests of American oligarchs.
Interesting, did not think if it that way. I guess why not, with this admin the US is handing China what is left of our scientific lead on a silver platter. Just look at the de-funding of mRNA vaccine research in the US for an example.
More like: "is Google still relevant?" Specially for the kind of people that browses Sci-Hub. It's been months since I've done a search in ad-ridden Google.
Sci-hub has ceased to be mentioned or considered when scientists/grads I know look for papers. Everything has gone back do “Does your institution have a subscription for X?”.
The research papers from 10, 20 or 50 years ago are at least as valuable and frequently more valuable than the papers from this year.
A lot of "new" discoveries are rediscoveries of old things, which may have been not important at the time of their initial discovery, because in order to be useful they depended on advances in other domains, but when those advances happen, suddenly they become important and they can be the base of state-of-the-art techniques.
Therefore Sci-Hub remains very relevant, as a repository containing a very large number of historically-important research papers, including many research papers from the 19th century or early 20th century, which should have been in the public domain, but which can still be found behind paywalls elsewhere.
Check https://open-slum.org/ what's up in the shadow libraries world.
Anna's archive & Z-lib has mirrored all of Sci-hub and are indeed a viable alternative.
if only i had a machine with a petabyte or two to spare to help seed the whole library
Why does it show all red for all zlibs?
There is a big green box at the top of the page explaining that.
Hah. I wonder how someone could miss that, but it does kind of look like one of those “sign up for our newsletter” types of elements.
Maybe many of us are just subconsciously blocking those types of things out now because it’s so pervasive.
It's called "banner blindness."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-original-e...
I use my own library of domains exactly for scenarios like that
https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database
needs a simple p2p desktop client
This changes absolutely nothing about how I use sci-hub. As long as I can find the front page and search for a DOI, I don't care how many search results Google censors.
If I go to a particular Sci-Hub mirror and it's down, I often go to the Wiki page to see the different TLD options. Same for checking some of my favorite Torrent trackers. I don't use Google for any controversial searches anymore, but if Wiki continues to degrade in quality, I'll really be SOL.
The only thing that consistently works for me is the Telegram bot.
>If I go to a particular Sci-Hub mirror and it's down, I often go to the Wiki page to see the different TLD options
You can still Google Sci-Hub, and find plenty of pages listing active mirrors.
Notably, https://www.sci-hub.pub is the top hit for me, and is reliable enough.
Why does it matter though?
I'd wager few people would use Google to search content on Sci-Hub. The normal usage is simply entering the DOI of the paper you want on Sci-Hub's front page.
Note: you can still search for Sci-Hub itself on Google, and find plenty of pages listing active mirrors.
They could censor that in Chrome as well, in multiple ways. That's one reason why having your DNS services provider, browser provider and search provider as the same entity is an extra risk.
There are alternative search engines to Google, in particular some where base censorship is not so easily enforced:
https://yandex.com/search/?text=sci-hub
I really like yep.com, as per https://www.searchenginemap.com/ it's one of only four search engines that run their own web crawlers. Results are slow but incredibly high-quality.
Yandex is also yellow on that map. It lists five search engines that run their own crawlers -- Google, Bing, Yandex, Mojeek, and Yep
its crazy that russian search engine is more "open" compared to US search engine
On this one particular issue. There are certainly things blocked by Russian search engines which have to comply with a rather lengthy list of banned sites since about 2012.
That's not the case.
https://ft.com/content/8a71052d-d26d-4d71-95d8-c8886ca4fdea
Paywall
Oops, sorry about that!
mirror: https://archive.ph/GTnS3
Just realized "archive.ph" is inappropriate for this topic...
https://hackread.com/fbi-wants-to-know-who-runs-archive-ph
Today is not my day.
It’s most definitely not.
There are countless websites and topics removed from Google. It’s impossible to say.
If by more open you mean not easily censored by anybody but Putin. But it's hard to imagine that it's actually more open by any reasonable definition of that word.
By open, they mean fewer results censored. The west censors more results overall than Russia, kind of like how more UK citizens are arrested for speech crimes than Russians, or kind of like how abortion is more legal in Russia than it is in half of the USA.
Which isn't to say Russia is a bastion of free speech, it's not, you still can't go hold an LGBTQIA2s+ pride parade or publicly march demanding you be given the right to hold the parade in the future without being thrown in prison, but they're a poor case study for authoritarianism when the west is rapidly turning more authoritarian than Russia is, while Russia hasn't really changed much in that regard in the last quarter century or so.
“Practical freedom” is a very important measure of freedom. If you are generally more free to do what you want, how much does it matter that you live in a dictatorship? If I live in a democracy with 10,000 laws I can’t meaningful affect with 1 vote, am I free?
Get off it, Russia is arresting people for a single web search: https://zona.media/news/2025/12/10/glukhikh
If you think the West is becoming more authoritarian than Russia, you're either misinformed or lying.
When did a 3,000₽ ($37) fine for searching for nazi symbols turn into an arrest? Your source doesn't say anything about this.
>its crazy that russian search engine is more "open" compared to US search engine
It's crazy that you think there's only one search engine in the US.
Try this one: https://www.bing.com/search?q=sci-hub
>There are alternative search engines to Google,
..and of those, I really wouldn't be giving the one under the direct control of Russia's FSB as my top recommendation.
A little-known American search engine known as Bing[1] lists Sci-Hub just fine though.
[1] https://www.bing.com/search?q=sci-hub
You are recommending a search engine that is operating from Russia under one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. The Russian state monitors usage and is definitely censoring all sorts of stuff on it.
Of course Sci Hub was developed by a Russian, which is probably why Yandex is not censoring it. Also, I don't think the Russian government cares much for intellectual property rights of companies in NATO countries, for obvious reasons. But they are definitely censoring a wide range of other topics.
Check this reports for some details on the types of things that Yandex censors: https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/07/30/disrupted-throttled-an...
If I was looking for something that is against the interests of Russian oligarchs I wouldn't use yandex.
In the same way it has become obvious that you should not use Google if you are looking for something that is against the interests of American oligarchs.
Hail the corporate overlords!!!
So we give Russia and China free access to science, while we block our own people? Smart move ... /s
Interesting, did not think if it that way. I guess why not, with this admin the US is handing China what is left of our scientific lead on a silver platter. Just look at the de-funding of mRNA vaccine research in the US for an example.
Is Sci-Hub still relevant? Haven’t they been frozen for like 5+ years at this point?
More like: "is Google still relevant?" Specially for the kind of people that browses Sci-Hub. It's been months since I've done a search in ad-ridden Google.
I know lots of people who still use google.
Sci-hub has ceased to be mentioned or considered when scientists/grads I know look for papers. Everything has gone back do “Does your institution have a subscription for X?”.
What country are you in, if you don't mind saying?
There is a successor to SciHub which relies on IPFS
I still use sci-hub because the newer the article, the less I trust it.
I am not a student anymore, though.
The research papers from 10, 20 or 50 years ago are at least as valuable and frequently more valuable than the papers from this year.
A lot of "new" discoveries are rediscoveries of old things, which may have been not important at the time of their initial discovery, because in order to be useful they depended on advances in other domains, but when those advances happen, suddenly they become important and they can be the base of state-of-the-art techniques.
Therefore Sci-Hub remains very relevant, as a repository containing a very large number of historically-important research papers, including many research papers from the 19th century or early 20th century, which should have been in the public domain, but which can still be found behind paywalls elsewhere.