While sci-hub undoubtedly plays a role here, in my field the arXiv is really what has obviated the necessity of journal subscriptions. Essentially all math papers, in both the preprint and post-review form, can be found on the arXiv. I would also emphasize that, with regard to decisions involving journal subscriptions and access, authors generally have very little power. As a researcher, if you have the grant money, you can pay to make your work open access; alternatively, you can restrict yourself to only open access journals (which in some fields, could come at significant opportunity cost).

arXiv is a very important entity here, correct. It performs a different role though.

arXiv positions itself in a place before the journals in the food chain; anyone can upload a paper there, including authors who submit to journals, but all of these papers are "preliminary", as in, "before journal edits". It's questionable if journal edits actually bring any value, but nonetheless, their status is that they're going to be "likely different in some way" than whatever journals publish.

SciHub allows free access to the "final" pieces of work, even if they're equivalent (or even equal) to the "non-final" ones available on arXiv. That's a big mental difference.

>> Essentially all math papers, in both the preprint and post-review form, can be found on the arXiv.

Still, that's just one field. Sci-Hub covers everything. It's an equal opportunity provider.

Probably worth mentioning Andrej Karpathy's http://arxiv-sanity.com as the flood of papers to read keeps growing

Most journals still publish a list of titles in the open, so you can 'follow' influential journals, and read the relevant articles on the arxiv.

Google Scholar scrapes arXiv and coalesces the results with journal updates, i.e. it will show the entry for a new journal article with a clearly visible [PDF on arXiv] link when this is available. Google Scholar also scrapes institutional repos (at universities etc.).

Google Scholar is a service to humanity. However, I do wonder: how comprehensive is it?

is there a similar site for physics papers (getting real tired of the usual new special snowflake melting in the spotlight physics aggregators)

also interested in such sites for optics, engineering (or throw whatever at me what you got!)

ArXiv does physics too. At least for particle physics, it's all there.

I thought this was universal knowledge. I'm not requesting another ArXiv, but a site providing a similar quality selection of papers

Why isn't functionality like this in Google Scholar yet?

Scholar isn't a 'sexy' thing to work on at Google. I'm surprised it still exists, frankly. Google products that aren't career-builders tend to languish.

SciHub is not open access based on the usual meaning of the term. SciHub doesn't give you reuse rights, or any rights at all.

> By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Open_Access_Initiativ...

Then again, isn't that always the case when a system is rotten but those in power have no incentives to change, and eventually said change is accomplished through a form of civil disobedience?

I'm taking a look at SciHub based on your suggestion. I see that they have journals for various biology related fields.

I decided to take a look at the biotechnology journal https://scihub.org/ajbms/current-issue/

However, it seems the current issue is July 2017? Is it not updated frequently?

Thank you.

SciHub started long after the move towards open access was underway. The campaign, and ongoing incremental steps by funding agencies, has been going on for 15 years.

Yes, and SciHub single-handedly achieved more for the cause that all those other efforts did for the past 20 years. People working on those efforts admit it:

http://sci-hub.tw/http://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1116

Doesn't SciHub source its articles from journals though?