Frustrated by paywalls, she made millions of research papers free: Meet Alexandra Elbakyan, who hacked paywalls to unlock science
etimes.in / Apr 30, 2026, 17:01 (IST)
A Kazakh computer scientist, Alexandra Elbakyan, launched Sci-Hub in 2011 to provide free access to costly academic research papers, often publicly funded. This platform, built to bypass publisher paywalls, has become a vast global archive. While lauded by open-access advocates for democratizing knowledge, it has also faced significant legal challenges and scrutiny from publishers.