#ICanHazPDF is a
hashtag used on
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
to request access to
academic journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...
articles which are behind
paywall
A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of ...
s.
It began in 2011 by scientist Andrea Kuszewski.
The name is derived from the meme
I Can Has Cheezburger?
I Can Has Cheezburger? (abbreviated as ICHC) is a blog-format website featuring videos (usually involving animals) and image macros. It was created in 2007 by Eric Nakagawa (Cheezburger), from Hawaii, and his friend Kari Unebasami (Tofuburge ...
Process
Users request articles by tweeting an article's title,
DOI or other linked information like a publisher's link, their email address, and the hashtag "#ICanHazPDF". Someone who has access to the article might then email it to them. The user then deletes the original tweet.
Alternatively, users who do not wish to post their email address in the clear can use direct messaging to exchange contact information with a volunteer who has offered to share the article of interest.
Use and popularity
The practice amounts to
copyright infringement
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
in numerous countries,
and so is arguably part of the '
black open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or Gratis v ...
' trend.
The majority of requests are for articles published in the last five years, and most users are from English-speaking countries.
Requests for biology papers are more common than papers in other fields, despite subscription prices for chemistry, physics, and astronomy being, on average, higher than for biology.
Possible reasons for people to use the hashtag include the reluctance of readers to pay for article access and the speed of the process compared to most university
interlibrary loan
Interlibrary loan (abbreviated ILL, and sometimes called interloan, interlending, document delivery, document supply, or interlibrary services, abbreviated ILS) is a service where patrons of one library can borrow materials and receive photocopies ...
s.
See also
*
Academic journal publishing reform Academic journal publishing reform is the advocacy for changes in the way academic journals are created and distributed in the age of the Internet and the advent of electronic publishing. Since the rise of the Internet, people have organized campai ...
*
Anna's Archive
Anna's Archive is a free Non-profit organization, non-profit online shadow library metasearch engine providing access to a variety of book resources (also via InterPlanetary File System, IPFS), created by a team of anonymous archivists (referre ...
*
Open Access Button
*
Library Genesis
Library Genesis (Libgen) is a file-sharing based shadow library website for scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines. The site enables free access to content that is otherwise p ...
*
Sci-Hub
*
Shadow library
Shadow libraries are online databases of readily available content that is normally obscured or otherwise not readily accessible. Such content may be inaccessible for a number of reasons, including the use of paywalls, copyright controls, or othe ...
*
Z-Library
Z-Library (abbreviated as z-lib, formerly BookFinder) is a shadow library project for file-sharing access to scholarly journal articles, academic texts and general-interest books. It began as a mirror of Library Genesis, from which most of it ...
References
External links
*
{{Use dmy dates, date=September 2019
Hashtags
Copyright campaigns
Academic publishing
2011 introductions