Not being in a scientific field, one of the previous times this came up I asked if any of the working scientists felt like SciHub had positively impacted their work: exposing them to more papers than they would have read, guiding them in different ways, etc. and the answer was a pretty overwhelming "ohmygodyes".
From the outside, it's very difficult to see this as anything but a public good. It certainly seems like literally the entire world is benefitting from this (including the scientists involved in the publishing) and its being held back by a handful of publishers.
From the outside, it's very difficult to see this as anything but a public good. It certainly seems like literally the entire world is benefitting from this (including the scientists involved in the publishing) and its being held back by a handful of publishers.