Anna's archive & Z-lib has mirrored all of Sci-hub and are indeed a viable alternative.
Maybe many of us are just subconsciously blocking those types of things out now because it’s so pervasive.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-original-e...
Got it after a bad car accident, some brain damage. Interestingly it also made me race blind as well - I'm probably one of the few people in the world who can say that! I do identify loved ones from the sound of their voice, though, or if not speaking, I can sometimes tell from how they walk and move. Same thing races, it's not hard to tell if someone's voice sounds black or if they walk like a white guy
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.
The technology is already there, isn't it?
I know plenty of people who would gladly "sudo docker compose up" something that would route some data between peers like in tor and donate a few tens of Go like in storj.
The demand is absolutely there.
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.
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...
Its about unchecked corruption, abuse, and the misuse of power. It's a mistake to believe such things are only done by "them" in a different country.
Russia is an oppressive and dangerous regime, sure, but in 2025, there's nothing particularly special about it on human rights and censorship.
In the context of Western censorship of a global resource, Yandex makes a load of sense.
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.
mirror: https://archive.ph/GTnS3
https://hackread.com/fbi-wants-to-know-who-runs-archive-ph
Today is not my day.
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.
If you think the West is becoming more authoritarian than Russia, you're either misinformed or lying.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/12/10/first-russian-fine...
Hope that clarifies it for you.
If it's also going to be against Russia, it would be great.
>"found Glukhikh guilty and imposed a fine of 3,000 rubles ($38)."
"Glukhikh, who did not attend his sentencing hearing, has denied his guilt."
And also:
"FSB officer noticed Glukhikh searching for extremist content while riding next to him on the bus"
That is, an employee of the services saw a search for a banned organization engaged in the murder of Russians and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine and reported it.
You must admit that this is not the same as just looking for information on Yandex.
And the parental comment refers specifically to the Yandex search, and not to isolated cases when an FSB agent suddenly stands behind you.
Keep in mind that millions of Russians search for information about VPN and the rest every day, openly discuss it on social networks and do not receive any punishment for it.> You must admit that this is not the same as just looking for information on Yandex.
I must do no such thing. The other week I searched for the fascist Ivan Ilyin because I wanted to see what kind of ideas Putin built his ideology on. I've also read about the Russian Nazi paramilitary unit Rusich Group, responsible for the murder of Ukrainians. I've googled Maria Lvova-Belova, wanted by the International Criminal Court for kidnapping children. Do you think I should have been arrested for those?
I'm happy you guys can still search for VPNs, enjoy it while you can. Truly the pinnacle of democracy.
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
..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.
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.
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?”.
I am not a student anymore, though.