Alexandra Elbakyan

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Alexandra Elbakyan
Alexandra Elbakyan
Elbakyan in 2010 at Harvard University in the United States
Born (1988-11-06) November 6, 1988 (age 28)
Almaty, Kazakh SSR, USSR
Fields Neural engineering
Alma mater Satbayev Kazakh National Technical University
Known for Creating Sci-hub
Website
engineuring.wordpress.com

Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan (Russian: Алекса́ндра Аса́новна Элбакя́н[1]) is a Kazakhstani graduate student,[2] computer programmer and the creator of the site Sci-Hub.[3][4] The New York Times has compared her to Edward Snowden for leaking information and because she avoids American law by residing in Russia,[5] and Ars Technica has compared her to Aaron Swartz.[6]

Biography[edit]

Elbakyan was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan on 6 November, 1988.[7][8] She is of Armenian, Slavic and Asian descent.[9] Elbakyan undertook university studies in Astana, where she developed skills in computer hacking. A year working in computer security in Moscow gave her the money to proceed to Freiburg in 2010 to work on a brain-computer interface project, and she developed an interest in transhumanism, which led her to a summer internship at Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, where she studied "Neuroscience and Consciousness".[10][11][12] In 2009 she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the Kazakh National Technical University, specializing in information security.[13][14]

She began Sci-Hub on her return to Kazakhstan in 2011, characterised by Science as "an awe-inspiring act of altruism or a massive criminal enterprise, depending on whom you ask".[15] Following a lawsuit brought in the US by the publisher Elsevier, Elbakyan is presently in hiding due to the risk of extradition.[16] According to a 2016 interview, her neuroscience research is on hold, but she has enrolled in a history of science master’s program at a “small private university” in an undisclosed location. Her thesis focuses on scientific communication.[15] In December 2016, Nature Publishing Group named Alexandra Elbakyan as one of the 10 people who most mattered in 2016.[17]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Элбакян Александра Асановна / RUNET-ID". runet-id.com. Retrieved 2017-01-07. 
  2. ^ Rosenwald, Michael S. (30 March 2016). "This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they're free.". Washington Post. The 27-year-old graduate student from Kazakhstan is operating a searchable online database of nearly 50 million stolen scholarly journal articles, shattering the $10 billion-per-year paywall of academic publishers. Elbakyan has kept herself beyond the reach of a federal judge who late last year issued an injunction against her site, noting that damages could total $150,000 per article — a sum that Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, a journal in her database, could help calculate. But she is not hiding from responsibility. 
  3. ^ "Transcript and translation of Sci-Hub presentation". University of North Texas. Retrieved January 1, 2017. We have a recent addition to our lineup of speakers that we’ll start off the day with: Alexandra Elbakyan. As many of you know, Alexandra is a Kazakhstani graduate student, computer programmer, and the creator of the controversial Sci-Hub site. The New York Times has compared her to Edward Snowden for leaking information and because she avoids American law, but Ars Technica has compared her to Aaron Swartz—so a controversial figure. 
  4. ^ Dylla, H. Frederick (2016-03-21). "No need for researchers to break the law to access scientific publications". Physics Today. doi:10.1063/PT.5.2031. ISSN 0031-9228. 
  5. ^ Murphy, Kate (2016-03-12). "Should All Research Papers Be Free?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-03-28. DRAWING comparisons to Edward Snowden, a graduate student from Kazakhstan named Alexandra Elbakyan is believed to be hiding out in Russia after illegally leaking millions of documents. While she didn’t reveal state secrets, she took a stand for the public’s right to know by providing free online access to just about every scientific paper ever published, on topics ranging from acoustics to zymology. 
  6. ^ Kravets, David (3 April 2016). "A spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz is angering publishers all over again". Ars Technica. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on January 11, 2017. Retrieved 18 April 2016. Just as Swartz did, this hacker is freeing tens of millions of research articles from paywalls, metaphorically hoisting a middle finger to the academic publishing industry, which, by the way, has again reacted with labels like "hacker" and "criminal." Meet Alexandra Elbakyan, the developer of Sci-Hub, a Pirate Bay-like site for the science nerd. It's a portal that offers free and searchable access "to most publishers, especially well-known ones." 
  7. ^ "Alexandra Elbakyan". Vk.com (in Russian). Retrieved 6 October 2016. 
  8. ^ Coralie Trinh Thi (2016). "Alexandra Elbakyan: la pirate scientifique" (in French). Archived from the original on January 11, 2017. Née en 1988 au Kazakhstan, elle est fascinée par « les livres de science soviétiques, qui expliquent scientifiquement tous les miracles attribués aux dieux ou à la magie ». Elle étudie les neurosciences à Astana et son université n’a pas les moyens de payer l’abonnement aux publications des éditeurs scientifiques. Pour son projet de recherche (l’interactivité cerveau-machine), elle aurait dû acheter chaque article autour de 30 dollars – un prix faramineux quand on sait qu’il faut consulter des dizaines ou des centaines d’articles. Elle n’a qu’une solution : les pirater. 
  9. ^ "Alexandra Elbakyan". Twitter.com. 19 February 2016. Retrieved 6 October 2016. 
  10. ^ "People". Georgia Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on January 11, 2017. Alexandra Elbakyan [...] Summer 2010 [...] Programming and data analysis 
  11. ^ Gameiro, Denise Neves (June 4, 2016). "This 27-year-old Woman is Shaking up the Scientific Publishing Industry". Archived from the original on January 11, 2017. Alexandra Elbakyan, a 27-year-old researcher from Kazakhstan, started out with the same issues. While she was studying ‘Neuroscience and Consciousness’ in labs at Georgia Tech (US) and University of Freiburg (Germany), she was forced to pirate papers for herself and other researchers. 
  12. ^ Peet, Lisa (August 25, 2016). "Sci-Hub Controversy Triggers Publishers' Critique of Librarian". Library Journal. Archived from the original on January 11, 2017. Elbakyan, a software developer and neurotechnology researcher, created Sci-Hub originally out of frustration over lack of access to scholarly material in her native Kazakhstan. After studying neuroscience and transhumanism (a futurist movement positing that the human species can evolve through technology) at Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, Elbakyan returned to Kazakhstan, where Internet access was limited, article purchase fees steep, and interlibrary loan periods long. She often located pirated journal articles through online content access communities, and helped procure them for her fellow students; eventually she decided to automate the process and launched Sci-Hub. 
  13. ^ Elbakyan, Alexandra (January 27, 2015). "Brain-Computer Interfacing, Consciousness, and the Global Brain: Towards the Technological Enlightenment". Archived from the original on January 11, 2017. Alexandra Elbakyan is a neurotechnology researcher and advocate, and a software developer. Alexandra holds a BS in CS from Kazakh National Technical University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, specializing in information security. During the last year of her study, she worked on a security system that would recognize individuals by their brainwaves. After obtaining her BS she worked for a while with the Human Media Interaction Group at the University of Twente on the mind-controlled game Bacteria Hunt. Later she joined the Human Higher Nervous Activity Lab dedicated to the study of consciousness. Currently she is working in The Brain Machine Interfacing Initiative at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg on the development of ECoG-based hand prostheses 
  14. ^ "Bacteria Hunt:A multimodal, multiparadigm BCI game" (PDF). University of Twente. p. 22. Alexandra A. Elbakyan graduated from KazNTU with a Bachelor degree in IT in June 2009. She conducted a study regarding person identification by EEG in her final year thesis. She is going to continue her research in brain-computer interfaces and brain implants 
  15. ^ a b Bohannon, John (29 April 2016). "The frustrated science student behind Sci-Hub". Science. 352 (6285). doi:10.1126/science.aaf5675. 
  16. ^ Bohannon, John (29 April 2016). "Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone". Science. 352 (6285): 508–512. doi:10.1126/science.aaf5664. Elbakyan also answered nearly every question I had about her operation of the website, interaction with users, and even her personal life. Among the few things she would not disclose is her current location, because she is at risk of financial ruin, extradition, and imprisonment because of a lawsuit launched by Elsevier last year. 
  17. ^ "Nature's 10". Nature. 540 (7634): 507–515. 2016-12-22. doi:10.1038/540507a. 

External links[edit]

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