What do Indian Researchers download from Sci-Hub

Abstract: Recently three foreign academic publishers filed a case of copyright infringement against Sci-Hub and LibGen before the Delhi High Court and prayed for complete blocking these websites in India. In this context, this paper attempted to assess the impact that blocking of Sci-Hub may have on Indian research community. The download requests originating from India on a daily-basis are counted, geotagged and analysed by discipline, publisher, country and publication year etc. Results indicate that blocking Sci-Hub in India may actually hurt Indian research community in a significant way.