July, 2025
July 2025
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031  
Mushtaq Bilal: SciDB Keeps Billion-dollar Publishers From Profiting Off of Academics’ Work
Jul 7, 2025, 00:28

Mushtaq Bilal: SciDB Keeps Billion-dollar Publishers From Profiting Off of Academics’ Work

Mushtaq Bilal, Head of Growth at Silvi.ai, shared a post on X:

“PSA: Do NOT use SciDB — a database of 92M+ research papers freely available (including those published after 2021 when Sci-Hub stopped).

SciDB makes latest research freely accessible and keeps billion-dollar publishers from profiting off of academics’ work. It’s truly insane.

Here’s how to avoid using SciDB:

First of all, do not go to annas-archive[.]org

Don’t copy the DOI of an article you need and paste it in the search bar under SciDB.

Then don’t click on ‘Download‘ at all because that will just give you the article.

Look, someone put up my own article there. Now other people will be able to read it, which is simply disastrous.

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini cost $20/m each. But NO integration with academic databases.

Chat Academia cost $15/m. Offers integration with multiple academic databases with millions of research papers. Also helps you find research gaps.

Check it out at.

Anna’s Archive also gives you access to 52M+ academic books. You don’t want to access them either.

Don’t type in the name of a book you need in the search bar under ‘Full database.’

If the book appears in search results, do not at any cost click on its title.

In the download options, don’t click on ‘Fast downloads.’Don’t click on ‘Slow downloads’ either.

Hope you found this PSA helpful.

  1.  I’d appreciate if you share this with your friends so they can also avoid using SciDB.
  2.  Follow me for more tips on how to avoid accessing research papers for free.”

More posts featuring Mushtaq Bilal.