Scientists are Working Overtime and at the Weekends: Comparison of Publication Downloading from Copyrighted and Pirated Platforms

TL;DR

This study analyzes global scientists' publication downloading behaviors from copyrighted and pirated platforms, revealing diverse working patterns and platform preferences influenced by work schedules and environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of scientists' activity patterns and platform preferences, highlighting the influence of work timing and location on access choices.

Findings

Scientists work overtime with distinct patterns across countries.

Preference for pirated platforms increases during overtime, especially at night and weekends.

Work environment transitions impact platform choice for accessing publications.

Abstract

In this study, we track and analyze publication downloads from both copyrighted and pirated platforms to reconstruct scientists' activity patterns from a holistic perspective. Scientists around the world are working overtime, but scientists in different countries have different working patterns. Scientists' preferences for different platforms are influenced by a variety of factors such as working times and workplace arrangements. There are variations by country in terms of whether scientists prefer to work overtime at night, at the weekend, or both at night and on the weekend. When scientists are working overtime, they prefer to use Sci-Hub rather than copyrighted platforms to access scholarly publications This may be because of the transition in their working scenarios as they move from the office to home outside of work hours.