content: edit: here is a blogpost by a scientist engaged in a free info project, it goes into more detail if you're interested Scientific study has become a vicious cycle, wherein universities and other organizations host/hire scientists only if they manage to keep publishing works, and that almost always entails publishing to "reputable" journals. Just like winning an Olympic medal is a big deal, getting published in Nature or Cell or Science is considered a big deal. Academic scientists are pressured by their employers to publish to well-known and presitigious journals, for the sake of reputation and exposure, since those journals are famous and get many fellow science readers. There is a phrase in the scientific community for this practice: "publish or perish." It works in much the same way that our USA parties work. Technically, anyone can create a political party rather than running as a Democrat or Republican. The reason most don't is because it's considered futile: if you do that, you'll be seen as small time, have trouble gaining traction, and most people will make a snap judgment that you're probably not worth their time, even if you happen to have great things to say. It's somewhat like that. In addition, scientists sometimes have no control over various aspects of their work or publishing, depending on funding. Also, SciHub isn't a publishing platform, it's just an aggregator/piracy site. Ostensibly, papers need to run through the gauntlet of peer review in order to be considered "good enough" for publishing, and SciHub does not have the resources for that and isn't set up for it. If it was made a publishing platform right now, just anyone could publish whatever, and there'd be a lot of junk.