UNVEILING THE SHADOWS: EXPLORING SHADOW LIBRARIES AND BLACK OPEN ACCESS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Abstract

This article examines the phenomenon of shadow libraries and black open access in the context of the rapidly changing academic library environment. Shadow libraries are alternative systems that provide unauthorized access to large collections of knowledge and intellectual and research content. The article analyses the moral and legal implications of these libraries, their impact on the traditional academic publishing system, and the consequences of their emergence for the global openness and democratization of knowledge in academia. The paper addresses the ethical and legal dimensions of shadow libraries, on the one hand, as illicit micro-infrastructures that facilitate the unlicensed sharing of scholarly outputs; and, on the other, as alternate infrastructures that unsettle the routinised scholarly publication practices of academia. In the process, it reflects on the implications that these libraries have for democratizing access to knowledge in universities, and for the democratization of knowledge access more globally. The study foregrounds the secret lives of these other commons. It attempts to contribute to a difficult conversation on alternative forms of knowledge commons, in this case, the scholarly knowledge commons. The article aims to analyze how scholarly communication, knowledge access and technology are getting reconfigured through such shadow libraries; it also delves into the specific challenges that shadow libraries in India suffer from and the attendant legal issues, and how all this might further affect publishing and academia. This critical account thus finds its place in a context of understanding how shadow libraries represent an element of complexity that is growing with digitality.