Alexandra Elbakyan

Alexandra Elbakyan
Александра Элбакян
Elbakyan in 2021
Born (1988-11-06) 6 November 1988
Alma mater
Occupations
Known forSci-Hub and Sci-Net
MovementOpen Access
Scientific career
FieldsNeural engineering, Computer science
Websitesci-hub.ru/alexandra (archived 2025-05-19)

Alexandra Asanovna Elbakyan (Russian: Алекса́ндра Аса́новна Элбакя́н; Armenian: Ալեքսանդրա Ասանովնա Էլբակյան; born 6 November 1988) is a Kazakhstani computer programmer and creator of the website Sci-Hub, which provides free access to research papers without regard for copyright. Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature published before 2020, but a much lower proportion of those published since then.

Elbakyan has been described as "Science's Pirate Queen". In 2016, Nature included her in their list of the top ten "people who mattered" in science. Since 2011, she has been living in Russia.