Hacker known as Shrine aims to advance COVID-19 research by publicly releasing over 5,000 scientific papers. His group accessed these via an unauthorized platform, ensuring researchers—especially those with limited budgets—gain free access without paywalls.
As COVID-19 surged past 2.25 million cases and 150,000 deaths worldwide, urgent research into vaccines and treatments intensified. Shrine and his team believed all coronavirus-related studies should be freely available. On April 15, 2020, they posted over 5,000 documents to Reddit, bypassing restrictive paywalls that generate 35-40% profit margins for publishers amid a global crisis.
Reddit users debated whether true hacking occurred or if the group simply used the controversial Sci-Hub platform, which hosts papers dating back to 1968. Regardless, the files are now public. Shrine also launched a petition urging publishers to remove paywalls, arguing they hinder collaboration—particularly for scientists in developing countries.
By late January 2020, COVID-19 reached Australia outside China, a pivotal moment enabled by global sharing through the World Health Organization (WHO). Earlier, Chinese researchers sequenced the virus's genome and created diagnostic tools but initially withheld results from international labs.
