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Segado-Boj F, Martín-Quevedo J, Prieto-Gutiérrez JJ. Jumping over the paywall: Strategies and motivations for scholarly piracy and other alternatives. INFORMATION DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1177/02666669221144429] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
Despite the advance of the Open Access (OA) movement, most scholarly production can only be accessed through a paywall. We conduct an international survey among researchers (N = 3304) to measure the willingness and motivations to use (or not use) scholarly piracy sites, and other alternatives to overcome a paywall such as paying with their own money, institutional loans, just reading the abstract, asking the corresponding author for a copy of the document, asking a colleague to get the document for them, or searching for an OA version of the paper. We also explore differences in terms of age, professional position, country income level, discipline, and commitment to OA. The results show that researchers most frequently look for OA versions of the documents. However, more than 50% of the participants have used a scholarly piracy site at least once. This is less common in high-income countries, and among older and better-established scholars. Regarding disciplines, such services were less used in Life & Health Sciences and Social Sciences. Those who have never used a pirate library highlighted ethical and legal objections or pointed out that they were not aware of the existence of such libraries.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Juan-José Prieto-Gutiérrez
- Researcher at Universidad Internacional de la Rioja, Spain
- Facultad de Ciencias de la Información, Av. Complutense, S/N. 28040, Madrid, Spain
- Facultad de Ciencias de la Comunicación, C/ Camino del Molino, S/N. 28942 Fuenlabrada, Madrid, Spain
- Avenida de la Paz, 137. 26006., Logroño, Spain
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2
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Valladares-Garrido MJ, Mejia CR, Rojas-Alvarado AB, Araujo-Chumacero MM, Córdova-Agurto JS, Fiestas J, Rojas-Vilar FJ, Culquichicón C. Factors associated with producing a scientific publication during medical training: evidence from a cross-sectional study of 40 medical schools in Latin America. F1000Res 2022; 9:1365. [PMID: 36225614 PMCID: PMC9540009 DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.26596.2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Background: Scientific publication during medical training is key to promoting enduring cutting-edge knowledge. The promotion of science among medical students in Latin America is a multisectoral issue that is hampered by the lack of governmental knowledge to invest in national research, as well as by the lack of support from local universities. This study aims to determine the factors associated with the production of a scientific publication during medical training among Latin American medical students of local scientific societies. Methods: This is a secondary data analysis of a cross-sectional study conducted in 2016 that assessed the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) among medical students from 40 local scientific societies of medical students affiliated with FELSOCEM. Teams from each local scientific society surveyed self-reported scientific publications and explored their association with socioeconomic, academic, and research training conditions. We applied nested models to identify the covariates associated with self-reported scientific publication, obtaining a parsimonious mixed-effects multilevel model grouped by medical scientific society. Results: Of 11,587 participants, the prevalence of scientific publications increased in 36% among medical students affiliated to a Scientific Society of Medical Students [parsimonious prevalence ratio (pPR)=1.36, 95%CI=1.16–1.59], 51% among medical students with advanced English proficiency [pPR=1.51, 95%CI=1.21 – 1.87], 85% among medical students who attended a scientific writing skills course [pPR=1.85, 95%CI=1.59–2.15], 81% among medical students who use Sci-Hub [pPR=1.81, 95%CI=1.50–2.20], and 108% among medical students who have access to a pirated academic account [pPR=2.08, 95%CI=1.83–2.36]. Conclusions: Producing a scientific publication among medical students is associated with being affiliated to a scientific society of medical students, English proficiency, training in scientific writing, use of Sci-Hub, and pirated academic accounts. The results will help clinical educators and medical programs improve resources for training students in high-quality research
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Affiliation(s)
- Mario J. Valladares-Garrido
- Vicerrectorado de Investigación, Universidad Norbert Wiener, Lima, Peru
- Instituto de Evaluación de Tecnologías en Salud e Investigación-IETSI, EsSalud, Lima, Peru
| | | | - Annel B. Rojas-Alvarado
- School of Medicine, Universidad Privada Antenor Orrego, Piura, Peru
- CI- Emerge, Center of Emerging Diseases and Climate Change, Universidad Nacional de Piura, Piura, Peru
- Scientific Society of Medical Students, Universidad Privada Antenor Orrego, Piura, Peru
| | | | - Jhacksson S. Córdova-Agurto
- CI- Emerge, Center of Emerging Diseases and Climate Change, Universidad Nacional de Piura, Piura, Peru
- School of Health Sciences, Universidad Nacional de Piura, Piura, Peru
| | | | | | - Carlos Culquichicón
- Universidad Privada Norbert Wiener, Centro de Investigación Epidemiológica en Salud Global, Lima, Peru
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Buehling K, Geissler M, Strecker D. Free access to scientific literature and its influence on the publishing activity in developing countries: The effect of
Sci‐Hub
in the field of mathematics. J Assoc Inf Sci Technol 2022. [DOI: 10.1002/asi.24636] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/05/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Kilian Buehling
- Research Group Knowledge and Technology Transfer Technische Universität Dresden Dresden Germany
| | - Matthias Geissler
- Digitalization and Innovation Section Rationalisierungs‐ und Innovationszentrum der Deutschen Wirtschaft e. V. RKW Kompetenzzentrum Eschborn Germany
| | - Dorothea Strecker
- Berlin School of Library and Information Science Humboldt University Berlin Berlin Germany
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Moskovkin VM, Gakhova NN, Nabokov AY. Downloading Articles by Russian Researchers Using the Sci-Hub Resource. SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION PROCESSING 2021. [PMCID: PMC8551944 DOI: 10.3103/s0147688221030059] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
On the basis of the 28 million downloaded articles posted by J. Bohannon and A. Elbakyan on the Internet on the Sci-Hub resource for the period from September 1, 2015 to February 29, 2016, about 1.5 million articles downloaded by Russian researchers were identified. They were distributed by publishing houses of scientific periodicals, cities, and regions of Russia, from which the download took place. As an example, among the 521 cities in Russia, the largest downloads were observed by researchers from Moscow (731 100 articles), St. Petersburg (132 600), Novosibirsk (57 500), Kazan (55 100), and Tomsk (26 400). Comparisons are made with similar downloads of Ukrainian researchers.
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Amin R, Ayoub A, Amin S, Wani ZA. Toll-based access vs pirate access: a webometric study of academic publishers. DIGITAL LIBRARY PERSPECTIVES 2021. [DOI: 10.1108/dlp-12-2020-0127] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to draw a comparison of the Web traffic ranking, usage and popularity of websites of databases of reputed publishers, namely, ScienceDirect and Emerald Insight, that provide access on subscription basis with Sci-Hub, on the basis of data obtained from Alexa databank (www.alexa.com). Sci-Hub is a website that provides pirated open-access to the research literature, where piracy, according to The Economic Times (2020), refers to the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted content.
Design/methodology/approach
Under present study, the quantitative study of the collected data was carried out with help of descriptive research methodology. The Alexa databank was singled out as the source of data. This study crawled through Alexa databank on 01.12.2019 and collected relevant data regarding Sci-Hub, ScienceDirect and Emerald Insight using the search terms Sci-hub.tw, Sciencedirect.com and Emeraldinsight.com sequentially. Different criteria were taken into consideration, which include global traffic rank, the average number of page views per user, time taken for uploading, bounce rate, percentage of users, the number of in-links and daily time spent on the site.
Findings
The results of this study showed that ScienceDirect has the highest traffic rank and in-linking sites among the surveyed databases. But highest number of page visits were recorded for Sci-Hub with fastest downloading speed. It has also been observed that the users spent less time on ScienceDirect and Emerald Insight as compared to Sci-Hub. This study further observed that Sci-Hub has the lowest bounce rate. Users from both the developing and developed economies use the Sci-Hub, though the highest number of visitors belongs to the developing nations.
Originality/value
This study provides an overview of the performance of toll-based publishing databases with pirated database based on different criteria through World Wide Web. Though, this study in no way supports or endorses the unauthorized and illegal access to knowledge, but such data helps in depicting and analyzing how much a particular database is accessed by its users all over the globe and also determines and illustrates the time spent by users while accessing a specific database, thus, providing the user preferences in information seeking activities. This study provides an overall view of adoption of open resources.
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Can scholarly pirate libraries bridge the knowledge access gap? An empirical study on the structural conditions of book piracy in global and European academia. PLoS One 2020; 15:e0242509. [PMID: 33270680 PMCID: PMC7714232 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242509] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/16/2020] [Accepted: 10/27/2020] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Library Genesis is one of the oldest and largest illegal scholarly book collections online. Without the authorization of copyright holders, this shadow library hosts and makes more than 2 million scholarly publications, monographs, and textbooks available. This paper analyzes a set of weblogs of one of the Library Genesis mirrors, provided to us by one of the service’s administrators. We reconstruct the social and economic factors that drive the global and European demand for illicit scholarly literature. In particular, we test if lower income regions can compensate for the shortcomings in legal access infrastructures by more intensive use of illicit open resources. We found that while richer regions are the most intensive users of shadow libraries, poorer regions face structural limitations that prevent them from fully capitalizing on freely accessible knowledge. We discuss these findings in the wider context of open access publishing, and point out that open access knowledge, if not met with proper knowledge absorption infrastructures, has limited usefulness in addressing knowledge access and production inequalities.
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Guerado E. The Myth of Sisyphus. The refounding of SECOT. Rev Esp Cir Ortop Traumatol (Engl Ed) 2020. [DOI: 10.1016/j.recote.2020.06.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/23/2022] Open
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8
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Guerado E. El Mito de Sísifo. La refundación de la SECOT. Rev Esp Cir Ortop Traumatol (Engl Ed) 2020; 64:229-235. [DOI: 10.1016/j.recot.2020.04.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022] Open
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9
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Chloros GD, Civil ID, Giannoudis PV. The future of medical publication as we move towards the second half of the 21 st century. Injury 2020; 51:1-3. [PMID: 31888858 DOI: 10.1016/j.injury.2019.12.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/02/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- George D Chloros
- Academic Department of Trauma and Orthopaedics, School of Medicine, University of Leeds, Leeds General Infirmary, Leeds, UK
| | - Ian D Civil
- Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, NZ
| | - Peter V Giannoudis
- Academic Department of Trauma and Orthopaedics, School of Medicine, University of Leeds, Leeds General Infirmary, Leeds, UK; NIHR Leeds Biomedical Research Center, Chapel Allerton Hospital, Leeds, UK.
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Ten Holter C. The repository, the researcher, and the REF: “It's just compliance, compliance, compliance”. JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP 2020. [DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2019.102079] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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11
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Lawson McLean A. Publication trends in transcranial magnetic stimulation: a 30-year panorama. Brain Stimul 2019; 12:619-627. [DOI: 10.1016/j.brs.2019.01.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/16/2018] [Revised: 01/02/2019] [Accepted: 01/07/2019] [Indexed: 01/11/2023] Open
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Abstract
Based on the total scholarly article output of Norway, we investigated the coverage and degree of openness according to the following three bibliographic services: (1) Google Scholar, (2) oaDOI by Impact Story, and (3) 1findr by 1science. According to Google Scholar, we found that more than 70% of all Norwegian articles are openly available. However, the degrees of openness are profoundly lower according to oaDOI and 1findr at 31% and 52%, respectively. Varying degrees of openness are mainly caused by different interpretations of openness, with oaDOI being the most restrictive. Furthermore, open shares vary considerably by discipline, with the medicine and health sciences at the upper end and the humanities at the lower end. We also determined the citation frequencies using cited-by values in Google Scholar and applying year and subject normalization. We found a significant citation advantage for open articles. However, this was not the case for all types of openness. In fact, the category of open access journals was by far the lowest cited, indicating that young journals with a declared open access policy still lack recognition.
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Black Open Access in Ukraine: Analysis of Downloading Sci-Hub Publications by Ukrainian Internet Users. SCIENCE AND INNOVATION 2018. [DOI: 10.15407/scine14.02.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
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Himmelstein DS, Romero AR, Levernier JG, Munro TA, McLaughlin SR, Greshake Tzovaras B, Greene CS. Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature. eLife 2018; 7:e32822. [PMID: 29424689 PMCID: PMC5832410 DOI: 10.7554/elife.32822] [Citation(s) in RCA: 53] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/18/2017] [Accepted: 02/08/2018] [Indexed: 12/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The website Sci-Hub enables users to download PDF versions of scholarly articles, including many articles that are paywalled at their journal's site. Sci-Hub has grown rapidly since its creation in 2011, but the extent of its coverage has been unclear. Here we report that, as of March 2017, Sci-Hub's database contains 68.9% of the 81.6 million scholarly articles registered with Crossref and 85.1% of articles published in toll access journals. We find that coverage varies by discipline and publisher, and that Sci-Hub preferentially covers popular, paywalled content. For toll access articles, we find that Sci-Hub provides greater coverage than the University of Pennsylvania, a major research university in the United States. Green open access to toll access articles via licit services, on the other hand, remains quite limited. Our interactive browser at https://greenelab.github.io/scihub allows users to explore these findings in more detail. For the first time, nearly all scholarly literature is available gratis to anyone with an Internet connection, suggesting the toll access business model may become unsustainable.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel S Himmelstein
- Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational TherapeuticsUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaUnited States
| | | | - Jacob G Levernier
- Library Technology Services and Strategic InitiativesUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaUnited States
| | | | | | - Bastian Greshake Tzovaras
- Department of Applied Bioinformatics, Institute of Cell Biology and NeuroscienceGoethe UniversityFrankfurtGermany
| | - Casey S Greene
- Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational TherapeuticsUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaUnited States
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Piwowar H, Priem J, Larivière V, Alperin JP, Matthias L, Norlander B, Farley A, West J, Haustein S. The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ 2018; 6:e4375. [PMID: 29456894 PMCID: PMC5815332 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4375] [Citation(s) in RCA: 319] [Impact Index Per Article: 53.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/09/2017] [Accepted: 01/25/2018] [Indexed: 01/31/2023] Open
Abstract
Despite growing interest in Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature, there is an unmet need for large-scale, up-to-date, and reproducible studies assessing the prevalence and characteristics of OA. We address this need using oaDOI, an open online service that determines OA status for 67 million articles. We use three samples, each of 100,000 articles, to investigate OA in three populations: (1) all journal articles assigned a Crossref DOI, (2) recent journal articles indexed in Web of Science, and (3) articles viewed by users of Unpaywall, an open-source browser extension that lets users find OA articles using oaDOI. We estimate that at least 28% of the scholarly literature is OA (19M in total) and that this proportion is growing, driven particularly by growth in Gold and Hybrid. The most recent year analyzed (2015) also has the highest percentage of OA (45%). Because of this growth, and the fact that readers disproportionately access newer articles, we find that Unpaywall users encounter OA quite frequently: 47% of articles they view are OA. Notably, the most common mechanism for OA is not Gold, Green, or Hybrid OA, but rather an under-discussed category we dub Bronze: articles made free-to-read on the publisher website, without an explicit Open license. We also examine the citation impact of OA articles, corroborating the so-called open-access citation advantage: accounting for age and discipline, OA articles receive 18% more citations than average, an effect driven primarily by Green and Hybrid OA. We encourage further research using the free oaDOI service, as a way to inform OA policy and practice.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Vincent Larivière
- École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
- Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies (OST), Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
| | - Juan Pablo Alperin
- Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada
- Public Knowledge Project, Canada
| | - Lisa Matthias
- Scholarly Communications Lab, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
| | - Bree Norlander
- Information School, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
- FlourishOA, USA
| | - Ashley Farley
- Information School, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
- FlourishOA, USA
| | - Jevin West
- Information School, University of Washington, Seattle, USA
| | - Stefanie Haustein
- Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies (OST), Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
- School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
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Katchanov YL, Markova YV. The “space of physics journals”: topological structure and the Journal Impact Factor. Scientometrics 2017. [DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2471-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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18
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Abstract
Despite the growth of Open Access, potentially illegally circumventing paywalls to access scholarly publications is becoming a more mainstream phenomenon. The web service Sci-Hub is amongst the biggest facilitators of this, offering free access to around 62 million publications. So far it is not well studied how and why its users are accessing publications through Sci-Hub. By utilizing the recently released corpus of Sci-Hub and comparing it to the data of ~28 million downloads done through the service, this study tries to address some of these questions. The comparative analysis shows that both the usage and complete corpus is largely made up of recently published articles, with users disproportionately favoring newer articles and 35% of downloaded articles being published after 2013. These results hint that embargo periods before publications become Open Access are frequently circumnavigated using Guerilla Open Access approaches like Sci-Hub. On a journal level, the downloads show a bias towards some scholarly disciplines, especially Chemistry, suggesting increased barriers to access for these. Comparing the use and corpus on a publisher level, it becomes clear that only 11% of publishers are highly requested in comparison to the baseline frequency, while 45% of all publishers are significantly less accessed than expected. Despite this, the oligopoly of publishers is even more remarkable on the level of content consumption, with 80% of all downloads being published through only 9 publishers. All of this suggests that Sci-Hub is used by different populations and for a number of different reasons, and that there is still a lack of access to the published scientific record. A further analysis of these openly available data resources will undoubtedly be valuable for the investigation of academic publishing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bastian Greshake
- Institute of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
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