How does LibGen/SciHub affect researchers' research and publishing process?
Let us call J. DOI  (for  &quot;John DOI&quot; or &quot;Jane DOI&quot;, gender aware, see Jane Doe and John Doe) the anonymous researcher whose opinions follow. S(he) could be just  everyone, either from a rich or poor country, either with paywall capabilities or not. Being able to do this from home, researchers in universities with paywall access use it as well as others.
At the beginning, J. DOI used the LibGen/SciHub source scarcely. J. was not sure whether it was dangerous or not, or legal or not. J. DOI probably had a little more casual &quot;hacking skills&quot; than her/his colleagues. Earlier, J. DOI knew how to fetch documents that did not appear directly on the  first pages of  classical search engines. He/she knew about gopher, wais, ftp, and wget, to name a few.
When you find a novel gold mine, sometimes you don't say it loud, especially if you don't know how safe the atmosphere is, but you may share some gold you have dug. So J. DOI did not tell friends of the tricks, but he/she was very  keen on &quot;helping colleagues&quot; find a buried paper, because they  knew that J. DOI could. At first, J. DOI gained local fame as a web-search wizard.
This boosted J. DOI's confidence. And gluttony began. This affected J. DOI's health. Positively, because J. DOI could travel with less favorite scientific paper books, less printed papers. And this probably saved J. DOI's back, spine and joints. J. DOI could now use a much smaller and lighter bag, with travel essentials  only. But J. DOI would spend night hours grabbing electronic scientific works, often unrelated to his studies, only because &quot;they were accessible&quot;, not knowing how long this will last. J. DOI remembers when  library.nu closed in 2012. J. DOI became physically healthier, but more tired.
Past the sheer amazement of the treasure, J. DOI became aware and overwhelmed. Aware of the legal and ethical  issues first and foremost. Some Johns and  Janes probably decided to refrain their greed, and to stick to official ways. The  other J. soon began to actually build a reference management policy with assorted software, because directories full of pdf, epub, djvu unnamed files are of no use. J. DOI created collections, used ontologies and keywords. J. DOI became organized.
But gathering papers and books is not science. J. DOI began to trace so-called &quot;new  ideas&quot; back in time, quoting the appropriate papers. J. was not stopped too early by paywalls, and was allowed generalizations. J. felt doing a more accurate and honest scientific job, standing on shoulders of more ancient or obscure but deserving giants. Science news does not invent everyday, especially in a time of publish or perish, paper avalanche and retraction.
J. DOI was now a little less interested in the most novel papers, and browsed journal table of contents less often. J. DOI was a FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) for the recent papers, and  became a FOMO of older stuff. Luckily, the number of published papers decreases when going back in time. J. DOI was more focused, and more curious as well.
Finally, J. DOI became more self-assured, meeting fellow researchers of the same kin. J. DOI could draw more connections between seemingly afar fields and ideas.
Now, J. DOI still dreams about (electric sheeps and) cumulative science and a global open access, for the rich and the  poor. J. DOI  knows that the present situation is not morally, ethically or even financially satisfactory, but (s)he hopes that it will slowly modify practices, toward better open science.

This topic is being reactivated in the context of paywalls, open access, archives. See for instance Why are most scientific articles locked behind a paywall?