download locked research papers

“The only truly modern academic research engine”

Oa.mg is a search engine for academic papers, specialising in open access. we have over 250 million papers in our index..

Best Websites To Download Research Papers For Free: Beyond Sci-Hub

Navigating the vast ocean of academic research can be daunting, especially when you’re on a quest for specific research papers without the constraints of paywalls. Fortunately, the digital age has ushered in an era of accessible knowledge, with various platforms offering free downloads of scholarly articles.

In this article, we explore some of the best websites that provide researchers, students, and academicians with free access to a plethora of research papers across diverse fields, ensuring that knowledge remains within everyone’s reach.

Best Websites To Download Research Papers For Free

Google scholar.

As a researcher, you might find Google Scholar to be a repository brimming with academic papers covering a broad span of domains like social sciences, computer science, and humanity, including:

• Journal articles
• Conference papers, and

Unlike other websites to download research papers, Google Scholar provides free access to a vast collection of scholarly literature, making it one of the best websites to download research.

Not every article is available in full PDF format directly; however, Google Scholar often links to other open access resources like DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and open-access repositories where you can directly download papers.

For instance, if you’re searching for a specific 2023 research paper in mathematics, you can use Google Scholar to locate the paper and check if it’s available for free download either on the platform itself or through links to various open access sources.

In many cases, Google Scholar integrates with tools like Unpaywall and Open Access Button, which are browser extensions that help you find free versions of paywalled articles.

These extensions often redirect you to open-access content, including those on platforms like Sci-Hub and Library Genesis, although it’s crucial to be aware of the legal and ethical implications of using such services.

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a unique platform that blends social networking with academic research, making it an essential tool for researchers and scientists across various disciplines.

Here, you have access to a digital library of millions of research papers, spanning fields from computer science to social sciences and beyond.

When you’re on ResearchGate, downloading a research paper is relatively straightforward, especially if it’s open access. Many researchers upload the full PDF of their work, providing free access to their peer-reviewed articles.

If the research paper you’re interested in isn’t available for direct download, ResearchGate offers a unique feature: you can request a copy directly from the author.

This approach not only gets you the paper but also potentially opens a line of communication with leading experts in your field.

It’s important to note that ResearchGate isn’t just a repository; it’s a platform for discovery and connection. You can:

• Follow specific researchers
• Join discussions, and
• Receive notifications about new research in your domain.

While it doesn’t have the controversial direct download links like Sci-Hub or Library Genesis, ResearchGate offers a more ethical and legal route to accessing academic papers. 

ScienceOpen

ScienceOpen is a comprehensive repository that hosts a multitude of open-access research articles across various fields, from the social sciences to computer science. 

The process of downloading a research paper on ScienceOpen is remarkably straightforward. Since it’s an open-access platform, most of the papers are available to download as PDFs without any cost.

This means you can access high-quality, peer-reviewed academic research without encountering paywalls that are often a barrier in many other scientific platforms.

For instance, if you’re delving into the latest 2023 scientific papers in mathematics, ScienceOpen can be your go-to source. You can easily search for research papers using:

• Browsing through various open access journals featured on the site.

The direct download feature simplifies access to these papers, making it convenient for you to obtain the research you need.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a digital library is an extensive repository of open-access, peer-reviewed journals, covering a wide array of subjects from humanities to nuclear science.

When you’re navigating DOAJ, you’ll discover that it’s not just a platform to download research papers; it’s a gateway to a world of academic research.

Each journal article listed is freely accessible, meaning you can download these scholarly articles without any cost or subscription.

The process is simple: search for research papers using specific keywords, subjects, or even DOAJ’s advanced search functionality that includes filters like:

• Language, or
• The year of publication.

For example, if you’re delving into the latest developments in scientific research in 2023, DOAJ allows you to refine your search to the most recent publications.

Once you find a relevant research paper, you can easily access the full text in PDF format through a direct download link. This is particularly useful for accessing high-quality, open-access research papers that are not always readily available on other platforms like Sci-Hub or Library Genesis.

PubMed hosts millions of research articles, primarily in the fields of medicine and life sciences, but also encompassing a broad range of scientific research.

When you’re on PubMed, you can search for research papers using:

• Authors, or
• Specific journal names.

While PubMed lists both open-access and subscription-based journal articles, it offers a unique feature for accessing papers for free.

If you’re looking for a particular research paper, say in the domain of computer science or social sciences from 2023, you can directly access its abstract on PubMed. For open access articles, a free full-text link is often available, allowing you to download the research paper in PDF format.

PubMed integrates with tools like Unpaywall and the Open Access Button. These browser extensions help you find open-access versions of the articles you’re interested in, bypassing the paywalls that often restrict access to scholarly literature.

While PubMed itself doesn’t provide direct download links for all articles, its connection with these tools and various open access repositories ensures that you, as a researcher, have greater access to scientific papers.

Sci-Hub (with Caution)

Sci-Hub, often dubbed the ‘Pirate Bay of Science,’ has been a game-changer in the scientific community since its inception by Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011.

It operates as a controversial, yet widely used platform providing free access to millions of research papers and academic articles that are typically locked behind paywalls.

As a researcher, you might find Sci-Hub an intriguing, albeit contentious, tool for accessing scholarly literature.

When you’re looking to download a research paper from Sci-Hub, the process is relatively straightforward. Say you need a journal article on computer science or a groundbreaking study in social sciences from 2023; you just need to have the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) of the paper.

By entering this DOI into Sci-Hub’s search bar, the website bypasses publisher paywalls, offering you direct download links to PDF versions of the articles.

It’s crucial to note that while Sci-Hub provides access to a vast repository of scientific research, its legality is under constant scrutiny. The platform operates via various proxy links and has been the subject of numerous legal battles with publishers and academic institutions.

Nevertheless, Sci-Hub remains a popular go-to for researchers and scientists globally, especially those without access to university libraries or digital archives.

While it opens doors to a wealth of knowledge, users should be aware of the ethical and legal implications of using such a service in their respective countries.

Wrapping Up: You Can Get Free Academic Papers 

The digital landscape offers a wealth of resources for accessing academic research without financial barriers. The platforms we share here provide an invaluable service to the scholarly community, democratising access to knowledge and fostering intellectual growth.

Whether you’re a seasoned researcher or a curious student, these websites bridge the gap between you and the vast world of academic literature, ensuring that the pursuit of knowledge remains an inclusive and equitable journey for all. Remember to consider the legal and ethical aspects when using these resources.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

Thank you for visiting Academia Insider.

We are here to help you navigate Academia as painlessly as possible. We are supported by our readers and by visiting you are helping us earn a small amount through ads and affiliate revenue - Thank you!

2024 © Academia Insider

Download Research Papers and Scientific Articles for free (Sci-Hub and Library Genesis links updated August 2022)

Many students and researchers need to find a paper for their research, to complete the review of an article, or while writing their thesis. Many papers can be found through your university library, but for those that you may not have access to through your institution, we take a look at the three largest open access sites, as well as sci hub and Library Genesis .

Unpaywall Unpaywall is a website built by Impactstory, a nonprofit working to make science more open and reusable online. They are supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. What they do is gather all the articles they can from all the open-access repositories on the internet. These are papers that have been provided by the authors or publishers for free, and thus Unpaywall is completely legal. They say they have about 50-85% of all scientific articles available in their archive. Works with Chrome or Firefox.

PaperPanda PaperPanda is a free browser extension for Chrome that gives you one-click access to papers and journal articles. When you find a paper on the publisher’s site, just click the PaperPanda icon and the panda goes and finds the PDF for you.

Open Access Button The Open Access Button  does something very similar to Unpaywall, with some major differences. They search thousands of public repositories, and if the article is not in any of them they send a request to the author to make the paper publicly available with them. The more people try to find an article through them, the more requests an author gets. You can search for articles/papers directly from their page, or download their browser extension.

Library Genesis Library Genesis is a database of over 5 million (yes, million) free papers, articles, entire journals, and non-fiction books. They also have comics, fiction books, and books in many non-english languages. They are also known as LibGen or Genesis Library. Many of the papers on Library Genesis are the same as sci hub, but what sets them apart is that Library Genesis has books as well.

OAmg OAmg lets you search for journal articles and papers, download them, and of course cite them in your Citationsy projects. After entering a query it searches through all published papers in the world and shows you the matches. You can then click a result to see more details and read a summary. It will also let you download the paper through a couple different, completely legal open access services. www.oa.mg

Sci-Hub (link updated August 2022) Finally, there’s Sci Hub . Science-Hub works in a completely different way than the other two: researchers, students, and other academics donate their institutional login to Schi-Hub, and when you search for a paper they download it through that account. After the articles has been downloaded they store a copy of it on their own servers. You can basically download 99% of all scientific articles and papers on SciHub. Just enter the DOI to download the papers you need for free from scihub. Shihub was launched by the researcher Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011 with the goal of providing free access to research to everyone, not only those who have the money to pay for journals. Many in the scientific community praise hub-sci / sciencehub for furthering the knowledge of humankind and helping academics from all over the world. shi hub has been sued many times by publishers like Elsevier but it is still accessible, for example by using a sci hub proxy.

You can find links to Sci-Hub on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub ) or WikiData ( https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21980377#P856 ).

Referencing and Writing Advice Unlocking Knowledge Getting the green light when using plagiarism detection software doesn’t mean you haven’t plagiarised.

15 Best Websites to Download Research Papers for Free

This post may contain affiliate links that allow us to earn a commission at no expense to you. Learn more

Is your thirst for knowledge limited by expensive subscriptions? Explore the best websites to download research papers for free and expand your academic reach.

Today, navigating through the academic terrain often feels like being stuck in an intellectual desert, parched for knowledge.

With paywalls acting like impenetrable fortresses, accessing scholarly articles becomes a herculean task. However, a beacon of hope exists in the form of free-access platforms, quenching our thirst for intellectual wisdom. Let’s set sail on this scholarly journey.

Table of Contents

Do you recall the Z Library, a once-prominent source of free academic resources? While its seizure by the FBI was a stark reminder of copyright considerations, it also marked a transformative phase in the digital academic landscape. 

Today’s champions of academia aren’t just about offering free access, they uphold ethics and copyright respectability. Let’s delve into these repositories that are reshaping the academia world. You can download free research papers from any of the following websites.

Best Websites to Download Research Papers

#1. sci-hub – best for accessing paywalled academic papers.

• Unlocks millions of academic articles
• Known as the ‘Robin Hood’ of research
• Free and easy to use

Sci-Hub is the defiant maverick of the academic sphere. Often termed the “Pirate Bay of Science,” it presents an unconventional solution to the paywall barrier, freely providing access to a vast range of scholarly literature.

What are the benefits of Sci-Hub?

• Unlimited Access: Unlocks paywalled research papers
• Extensive Database: Hosts a wide variety of academic disciplines
• User-friendly: Features a simple interface and easy navigation

Despite its contentious standing, Sci-Hub offers an invaluable service to knowledge-seekers. While navigating the tightrope between access and legality, it represents a game-changing force in the world of academic research.

Source: https://www.sci-hub.se

#2. Library Genesis (Libgen) – Best for a Wide Range of Books and Articles

• Houses a comprehensive collection of books and articles
• Allows downloading in various formats
• Free and efficient

If the pursuit of knowledge was a grand voyage, Library Genesis, or Libgen, would undoubtedly be your trusty compass and map. Like the vast sea brimming with hidden treasures, Libgen is an expansive library with riches ranging from academic papers to rare textbooks, and even popular fiction. 

It’s not just a repository, but a vibrant confluence of multiple disciplines and interests, catering to the unique intellectual appetite of each knowledge seeker.

You might also like:

• 15 Best Online Research Communities and Forums 2024
• 25 Best Tools for Tracking Research Impact and Citations
• SAGE Open Impact Factor & Key Scientometrics
• 11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers 2024
• Top Mathematics Journals – what and How to get

What are the benefits of Libgen?

• Multidisciplinary: Holds resources for a vast array of subjects
• Diverse Content: Offers not just articles but also books, textbooks, and fiction
• Format Freedom: Allows content download in various formats

Libgen, with its remarkable expanse and variety, is the academic equivalent of a treasure trove. It’s a one-stop destination for researchers and readers, making it an invaluable ally in the quest for knowledge.

Source: https://libgen.is

#3. Unpaywall – Best for Legal Open Access Versions of Scholarly Articles

• Provides legal access to millions of academic articles
• Fast and user-friendly
• Free and ethically sound

Unpaywall is the stately knight of the academic world. Upholding the banner of ethics, it gallantly charges through the battlefield of paywalls, breaking barriers and making scholarly literature accessible.

Unpaywall doesn’t just give you a key; it gives you a legal, ethically sound key to the treasure chest of academic wisdom. This website is not merely a tool; it’s a testament to the idea that knowledge should be accessible to all, without compromising on legality and respect for authorship.

What are the benefits of Unpaywall?

• Legal Access: Enables legitimate access to research papers
• Wide Reach: Features an extensive, continuously updated database
• Cost-free: All services are available without any charges

For those who believe in the harmony of free access and ethical consideration, Unpaywall is a guiding star. It reflects an ideal blend of accessibility, legality, and respect for intellectual property .

Source: https://unpaywall.org

• Best Survey Tools For Research In Academics
• 15 Best Online Research Communities And Forums
• 15 Best Academic Journal Discovery Platforms
• 15 Best Academic Research Trend Prediction Platforms

#4. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) – Best for Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journals

• Repository of high-quality, open-access, peer-reviewed journals
• Covers all subjects and many languages
• Free to use

DOAJ is one of the most popular open access repositories that offers peer-reviewed, open-access journals across numerous subjects and languages. More than just a tool, DOAJ symbolizes the collaborative ethos of academia, fostering a global exchange of knowledge with no entry ticket.

What are the benefits of DOAJ?

• High Quality: Ensures all listed journals are peer-reviewed for quality assurance
• Wide Range: Features journals covering numerous subjects and languages
• Free Access: No cost attached to access these resources

The DOAJ, in its essence, manifests the democratic spirit of academic research. It’s an indispensable platform for researchers seeking high-quality, peer-reviewed, open-access resources across a wide range of subjects.

Source: https://doaj.org

• SCI Journal: Science Journal Impact Factor
• Deep Web For Academic Research To Double Your Access To Knowledge 
• 15 Best Academic Journal Discovery Platforms 2024
• We Help scientists make more impact

#5. Open Access Button – Best for Free Versions of Paywalled Articles

• Finds legal free versions of paywalled articles
• Fast, simple, and reliable
• Free and respects copyright laws

Just like the rush of adrenaline you feel when you find a forgotten $20 bill in your old jeans, Open Access Button brings the same excitement to the academic sphere. 

It is your trusty detective, sniffing out legal, freely accessible versions of those pesky paywalled articles. More than just a tool, it represents an ethical, innovative solution to the widespread issue of paywall barricades in academic research.

What are the benefits of Open Access Button?

• Legal & Free Access: Hunts for legal, open versions of paywalled research papers
• User-friendly: Easy to use with swift results
• Ethical: Respects and upholds copyright laws

Open Access Button serves as the ethical bridge between knowledge seekers and the scholarly content they need. Its commitment to providing free, legal access upholds the values of respect and fairness in academia.

Source: https://openaccessbutton.org

• 15 Best Academic Networking and Collaboration Platforms
• 15 Best Academic Journal Discovery Platforms 
• 15 Best Academic Research Trend Prediction Platforms 
• Sci Hub Review

#6. Science Open – Best for a Wide Variety of Open Access Scientific Research

• Features over 60 million articles
• Facilitates academic networking and discussion
• Free and comprehensive

Consider Science Open as a bustling town square in the city of scientific knowledge, where scholars from all walks of life gather, discuss, and dissect over 60 million articles. 

It’s not just like the best university libraries, it’s a collaborative arena for scientists, researchers, and curious minds alike. By fostering open discussions and peer reviews, it not only disseminates information but also nourishes a robust, global scientific community.

What are the benefits of Science Open?

• Vast Library: Provides access to over 60 million research items
• Collaborative Platform: Encourages networking, discussion, and public peer review
• Comprehensive: Covers a wide array of scientific disciplines

Science Open is more than a tool; it’s a community fostering open scientific discourse. Its vast resources and collaborative platform make it a vital player in modern scientific research.

Source: https://www.scienceopen.com

• Best Academic Social Network Sites 
• 15 Best Online Research Communities and Forums 
• 30+ Essential Software for Researchers
• Sci Hub Review 

#7. CORE – Best for Open Access Content Across Disciplines

• Harvests research papers from repositories worldwide
• Features millions of open access articles

CORE is like a skilled artisan, meticulously crafting a vast tapestry of open-access content across various disciplines. By aggregating data from repositories worldwide, it weaves together a rich, comprehensive picture of global research. 

This tool doesn’t merely provide access; it delivers an integrated research experience that pushes the frontiers of academia and knowledge exploration.

What are the benefits of CORE?

• Wide Coverage: Harvests data from global repositories, providing extensive coverage
• Open Access: Features millions of open access research papers
• User-friendly: Simple, efficient interface for seamless navigation

With its unparalleled aggregation and comprehensive access, CORE embodies the grand orchestra of global research. It stands as an essential tool in the modern researcher’s toolkit.

Source: https://core.ac.uk

• 11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers 
• 25 Best Research File Sharing and Storage Solutions 

#8. ERIC – Best for Education Research

• Specialized in education research literature
• Offers a wide range of resources, including articles, reports, and studies
• Free and tailored for educators and researchers

Like an esteemed professor, ERIC curates and presents a wealth of scholarly resources for educators, policymakers, and researchers. It serves as a guiding light, illuminating the path to evidence-based practices and enriching the field of education.

What are the benefits of ERIC?

• Focus on Education: Offers a specialized collection of education research literature
• Comprehensive Resources: Includes articles, reports, studies, and more
• Tailored for Educators: Provides valuable insights and tools specifically for educators and researchers

ERIC stands as a pillar in the realm of education research, equipping educators with the knowledge and evidence they need to drive innovation and improve educational practices.

Source: https://eric.ed.gov

#9. PaperPanda – Best for Free Access to Research Papers

• Provides free access to research papers across multiple disciplines
• Offers convenient search and download options
• Free and user-friendly

PaperPanda is always there to assist you in your quest for knowledge. With its vast collection of research papers spanning various disciplines, PaperPanda ensures that you have the resources you need right at your fingertips. 

It’s like having a personal research assistant, guiding you through the maze of scholarly literature.

What are the benefits of PaperPanda?

• Wide Range of Disciplines: Offers research papers across multiple fields of study
• Easy Search and Download: Provides convenient search and download options
• User-Friendly Interface: Makes the research process smooth and accessible

PaperPanda, with its user-friendly approach and expansive collection, simplifies the journey of accessing research papers. It empowers researchers and knowledge enthusiasts by putting a world of information within reach.

Source: https://paperpanda.app

• 25 Best Tools For Tracking Research Impact And Citations
• 25 Best Collaborative Writing Tools For Research
• 11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers

#10. Citationsy Archives – Best for Research Papers from Numerous Fields

• Curates a vast collection of research papers
• Offers easy-to-use citation and bibliography management tools

As you navigate through the vast corridors of this digital library, you’ll discover a wealth of academic resources from diverse fields. 

Citationsy Archives provides access to valuable research papers. It also equips you with powerful citation and bibliography management tools, ensuring that your scholarly journey remains organized and efficient.

What are the benefits of Citationsy?

• Extensive Collection: Curates a wide variety of research papers from numerous fields
• Citation Management: Offers user-friendly tools for organizing citations and creating bibliographies
• Comprehensive Support: Helps researchers streamline their academic workflow

Citationsy Archives serves as a haven for researchers seeking a comprehensive collection of research papers. Its integrated citation and bibliography management tools make it an indispensable companion in the scholarly pursuit.

Source: https://citationsy.com

#11. OA.mg – Best for Direct Download Links to Open Access Papers

• Provides direct download links to open access papers
• Offers a straightforward, no-frills interface

OA.mg presents a no-nonsense approach to providing direct download links to scholarly articles, ensuring that you have immediate access to the knowledge you seek. With its simplicity and efficiency, OA.mg streamlines the process of finding and accessing open access papers.

What are the benefits of OA.mg?

• Direct Download Links: Offers quick access to open access papers without unnecessary hurdles
• Simplicity: Features a straightforward interface for effortless navigation
• Efficient Access: Saves time by bypassing intermediary steps in accessing research papers

OA.mg stands as a reliable conduit between knowledge seekers and open access papers. Its focus on direct download links enhances the efficiency of accessing scholarly resources.

Source: https://oa.mg

#12. Social Science Research Network (SSRN) – Best for Social Sciences and Humanities Research

• Specializes in social sciences and humanities research
• Hosts a vast collection of scholarly papers, working papers, and preprints
• Free and tailored for researchers in these fields

This digital haven caters to the intellectual curiosity of scholars in these fields, providing access to a wealth of scholarly papers, working papers, and preprints.

SSRN fosters collaboration and knowledge-sharing, creating a vibrant community at the forefront of social sciences and humanities research.

What are the benefits of SSRN?

• Specialized Content: Focuses on social sciences and humanities research
• Diverse Collection: Offers scholarly papers, working papers, and preprints
• Research Community: Facilitates collaboration and knowledge-sharing among researchers

SSRN serves as an invaluable resource for researchers in the social sciences and humanities, fostering a community that drives innovation and advancements in these fields.

Source: https://www.ssrn.com

#13. Project Gutenberg – Best for Free Access to eBooks

• Houses a vast collection of free eBooks
• Covers a wide range of subjects and genres
• Free and easily accessible

Project Gutenberg is a paradise for book lovers and knowledge enthusiasts. This impressive collection of free eBooks spans various subjects and genres, from classic literature to scientific works. 

Project Gutenberg opens the doors to a world of literary exploration, providing access to timeless wisdom and captivating stories that shape our intellectual landscape.

What are the benefits of Project Gutenberg?

• Extensive eBook Collection: Offers a vast selection of free eBooks
• Diverse Subjects and Genres: Covers a wide range of topics and literary genres
• Free and Accessible: Provides easy access to literary works without any cost

Project Gutenberg serves as a testament to the power of literature and the accessibility of knowledge. It enables readers worldwide to embark on intellectual journeys through its extensive collection of free eBooks.

Source: https://www.gutenberg.org

• Journal of Scholarly Publishing Impact Factor & Key Scientometrics
• Journal of Advanced Research Impact Factor & Key Scientometrics
• American Journal of Sociology Impact Factor & Key Scientometrics
• Journal of Economic Psychology Impact Factor & Key Scientometrics

#14. PLOS (Public Library of Science) – Best for Open Access to Scientific and Medical Research

• Publishes open access scientific and medical research
• Features high-quality, peer-reviewed articles
• Free and promotes global scientific collaboration

As a leading publisher of open access research, PLOS fosters the dissemination of cutting-edge scientific discoveries to a global audience. 

With a commitment to quality and peer-reviewed excellence, PLOS supports the collaborative spirit of scientific advancement, empowering researchers and scientists to share their findings freely.

What are the benefits of PLOS?

• Open Access Publications: Provides free access to high-quality scientific and medical research
• Peer-Reviewed Excellence: Ensures rigorous peer review for published articles
• Global Scientific Collaboration: Facilitates knowledge sharing and collaboration among researchers worldwide

PLOS stands at the forefront of the open access movement, promoting the free flow of scientific and medical knowledge. It represents the spirit of collaboration and transparency, empowering researchers to push the boundaries of human understanding.

Source: https://plos.org

#15. arXiv.org – Best for Preprints in Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science

• Specializes in hosting preprints in science, mathematics, and computer science
• Provides early access to cutting-edge research
• Free and fosters collaboration among researchers

arXiv.org is the epicenter of preprints in science, mathematics, and computer science. This virtual haven serves as an incubator for innovative ideas, granting researchers early access to the latest findings and nurturing collaboration within these rapidly evolving disciplines.

What are the benefits of arXiv?

• Cutting-Edge Research: Provides access to preprints, allowing early exploration of groundbreaking ideas
• Interdisciplinary Reach: Spans science, mathematics, and computer science, fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration
• Global Knowledge Exchange: Encourages the sharing of research findings and facilitates collaboration among researchers worldwide

arXiv.org stands as a catalyst for scientific progress, offering a glimpse into the future of research. By providing early access to preprints, it fuels innovation, collaboration, and the acceleration of knowledge in science, mathematics, and computer science.

Source: https://arxiv.org

In a world where knowledge is king, accessing a research paper shouldn’t feel like an impossible task. Thanks to these free and innovative websites, we can escape the barriers of paywalls and dive into a vast ocean of intellectual wealth. 

From the rebellious spirit of Sci-Hub to the collaborative nature of PLOS, these digital champions are reshaping the academic landscape.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

We maintain and update science journals and scientific metrics. Scientific metrics data are aggregated from publicly available sources. Please note that we do NOT publish research papers on this platform. We do NOT accept any manuscript.

2012-2024 © scijournal.org

• Interesting
• Scholarships
• UGC-CARE Journals

14 Websites to Download Research Paper for Free – 2024

14 Top Websites for Free, Open Access Research Paper Download

Collecting and reading relevant research articles to one’s research areas is important for PhD scholars. However, for any research scholar, downloading a research paper is one of the most difficult tasks. You must pay for access to high-quality research materials or subscribe to the journal or publication. In this article, ilovephd lists the top 14 websites to download free research papers, journals, books, datasets, patents, and conference proceedings downloads.

Free Research Paper Download Websites – 2024

Check the 14 best free websites to download and read research papers listed below:

Sci-Hub is a website link with over 64.5 million academic papers and articles available for direct download. It bypasses publisher paywalls by allowing access through educational institution proxies.  To download papers Sci-Hub  stores papers in its repository, this storage is called Library Genesis (LibGen) or Library Genesis Proxy 2024. It helps researchers to download free articles by simply using Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article.

Visit: Working Sci-Hub Proxy Links – 2024

2. Z-Library

The Z-Library clones Library Genesis, a shadow library project. Z-Library facilitates file sharing of scholarly journal articles, academic texts, and general-interest books (including some copyrighted materials). While most of its books come from Library Genesis, further expanding the collection, users can also directly upload content to the site. This user-contributed content helps to make literature even more widely available. Additionally, individuals can donate to the website’s repository, furthering their mission of free access.

Z-Library claims to have a massive collection, boasting more than 10,139,382 Books books and 84,837,646 Articles articles as of April 25, 2024. According to the project’s page for academic publications (at booksc.org), it aspires to be “the world’s largest e-book library” as well as “the world’s largest scientific papers repository.” Interestingly, Z-Library also describes itself as a donation-based non-profit organization.

Visit Z-Library – You can Download 70,000,000+ scientific articles for free

3. Library Genesis

The Library Genesis aggregator is a community aiming to collect and catalog item descriptions for the most scientific, scientific, and technical directions, as well as file metadata. In addition to the descriptions, the aggregator contains only links to third-party resources hosted by users. All information posted on the website is collected from publicly available public Internet resources and is intended solely for informational purposes.

Visit: libgen.li

4. Unpaywall – Free Research Paper Download

Unpaywall harvests Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and makes it easy to find, track, and use. It is integrated into thousands of library systems, search platforms, and other information products worldwide. If you’re involved in scholarly communication, there’s a good chance you’ve already used Unpaywall data.

Unpaywall is run by OurResearch, a nonprofit dedicated to making scholarships more accessible to everyone. Open is our passion. So it’s only natural our source code is open, too.

Visit: unpaywall.org

5. GetTheResearch.org

GetTheResearch.org is an  Artificial Intelligence(AI)  powered search engine for searching and understanding  scientific articles  for researchers and scientists. It was developed as a part of the  Unpaywall  project. Unpaywall is a database of 23,329,737 free scholarly Open Access(OA) articles from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and make it easy to find, track, and use.

Visit: Find and Understand 25 Million Peer-Reviewed Research Papers for Free

6. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) was launched in 2003 with 300 open-access journals. Today, this independent index contains almost 17,500 peer-reviewed, open-access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Open-access journals from all countries and in all languages are accepted for indexing.

DOAJ is financially supported by many libraries, publishers, and other like-minded organizations. Supporting DOAJ demonstrates a firm commitment to open access and the infrastructure that supports it.

Visit: doaj.org

7. Researcher

The Researcher is a free journal-finding mobile application that helps you to read new journal papers every day that are relevant to your research. It is the most popular mobile application used by more than 3 million scientists and researchers to keep themselves updated with the latest academic literature.

Visit: 10 Best Apps for Graduate Students 

8. Science Open

ScienceOpen  is a discovery platform with interactive features for scholars to enhance their research in the open, make an impact, and receive credit for it. It provides context-building services for publishers, to bring researchers closer to the content than ever before. These advanced search and discovery functions, combined with post-publication peer review, recommendation, social sharing, and collection-building features make  ScienceOpen  the only research platform you’ll ever need.

Visit: scienceopen.com

OA.mg is a search engine for academic papers. Whether you are looking for a specific paper, or for research from a field, or all of an author’s works – OA.mg is the place to find it.

Visit: oa.mg

10. Internet Archive Scholar

Internet Archive Scholar (IAS) is a full-text search index that includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth-century journals through the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web.

Visit: Sci hub Alternative – Internet Archive Scholar

11. Citationsy Archives

Citationsy was founded in 2017 after the reference manager Cenk was using at the time, RefMe, was shut down. It was immediately obvious that the reason people loved RefMe — a clean interface, speed, no ads, and simplicity of use — did not apply to CiteThisForMe. It turned out to be easier than anticipated to get a rough prototype up.

Visit: citationsy.com

CORE is the world’s largest aggregator of open-access research papers from repositories and journals. It is a not-for-profit service dedicated to the open-access mission. We serve the global network of repositories and journals by increasing the discoverability and reuse of open-access content.

It provides solutions for content management, discovery, and scalable machine access to research. Our services support a wide range of stakeholders, specifically researchers, the general public, academic institutions, developers, funders, and companies from a diverse range of sectors including but not limited to innovators, AI technology companies, digital library solutions, and pharma.

Visit: core.ac.uk

13. Dimensions

The database called “Dimensions” covers millions of research publications connected by more than 1.6 billion citations, supporting grants, datasets, clinical trials, patents, and policy documents.

Dimensions is the most comprehensive research grants database that links grants to millions of resulting publications, clinical trials, and patents. It

provides up-to-the-minute online attention data via Altmetric, showing you how often publications and clinical trials are discussed around the world. 226m Altmetric mentions with 17m links to publications.

Dimensions include datasets from repositories such as Figshare, Dryad, Zenodo, Pangaea, and many more. It hosts millions of patents with links to other citing patents as well as to publications and supporting grants.

Visit: dimensions.ai

14. PaperPanda – Download Research Papers for Free

PaperPanda is a Chrome extension that uses some clever logic and the Panda’s detective skills to find you the research paper PDFs you need. Essentially, when you activate PaperPanda it finds the DOI of the paper from the current page, and then goes and searches for it. It starts by querying various Open Access repositories like OpenAccessButton, OaDoi, SemanticScholar, Core, ArXiV, and the Internet Archive. You can also set your university library’s domain in the settings (this feature is in the works and coming soon). PaperPanda will then automatically search for the paper through your library. You can also set a different custom domain in the settings.

Visit: PaperPanda

I hope this article will help you to know some of the best websites to download research papers and journals for free. By utilizing open-access databases, free search tools, and potentially even your local university library, you can access a wealth of valuable scholarly information without infringing on a copyright. Remember, ethical practices in research paper downloading are important, so always prioritize legal access to materials whenever possible. Happy researching!

• download paid books for free
• download research papers for free
• download research papers free
• download scientific article for free
• Free Datasets download
• how to download research paper

Effective Tips on How to Read Research Paper

Anna’s archive – download research papers for free, fulbright-kalam climate fellowship: fostering us-india collaboration.

hi im zara,student of art. could you please tell me how i can download the paper and books about painting, sewing,sustainable fashion,graphic and so on. thank a lot

thanks for the informative reports.

warm regards

Good, Keep it up!

LEAVE A REPLY Cancel reply

Most popular, iitm & birmingham – joint master program, fulbright specialist program 2024-25, six effective tips to identify research gap, 24 best free plagiarism checkers in 2024, how to check scopus indexed journals 2024, types of research variable in research with example, what is hypothesis in research types, examples, & importance, best for you, what is phd, popular posts, how to write a research paper a complete guide, 480 ugc-care list of journals – science – 2024, popular category.

• POSTDOC 317
• Interesting 259
• Journals 234
• Fellowship 128
• Research Methodology 102
• All Scopus Indexed Journals 92

iLovePhD is a research education website to know updated research-related information. It helps researchers to find top journals for publishing research articles and get an easy manual for research tools. The main aim of this website is to help Ph.D. scholars who are working in various domains to get more valuable ideas to carry out their research. Learn the current groundbreaking research activities around the world, love the process of getting a Ph.D.

Contact us: [email protected]

Google News

Copyright © 2024 iLovePhD. All rights reserved

• Artificial intelligence

Find scientific papers by searching here or download the Chrome extension

Unlocking knowledge: your gateway to open access scientific papers and research data, introduction.

In the digital era, the quest for knowledge and scientific discovery is no longer confined to the walls of academia and research institutions. Welcome to [Your Website Name] , a dedicated platform for finding and downloading open access scientific papers and other research data. Our mission is to democratize access to scientific information, making it freely available to researchers, students, and curious minds across the globe.

What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) refers to the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly research. OA content is available to all, without the usual financial or legal barriers. We believe that open access is crucial in fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration, thereby accelerating innovation and discovery.

Types of Open Access:

• Gold Open Access: Papers are published in open access journals that provide immediate open access to all of their articles.
• Green Open Access (Self-Archiving): Authors publish in any journal and then self-archive a version of the article for free public use in their institutional repository or on a website.
• Hybrid Open Access: Some articles in a subscription journal are made open access upon the payment of an additional charge.

Downloading Resources

• Direct Downloads: Once you find a paper or dataset, download it directly.
• Citation Tools: Easily export citations in various formats to incorporate them into your research.

Open Access

Open access in scientific publishing represents a transformative approach that breaks down traditional barriers to knowledge dissemination. It is a movement dedicated to making scientific research freely available to all, fostering a more inclusive and collaborative scientific community. At its core, open access allows for the unrestricted sharing of research findings, enabling scientists, academicians, and the general public to access and utilize scientific papers without the constraints of subscription fees or licensing restrictions. This paradigm shift in scholarly communication is driven by the belief that knowledge, particularly that which is publicly funded, should be a communal resource, accessible to everyone for the greater good of society.

In the realm of scientific research, open access has numerous advantages. It accelerates the pace of discovery by allowing researchers to build upon existing work without delay, facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas across various fields. This is particularly crucial in addressing global challenges, where rapid and unencumbered access to research can lead to faster solutions. Furthermore, open access democratizes knowledge by making it available to researchers in developing countries who may not have the resources for expensive journal subscriptions, thereby narrowing the research gap between high and low-income countries.

The open access model also aligns with the digital age's ethos of openness and transparency. It enables a more efficient validation and critique process, as a larger audience can scrutinize and contribute to the research. This can lead to higher quality and more reliable scientific work. Moreover, it provides an equal platform for emerging researchers and institutions to share their findings, ensuring that the visibility and impact of research are not confined to those within well-funded, prestigious entities.

However, the transition to open access is not without challenges. The sustainability of publishing models, quality assurance, and equitable distribution of costs are ongoing concerns. Despite these hurdles, the open access movement is gaining momentum, driven by the global scientific community's commitment to an open, accessible, and collaborative future in research. As we move forward, open access stands as a beacon of progress, symbolizing a world where knowledge is a shared and freely accessible asset, driving innovation and societal advancement.

Writing about Design

Principles and tips for design-oriented research.

How to get access to articles that are not Open Access

Although there is a strong push within the academic community to make research freely accessible (“open access”) to everyone, many research papers are unfortunately still published and available “behind the paywall”. That means that the publisher of the journal, book or a conference proceedings requires someone to subscribe the content. Typically that payer is a university library, who then can make the content accessible to the university students and employees.

But making use of this subscription can be complicated. Even if the seeker for papers – such as a student or a researcher – would have an affiliation with a university, it is not self-evident how one can get past the paywall and download the paper.

This post presents ways to get through the paywall, but requires that you have a user account in a university.

The focus of this post builds on an assumption that the seeker’s main literature search tool is Google Scholar, due to its simple use and excellent coverage of different research papers.

Google Scholar with basic internet connection: limited access to “full texts”

It is important to notice that Google Scholar provides access to articles differently depending on the type of internet connection. The difference shows in the links that Scholar displays in its search results.

When a user searches papers with Google Scholar with an ordinary internet connection, Google Scholar helps find papers, but cannot always provide the user with the “full text”. By full text, publishing companies mean the PDF that contains the article in its entirety. If access is not full text, then the user can only see the title, abstract, references, and maybe the first page of the paper.

It is sometimes possible to get an access to a full text even with this internet setup. This happens if:

• The text has been published as Open Access (OA) or with a permission that the authors are allowed to upload a copy of the text to their personal public repository of papers.
• Someone has uploaded the text somewhere in the Internet even if it is is not OA, thus possibly breaking the copyright of that content. Google has then found that paper.
• The paper’s preprint or so-called “accepted manuscript” version is available from the authors of the paper. A pre-print is often an earlier version of the paper: similar or even identical in its content with the final one, but not copy-edited to the final layout, and therefore lacks correct page numbers, and may have minor typing errors.

The screenshot below shows an example of what a Google Scholar search can produce as an outcome.

From the screenshot, different kinds of links can be seen. They provide different levels of access to the content:

• [PDF] : full text can be downloaded from the linked web page
• [HTML] : full text can be usually downloaded, but not always
• Getit@Grifols : this is a link whose purpose is not clear to me. No full texts available, anyway.
• The link of the paper title : takes the user to the publisher’s website. Full text may or may not be downloadable from it.

As a base rule, if the text does not have any links in the right-side column, the full text PDF is not available from any source.

Google Scholar with university’s VPN connection

The access to papers can dramatically improve if you tunnel your Internet connection through a university’s VPN service. With VPN, all the Internet traffic from a computer will travel (i.e., is “tunneled”) through a designated server. Both Google Scholar and the publishing companies then recognize that the user is connecting them from an Internet address that has a right to access also subscribed contents.

It therefore makes sense to use VPN in using Google Scholar. Here is how the same search results look like with VPN. Note that the two previously inaccessible papers are now downloadable via a “ sfx@Aalto ” link. Sadly, Klein & Weitzenfeld’s text in Educational Psychologist still remains unaccessible: my university does not have a subscription to its contents:

I cannot be sure, but I believe all the universities provide a similar service as Aalto University does, and therefore VPN opens doors to papers (for those who have a university account, of course). Here are the instructions for Aalto users for how you install the VPN client on your computer.

Accessing papers without VPN

It is not necessary to use VPN to access texts, however. An alternative is to navigate to a university library’s search interface and download the paper through it. Every library works slightly differently in service its users. At Aalto University, it is possible to enter e.g., the paper’s title, and the service tries to find a matching piece of content from its digitally subscribed sources. Aalto University’s article search interface is here .

A good idea is to use the text’s DOI (digital object identifier) as the search term instead of a paper’s name, because otherwise you may get lots of unnecessary search hits too. DOI uniquely identifies the paper, and can be always found somewhere from the publisher’s website.

When you find the desired search result, click on the links that promises to take you to the electronic full text. At that stage you will need to provide your user name and password, to prove that you are entitled to access the content.

Another Aalto-specific tip is to use the list of digital paper libraries in libproxy.aalto.fi . If you know the publisher of a paper your are interested in, you can go to that library via a link in the libproxy page. As long as you browse papers in that library, you are surfing within the paywall, and will be able to download full texts.

Paper request from ResearchGate

As the last resort, you may go to ResearchGate  or Academia.edu . These are services where researchers can upload their works and create profile pages. If a researcher has uploaded the paper to the service, ResearchGate/Academia.edu provides a feature where you can ask a researcher to send a copy of the paper to you privately.

A word of advice: It is best to use this feature only after you have tried the other possibilities above and they have failed. By my personal experience, it is always irritating to react to ResearchGate’s paper requests if the requested paper is also available as Open Access. A request in such a situation only shows that the requester has not spent even a minimal bit of effort to find it. I get paper requests from ResearchGate approximately once a week. Much more cited researchers therefore probably get several requests each day.

Final words

As can be seen, retrieval of a text can require quite a bit of work. It is better to minimize the amount of work that you need to spend in downloading. Therefore, always download and store the paper on your computer! Also make sure that you can easily find that paper later on from your computer. For example, use a systematic file-naming principle (e.g., authorname year paper title.pdf) for all the papers, or start using reference manager programs such as Mendeley or Zotero. That will save you time next time, and lets you annotate the texts that you read with your own observations.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Markku Reunanen for informing about the digital library listing at libproxy.aalto.fi.

One thought on “ How to get access to articles that are not Open Access ”

Pingback: How the most useful background literature can be found? | Writing about Design

Comments are closed.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 26 October 2021

Giant, free index to world’s research papers released online

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

In a project that could unlock the world’s research papers for easier computerized analysis, an American technologist has released online a gigantic index of the words and short phrases contained in more than 100 million journal articles — including many paywalled papers.

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

185,98 € per year

only 3,65 € per issue

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02895-8

Reprints and permissions

Related Articles

• Computer science

AI now beats humans at basic tasks — new benchmarks are needed, says major report

News 15 APR 24

High-threshold and low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum memory

Article 27 MAR 24

Three reasons why AI doesn’t model human language

Correspondence 19 MAR 24

Standardized metadata for biological samples could unlock the potential of collections

Correspondence 14 MAY 24

A guide to the Nature Index

Nature Index 13 MAR 24

Decoding chromatin states by proteomic profiling of nucleosome readers

Article 06 MAR 24

I’m worried I’ve been contacted by a predatory publisher — how do I find out?

Career Feature 15 MAY 24

Illuminating ‘the ugly side of science’: fresh incentives for reporting negative results

Career Feature 08 MAY 24

Mount Etna’s spectacular smoke rings and more — April’s best science images

News 03 MAY 24

Senior Research Assistant in Human Immunology (wet lab)

Senior Research Scientist in Human Immunology, high-dimensional (40+) cytometry, ICS and automated robotic platforms.

Boston, Massachusetts (US)

Boston University Atomic Lab

Postdoctoral Fellow in Systems Immunology (dry lab)

Postdoc in systems immunology with expertise in AI and data-driven approaches for deciphering human immune responses to vaccines and diseases.

Global Talent Recruitment of Xinjiang University in 2024

Recruitment involves disciplines that can contact the person in charge by phone.

Wulumuqi city, Ürümqi, Xinjiang Province, China

Xinjiang University

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor

Westlake Center for Genome Editing seeks exceptional scholars in the many areas.

Westlake Center for Genome Editing, Westlake University

Faculty Positions at SUSTech School of Medicine

SUSTech School of Medicine offers equal opportunities and welcome applicants from the world with all ethnic backgrounds.

Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Southern University of Science and Technology, School of Medicine

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

How to access paywalled research papers without institutional access

Anne-Laure Le Cunff

The Internet is full of extraordinary allegations, promises of breakthrough discoveries, and content promoting new, innovative products. Some of these claims are supposedly based on scientific evidence, linking to research which you are told to read. So, you look it up, but the papers are hidden behind paywalls. What should you do?

One option is to accept all those claims at face value. In a perfect world where everyone was an honest citizen driven by doing the most good, this could be a viable approach. However, whether it is because of ulterior motives or laziness, a lot of information published online is not based on strong evidence.

Linking to a paper doesn’t guarantee you can trust that what you’re reading is a true reflection of the original results, nor that the study constitutes strong evidence in the first place. In order to assess whether you can trust a claim, you need to access the original paper. Fortunately, even when the paper is paywalled, there are a few workarounds.

An opportunity to nurture your network

Paywalls are a pain, there is no denying that. However, you can turn your annoyance into an opportunity for growth by either making the most of your existing network, or expanding your network to include more experts in the fields you are curious about.

Here are some ways you can access paywalled research papers that will help you nurture your professional network:

• Contacting the author(s). All papers, including paywalled papers, display the contact information for the corresponding author on the page. Send them a polite email asking if they can send you a PDF version of the paper. Most researchers will be happy to oblige, and even flattered that someone is taking an interest in their research, so you don’t even need to give a justification.
• Obtaining alumni access. If you went to university, check with your alumni association whether they have a programme that gives alumni access to library resources. For example, many universities around the world give access to JSTOR as a perk of joining the alumni association.
• Getting a courtesy appointment. Do you have any connections with an educational institution? It doesn’t have to be your former university. You can have a look at your local institutions, and offer to help with some projects or provide a few hours of adjunct teaching per month in exchange for a courtesy affiliation that will come with login credentials.

Of course, some of these workarounds are quite tedious, and you may not be interested in growing an academic network. Some other options are quicker and easier to implement.

Finding a freely available copy

A lot of paywalled research papers are also available freely somewhere else on the web. It may not always be the final, publisher-approved version, but you will still get access to the results you want to read for yourself.

• Accessing the self-archived version. Many researchers post their papers on their own website, on their research institution’s website, or on self-archival websites such as Academia and ResearchGate . Instead of manually checking each of these, you can go to Google Scholar , paste the title of the article, and then check the “all versions” link. If it says “PDF” next to any of the versions, bingo! You’ve found yourself a freely available copy.
• Downloading the preprint. If you can’t find a freely available copy of the peer-reviewed article on Google Scholar, you may still be able to find the corresponding preprint. While it may slightly differ from the final, peer-reviewed version, the data should still be the same. Just make sure you are downloading the latest preprint. Some preprint servers include arXiv , Cogprints , and PeerJ .
• Going to a public library. If you want an excuse to take a walk, look no further. This is an old-school workaround, but most public libraries will give you onsite access to many research databases, though you may need a library card in some cases. If you are pressed for time, download the research you need and read it later in the comfort of your home.
• Installing a browser extension. Even easier, you can install Unpaywall to do all of the hard work for you. It harvests content from thousands of university and government websites from all over the world, and will tell you if there is a freely available copy somewhere, whether it’s a preprint or an author’s self-archived version. Open Access Button is another extension that looks for the open access version, or sends a request to the author.

You can find many more open access journals and repositories by searching the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Directory of Open Access Repositories (openDOAR).

For instance, even if it’s published in paywalled journals, research funded through the National Institutes of Health must also be published through PubMed , a repository of freely available scientific papers.

This guide would not be complete without mentioning Sci-Hub. Created by Alexandra Elbakyan ( read our interview ), Sci-Hub will let you access almost any academic paper. As it’s not legal in many countries, we cannot fully endorse it and this is for informational purposes only ?

Open science where anyone could access any research at any time would greatly contribute to fostering scientific collaboration, nurturing our collective intelligence, and accelerate humanity’s pace of discovery. The current model is antiquated and new models are being designed as you read this.

In the meantime, there are many workarounds to access paywalled research papers without institutional access. Give them a go, and have fun expanding your knowledge and your network!

Join 80,000 mindful makers!

Maker Mind is a weekly newsletter with science-based insights on creativity, mindful productivity, better thinking and lifelong learning.

One email a week, no spam, ever. See our Privacy policy .

Don’t work more. Work mindfully.

Ness Labs provides content, coaching, courses and community to help makers put their minds at work. Apply evidence-based strategies to your daily life, discover the latest in neuroscience research, and connect with fellow mindful makers.

Ness Labs © 2022. All rights reserved .

Reference management. Clean and simple.

The top list of academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
• Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
• Related articles: ✔
• References: ✔
• Cited by: ✔
• Links to full text: ✔
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
• Abstracts: ✔
• Related articles: ✘
• References: ✘
• Cited by: ✘
• Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
• Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
• Export formats: BibTeX

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
• Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

• Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
• Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
• Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
• Export formats: not available

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

How to Access Journal Articles Behind Paywalls

Science can’t advance without researchers being able to share their publications with collaborators and others and to access published papers as bases for their own hypotheses and work. The trend toward open-access availability of papers and the push for mandating publicly-funded research to be freely accessible to the public is still ongoing [1,2]. Until more literature is easily accessible, the path from the publication of an article to the eyes of a researcher in need of it is not always straightforward.

In this first of a two-part series, we review legal ways to access journal articles . Look out for our upcoming article on sharing your articles.

Access Journal Articles Behind Paywalls for Free

It’s an all-too-familiar frustration: you’re writing your latest research paper and sifting through PubMed [3] for sources to cite, and you come across an abstract where the authors describe experiments that would confirm or deny your burgeoning point…only to hit a paywall.

Another common dilemma: it’s your turn to lead journal club, and you want to cover the latest major publication on the gene many members of your group are researching, but like many just-published papers, it’s paywalled for the next 12 months.

How can you dig deeper to support your manuscript properly, or nab access to that hot new paper for group discussion, without paying the usually hefty single-article fee [4]…or breaking the law?

Check Your Institutions’ and Associations’ Subscriptions

Universities, colleges, and companies usually subscribe to a number of journals relevant to their research. You might have hit a paywall simply because you’re not logged in through your institution. If you’re on-site, check your internet connection. Your Wi-Fi device might have reverted to guest access that lacks privileges afforded to students, faculty, and staff of the institution, a common glitch.

If you’re working from home, have you logged in to your institution’s VPN or library proxy server? Some papers (especially older ones) that are not available via PubMed even when you log in through VPN or proxy could still be available through your university’s library. Clicking around on the library’s site often reveals different ranges of issue dates sorted under different databases, particularly for long-running journals.

Institutions where you are an alumnus could also be helpful here. Many universities include some extent of library access—often for a small annual fee—in their alumni programs. It’s frequently limited to physical copies or to a single database that is separate from the greater variety available to current students, but it could just uncover that specific article you seek.

Finally, are you a member of the Biophysical Society, AAAS, ASBMB [5,6,7], or other science society? These usually offer free or discounted subscriptions to the journals they publish.

Investigate Other Library Options

Your local library might subscribe to the journal(s) you’re trying to access. In many cases, the resources are only available on microfilm or microfiche.

And don’t forget good old interlibrary loans. It will take a few visits to websites of libraries where you aren’t a member and maybe a few phone calls as well, just to see which library has the right issue of the journal. Then, call your institution’s or city’s library and arrange for a loan from that other library. This may cost a nominal fee and may only allow you access to a hard copy. Also, keep in mind how soon you need the resource, as interlibrary loans often take weeks.

Get it From the Author

The first page of most papers contains an email address for the corresponding author for situations exactly like this! Contact info is also available on that webpage with the abstract preceding the page with the paywall. It might feel awkward to cold-email a researcher you don’t know for their paper, but if they respond, it would be all worthwhile.

Be sure to ask the author about any permission they have from the journal to share the paper, and give them the chance to check with the journal as they might also not know. (You could also look on How Can I Share It whether an author is allowed to share their work [8].) In many cases, journals give authors permission to share only pre-print versions of their papers, which suit most purposes and shouldn’t inhibit your work that uses that paper.

If you write to the corresponding author and can’t seem to get a response, check the authors’ lab group pages on their institutions’ websites as well as their social media pages. Some publishers, such as Springer Nature [9], are allowing authors to share their work, often in view-only mode, on social media, networks for researchers, personal websites, and public repositories without it being a copyright violation.

Try Unpaywall

Unpaywall [10], a service from the organization Our Research (formerly Impactstory) [11,12], legally harvests content from open-access sources such as university and government databases and authors’ and publishers’ webpages and makes them available in one place [13].

While there isn’t a search bar on its site to look for papers directly, it is integrated into Dimensions [14] and Scopus [15], where its database feeds into your search results [16]. If you’re accessing the web from a University of California campus or through their VPN or proxy, you’ll see Unpaywall as a link for accessing many of your search results. Otherwise, you may want to install Unpaywall as a browser plug-in; it’s available for Chrome [17] and Firefox [18]. It runs in the background while you browse, without the need for you to paste in article DOIs as in its previous iteration, OA Button (which is still available [19]).

Look for an Open-Access Alternative

Are you looking for an article to cite for backing up a statement? You might not need the particular one you’ve targeted. Similar work with results pointing to the same fact could be published elsewhere. This can happen because competing research groups often tend to publish parallel research at the same time, or else because findings are frequently reproduced by other labs to verify their integrity.

Sometimes a lab will publish figures analyzing the same data they had previously published in a new way, either in a review paper or in a subsequent research article where new, related data build over the old data. Alternatively, a review paper by another lab citing the paper you can’t access could cite the fact you seek substantially enough to serve as an adequate citation.

With any luck, you could find a source fitting any of these scenarios that is open access and can replace the citation you’d initially desired.

When it’s Time to Open Your Wallet

If none of the above options works, you may have to fork it over and pay the journal. Here are your options:

Purchase or Rent the Individual Paper

If it’s a particular paper that you can’t obtain for free and for which you just can’t find an open-access substitute, you may need to invest in access to that one paper. It may not be necessary to purchase it at the full price indicated by the paywall.

If the journal is published by a scientific society of which you are a member, the price is likely discounted for you. If the paper is from a Nature -branded journal, you could use ReadCube [20], which offers three different tiers of access:

• most cheaply, to rent the paper for 48 hours;
• intermediately, to purchase cloud access;
• and most expensively, to purchase the full PDF.

If this is a journal club article , you’ll need to purchase the PDF because you wouldn’t otherwise be able to print or share the paper with your group, just as you wouldn’t be able to import it into your reference manager. The lower tiers would still allow you to read the information from the paper for your use, and of course, you could always enter all the citation info into your reference manager.

Get a Personal Subscription

If you find yourself wishing you had access to different papers and a large proportion of them are from the same journal, it might be worthwhile to subscribe to that journal.

Perhaps you’re having a year during which you’re writing more than usual—the last year of your PhD, a period of grant-writing for a nonprofit startup that likely has few or no journal subscriptions of its own, or a year several years into a professorship at which point you’re hoping for tenure next quarter—and you might want to subscribe to a journal or two that particularly pertain to your work for that year (subscriptions are annual in most cases).

Admittedly, this is an expensive option, although personal, non-commercial subscriptions are usually priced lower than institutional ones. For instance, yearly individual subscriptions are $235 for PNAS [21], $835 for JLR [22] (though a subscription comes free of charge to members of ASBMB [23]), and $845 for Environmental Microbiology [24].

Have we missed any legal ways to access articles? If so, leave us a comment below. Also, make sure to check out our related Bitesize Bio articles on Common Myths of Copyright and Open Access: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly for more answers to your burning questions about copyright and open access.

For more tips on keeping track of the scientific literature, head over to the Bitesize Bio Managing the Scientific Literature Hub .

• Piwowar H, Priem J, Orr R. The Future of OA: A large-scale analysis projecting Open Access publication and readership . bioRxiv 795310; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/795310 [PREPRINT]
• Rabesandratana, T. Will the world embrace Plan S, the radical proposal to mandate open access to science papers? Science , Jan. 3, 2019.
• PubMed . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• sporte (Porter, S). How much does it cost to get a scientific paper? ScienceBlogs, Jan. 9, 2012. Accessed Aug. 31, 2020.
• Biophysical Society . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• American Association for the Advancement of Science . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• How Can I Share It . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Springer Nature. SharedIt . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Unpaywall: An open database of 20 million free scholarly articles . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Our Research . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Heather. Impactstory is now Our Research . Our Research blog, July 4, 2019. Accessed Sep. 1, 2020.
• Unpaywall due for release 4th April . LibraryLearningSpace, March 22, 2017. Accessed Sep. 1, 2020.
• Dimensions . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Elsevier. Scopus . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Heather. Elsevier becomes newest customer of Unpaywall Data Feed . Our Research blog, July 26, 2018. Accessed Sep. 1, 2020.
• Chrome Web Store – Extensions . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Unpaywall – Get this Extension for Firefox . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Open Access Button . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Papers App. What is ReadCube Checkout? What are the purchase options? Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2021 Subscription Rates . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Journal of Lipid Research. Print Subscriptions . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Member subscriptions . American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2020. Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.
• Wiley Online Library. Step 1 of 4 – Choose Subscription . Accessed Sep. 9, 2020.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Forgot your password?

Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password.

Back to login

Start your research

Get started on your research.

Something catchy about doing research and the steps it takes.

• Next: Picking a Good Topic >>

Protected: Gaining Steam: Incumbent Lock-in and Entrant Leapfrogging

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

More on this topic

Closing the Achievement Gap: Is There an App for That?

From Transcripts to Insights: Uncovering Corporate Risks Using Generative AI

ChatGPT and Corporate Policies

Evaluation of the Full-Frontal Crash Regulation for the M1 Category of Vehicles from an Indian Perspective

2024-01-2750.

• 1 What should be the appropriate test speed for the full-frontal test based on Indian accident data?
• 2 What is the suitable dummy configuration in terms of gender, seating position, and age to maximize occupant safety in full frontal accidents?
• 3 Is the proposed ATD’s anthropometry (weight and height) suitable, based on the people involved in full frontal cases in India?
• 4 What are occupant injury attributes in full-frontal accidents?

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

https://www.nist.gov/publications/protecting-controlled-unclassified-information-nonfederal-systems-and-organizations-5

Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Systems and Organizations

Download paper, additional citation formats.

• Google Scholar

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact [email protected] .