How to Get Hold of a Research Paper
2023-03-01
• 1 min read
Here are some ways of acquiring the full text of an academic paper:
- Search Sci-Hub. Give it the DOI (e.g.
https://doi.org/...) or, if that doesn’t work, give it the URL to the paper’s page at an academic journal (e.g.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...). - Search Libgen. Give it the DOI or title. (You can also use Libgen to find academic books.)
- Search Google Scholar. I often just search the paper’s name, and if I find it, there may be a link to the full paper (HTML or PDF) on the right of the search result. The linked paper is sometimes not the exact version of the paper I am after – for example, it may be a manuscript version instead of the accepted journal version – but in my experience this is usually fine.
- Search the web for
"name of paper in quotes" filetype:pdf. If that fails, search for"name of paper in quotes"and look at a few of the results if they seem promising. (Again, I may find a different version of the paper than the one I was looking for, which is usually but not always fine.) - Check the paper’s authors’ personal websites for the paper. Many researchers keep an up-to-date list of their papers with links to full versions.
- Request the paper on r/Scholar. Make sure to read the posting rules first.
- Email an author to politely ask for a copy. Researchers spend a lot of time on their research and are usually happy to learn that somebody is eager to read it.