We have all been there: the article we need is locked behind a paywall. I feel your frustration: who can afford 30 bucks for every paper? Shouldn’t knowledge be free? How the *$#@£ do I get that paper?
Sci-Hub would be the go-to option if it weren’t for the fact that it’s illegal. I’m not starting a moralistic, hypocritical spiel, though. Instead, I’m flagging a practical drawback: the Sci-Hub database is outdated. No new articles have been added to the repository since 2020. If you’re searching for a study published in 2021, you won’t find it there. Has your frustration grown worse?
Don’t despair, not all is lost. I have listed five legal ways to defeat the paywall! These tips may allow you to download and read those overpriced articles, without breaking any law. If none of these work, I still have a trick up my sleeve that may work just fine!
Ready? Lets get started!
- ASK GOOGLE.
Some paywalled articles are uploaded to university and government repositories. Everyone can download and read these papers for free. Just google the title between quotation marks, (“”) accompanied by the search operator filetype:pdf and scroll through the results. The search should look like this: “title of paper” + filetype:pdf. - ASK UNPAYWALL
This is an Firefox and Chrome extension that systematically searches all open access datasets as you hit an article behind paywall. This is basically option 1, but more thorough. - ASK THE AUTHORS
In LinkedIn or ResearchGate, send a direct message to the first or second author — these are usually PhD students and postdocs, more likely to hit you back fast — and they will happily help. Scientists love sharing their work. But mind your manners: introduce yourself, explain why you need their article, and be concise (don’t waffle, as my fiancee says). - ASK REDDIT
Request the article in a new thread in the subreddit Scholars. This community exists to promote sharing of articles and books. It has never let me down so far. - ASK FRIENDS
if you have friends in academia, they may have access through their university library. Remember: different universities have subscriptions to different journals.
Unfortunately, these approaches may still leave you empty handed, and monumentally *&*% off. But this is not the end of the road, we have one more trick up our sleeve…
If you can’t access the published work for free, you may still be able to read its preprint on biorXiv! Sure, a preprint is not the final version of the story, but it’s often close enough, or at least contains the great bulk of the data. And we are not picky…
You won’t be able to cite the preprint version of a published study, but you’ll have a good idea whether that elusive paywalled article is really worth the money!
Or worth an extra-effort to get if for free…
WritinGenomics 