4 ms·

> First try to find the paper. First use http://front.math.ucdavis.edu http://front.math.ucdavis.edu . If you can't find it then use google scholar. If that fai

by vog 9y ago

> First try to find the paper. First use http://front.math.ucdavis.edu http://front.math.ucdavis.edu . If you can't find it then use google scholar. If that fails then go on the authors academic website. If that fails then see if the author is live and try to contact them. Then repeat for their grad students. If all else fails post it to r/math or HN and ask for the pdf. Or, go directly to arxiv, scihub or a similar service. Fully agree with the following steps, though.

giomasce 9y ago
This is still the easy path. Sometimes you have to hope that the article you need was translated from Russian to English, find which is its translated title, search the title, understand that you could not find anything because you have to search the title the volume it was published into, not its original one; then search again the new title, find nothing on GenLib, SciHub and similar, go the university library, discover that the section this article belongs to is currently packed because they are renovating (or moving, who remembers) and there is not ETA and they do not allow you to fetch it from the packages; speak of the problem with your advisor, who tries to find it in his university's library; in the meantime, speak of the problem with a friend, that encourages to you to ask the library again, this time the library agrees to get the paper for you and you photocopy it; more or less at the same time your advisor manages to give you a photocopy. At last, scan the paper (because you do not want to carry a hundred pages in your backpack all the time, do you?) and put it on GenLib for the sake of future souls that might need it. All of this just to have the paper. During reading, you still need to check the Russian original and ask a Russian friend (as Google translator is not necessarily to be trusted on mathematical texts) for some points that make no sense and turn out to be mistranslations. Not to mention the references to other Russian papers from the sixties that could be even more difficult to find. On the other hand I have to mention that the paper actually contained the theorem I wanted and the proof was reasonably clear. The author also replied helpfully to an email I sent him! So this was definitely worth the effort. I was lucky!

by vog 9y ago

giomasce 9y ago

This is still the easy path. Sometimes you have to hope that the article you need was translated from Russian to English, find which is its translated title, search the title, understand that you could not find anything because you have to search the title the volume it was published into, not its original one; then search again the new title, find nothing on GenLib, SciHub and similar, go the university library, discover that the section this article belongs to is currently packed because they are renovating (or moving, who remembers) and there is not ETA and they do not allow you to fetch it from the packages; speak of the problem with your advisor, who tries to find it in his university's library; in the meantime, speak of the problem with a friend, that encourages to you to ask the library again, this time the library agrees to get the paper for you and you photocopy it; more or less at the same time your advisor manages to give you a photocopy. At last, scan the paper (because you do not want to carry a hundred pages in your backpack all the time, do you?) and put it on GenLib for the sake of future souls that might need it. All of this just to have the paper. During reading, you still need to check the Russian original and ask a Russian friend (as Google translator is not necessarily to be trusted on mathematical texts) for some points that make no sense and turn out to be mistranslations. Not to mention the references to other Russian papers from the sixties that could be even more difficult to find. On the other hand I have to mention that the paper actually contained the theorem I wanted and the proof was reasonably clear. The author also replied helpfully to an email I sent him! So this was definitely worth the effort. I was lucky!