Have you ever done a masters degree? If not, this is how it works (and this works for ANY subject, not just desalination) 1) Get a library card for university

Have you ever done a masters degree? If not, this is how it works (and this works for ANY subject, not just desalination) 1) Get a library card for university (this will more reliably get you papers than sci-hub). Sometimes you can just pay them for one, sometimes you have to register for a course (1 unit courses in the US can be inexpensive and even if they are in basket weaving as a "student" you get to get a library card :-) 2) With the assistance of the reference librarian find the journals that cover the topic you're trying to master and go through the papers. There will be some "highly cited" papers that everyone refers to, some "medium levels of citations" and then typically you'll see papers that take the research in one of a few directions. You can choose to either stay in "survey" mode at this point or dive down one of those directions. 3) Read the papers and learn from the results, you may find subjects that you didn't learn as much as you needed to in order to read the paper (math, chemistry, physics, etc) for each of those, you find text books or things like the Chaum's notes for the subject to bring you up to the level you need in order to understand the paper. If you keep at this for a while you will start finding that when you read a paper you both understand what they are doing and may instantly develop an opinion on whether or not you think it is "good" and will be able to explain why it is or isn't good. At that point you are now the "master" of that topic. You don't have the degree but you didn't have to write a thesis either so there is that :-). If the university you chose in step 1 has professors doing stuff in the area you could probably co-write papers with them.