5 ms·

8 Ways Journalists Can Access Academic Research for Free

68 points by warrenm 3y ago

JimtheCoder 3y ago
No love for Sci-Hub?
- idlewords 3y ago
  Came here to say the same thing. Just use SciHub.
- antegamisou 3y ago
  Looks like it's covertly suggested in #5 5. Install Browser Extensions Browser extensions can help you check the web for free versions of academic articles. The Unpaywallbrowser extension gathers content from more than 50,000 journals and open-access repositories worldwide. The Open Access Button searches “millions of articles” from sources that include “all of the aggregated repositories in the world, hybrid articles, open access journals, and those on authors’ personal pages,” according to its website. If the Open Access Button does not find free versions of the articles you’re looking for, it will contact the authors and ask them to share their work by putting it into an open access repository.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- warrenm 3y ago
  suggest it to the article author :)
- cratermoon 3y ago
  I suspect the oversight is intentional. The other methods are uncontroversial. The mention of the OA button is a nod to it, without going into the arguments over Sci-Hub's legality.
  - tokai 3y ago
    How is it a nod to scihub?
    - cratermoon 3y ago
      There's a sci-hub now browser extension.
      - tokai 3y ago
        But that is not the two extensions being recommend. On the contrary the two extensions are ones that tries to respect copyright.
sva_ 3y ago
0. sci-hub.st / libgen.is
warrenm 3y ago
My personal favorite? #2: "Ask" It is truly astonishing what you can get when you ask (of course, the answer could be "no", but asking is free - why not do it?)
- antegamisou 3y ago
  May be field dependent but unfortunately the most likely outcome is the authors never getting back to you.
  - hannob 3y ago
    Not my experience, and I do this regularly. Scientists are often happy when people are interested in their research.
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      Many authors I'm interested in are dead. Asks are rarely answered.
  - warrenm 3y ago
    in this case, the article does suggest asking the journal for a free account - not directly to the authors (that's #6)
- generalizations 3y ago
  For me, it's the latency. If I'm researching something, I want to read the papers right then so that I can build off of them to do my next round of searches, instead of waiting for stuff to (maybe) trickle in. With scihub, I can do the search-read-search cycle in a matter of minutes rather than waiting hours/days for emails to be replied to.
  - JJMcJ 3y ago
    > it's the latency Journalists are often on deadline.
robwwilliams 3y ago
Elephant in the room is missing as the author must know. Sci-Hub is sparse for recent articles in certain notorious high profile journals. Authors are getting better about coughing funds to pay for open access at publication. Yes, asking for reprint is still highly effective.
- archangelsky 3y ago
  Also, annas-archive. Has Literally millions of science articles (including the ones from Sci-Hub) all preserved on there along with books. Definitely better then Google Scholar imo.
  - kzrdude 3y ago
    First time I hear about it. Are they likely to stay online, has there been any challenges?
  - kergonath 3y ago
    > Definitely better then Google Scholar imo. It’s not at all in the same niche as Google Scholar. GS is a search engine to legitimate sources for scientific articles. It’s about finding where the articles are, not about getting the articles themselves.
hunters_laptop 3y ago
[flagged]
elektor 3y ago
My usual go-to is to use Sci-Hub but that database hasn't been updated in a long time so I've switched over to Nexus Search. Chrome and Firefox extension here: https://github.com/aokellermann/nexus-now https://github.com/aokellermann/nexus-now
Bystander22 3y ago
Another article with a different round-up of resources: 'You’re a Researcher Without a Library: What Do You Do?' - https://medium.com/a-wikipedia-librarian/youre-a-researcher-without-a-library-what-do-you-do-6811a30373cd https://medium.com/a-wikipedia-librarian/youre-a-researcher-...
JJMcJ 3y ago
Some universities, especially public ones, may offer library privileges for relatively low costs.
Bostonian 3y ago
Often a preprint can be found on arxiv.org, SSRN (for social science research), or searching "pdf <article title>". My local public library has obtained published papers for me on a few occasions.
dredmorbius 3y ago
Sci-Hub (scientific articles) Library Genesis (Nonfiction & fiction books, scientific articles, mass-market magazines) Z-Library (Books, articles) annas-archive (Books, articles) Out-of-copyright / open-access materials can be found through the Internet Archive / Open Library, Project Gutenberg, and Standard Ebooks (latter drawing mostly from the former). Preprints can be found on preprint servers such as ArXiv and SSRN.
sigtstp 3y ago
Re: all the mentions of Sci-Hub, I assume the organization intends to keep a professional image and avoid legal trouble, so they won't just come out and say "just pirate it". Plenty of institutions consider the use of Sci-Hub as misconduct. (I'm just presenting the stance, not defending it, if not clear.)
- kragen 3y ago
  can you name and shame
- notcensored02 3y ago
  [dead]
kzrdude 3y ago
Wikipedia has a program for established editors (with 10+ edits the last month) to access journals through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Librar...
- cguess 3y ago
  Reporters straight up don't have time to edit that much unfortunately. It's a grueling, underpaid and under appreciated job. Most aren't senior reporters at The NY Times (and even then... it's not as good pay as you'd expect).
abbassi 3y ago
[dead]
bikenaga 3y ago
If all you need to do is read an article (but not download), you can register for a free acount with jstor that allows you to read 100 articles a month: https://www.jstor.org/register?redirectUri=%2F https://www.jstor.org/register?redirectUri=%2F I have jstor access elsewhere (through a school) which allows me to actually download pdfs, but it doesn't carry all the journals that going straight through jstor does. And often I just need a single result from a paper or the article is short, and reading online without downloading is fine. arxiv.org is best if the article is recent and available there. Journals published by professional societies sometimes have free access - e.g. some, but not all, of the American Mathematical Society journals. Go to the organization's web site and search the journal there. If you know the author(s) of the paper and they're still active, a search on the author(s) will often turn up faculty web pages with download links. I've found that it's useful to search (ddg, google, etc.) on the author + title of the book/paper, as opposed to going to a site that aggregates works and then searching, because a given site might not have that book/paper. I've often found books, for instance, that were not on places like Project Gutenberg.

68 points by warrenm 3y ago

JimtheCoder 3y ago

No love for Sci-Hub?

idlewords 3y ago
Came here to say the same thing. Just use SciHub.
antegamisou 3y ago
Looks like it's covertly suggested in #5 5. Install Browser Extensions Browser extensions can help you check the web for free versions of academic articles. The Unpaywallbrowser extension gathers content from more than 50,000 journals and open-access repositories worldwide. The Open Access Button searches “millions of articles” from sources that include “all of the aggregated repositories in the world, hybrid articles, open access journals, and those on authors’ personal pages,” according to its website. If the Open Access Button does not find free versions of the articles you’re looking for, it will contact the authors and ask them to share their work by putting it into an open access repository.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
warrenm 3y ago
suggest it to the article author :)
cratermoon 3y ago
I suspect the oversight is intentional. The other methods are uncontroversial. The mention of the OA button is a nod to it, without going into the arguments over Sci-Hub's legality.
- tokai 3y ago
  How is it a nod to scihub?
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    There's a sci-hub now browser extension.
    - tokai 3y ago
      But that is not the two extensions being recommend. On the contrary the two extensions are ones that tries to respect copyright.

sva_ 3y ago

0. sci-hub.st / libgen.is

warrenm 3y ago

My personal favorite? #2: "Ask" It is truly astonishing what you can get when you ask (of course, the answer could be "no", but asking is free - why not do it?)

antegamisou 3y ago
May be field dependent but unfortunately the most likely outcome is the authors never getting back to you.
- hannob 3y ago
  Not my experience, and I do this regularly. Scientists are often happy when people are interested in their research.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Many authors I'm interested in are dead. Asks are rarely answered.
- warrenm 3y ago
  in this case, the article does suggest asking the journal for a free account - not directly to the authors (that's #6)
generalizations 3y ago
For me, it's the latency. If I'm researching something, I want to read the papers right then so that I can build off of them to do my next round of searches, instead of waiting for stuff to (maybe) trickle in. With scihub, I can do the search-read-search cycle in a matter of minutes rather than waiting hours/days for emails to be replied to.
- JJMcJ 3y ago
  > it's the latency Journalists are often on deadline.

robwwilliams 3y ago

Elephant in the room is missing as the author must know. Sci-Hub is sparse for recent articles in certain notorious high profile journals. Authors are getting better about coughing funds to pay for open access at publication. Yes, asking for reprint is still highly effective.

archangelsky 3y ago
Also, annas-archive. Has Literally millions of science articles (including the ones from Sci-Hub) all preserved on there along with books. Definitely better then Google Scholar imo.
- kzrdude 3y ago
  First time I hear about it. Are they likely to stay online, has there been any challenges?
- kergonath 3y ago
  > Definitely better then Google Scholar imo. It’s not at all in the same niche as Google Scholar. GS is a search engine to legitimate sources for scientific articles. It’s about finding where the articles are, not about getting the articles themselves.

hunters_laptop 3y ago

[flagged]

elektor 3y ago

My usual go-to is to use Sci-Hub but that database hasn't been updated in a long time so I've switched over to Nexus Search. Chrome and Firefox extension here: https://github.com/aokellermann/nexus-now https://github.com/aokellermann/nexus-now

Bystander22 3y ago

Another article with a different round-up of resources: 'You’re a Researcher Without a Library: What Do You Do?' - https://medium.com/a-wikipedia-librarian/youre-a-researcher-without-a-library-what-do-you-do-6811a30373cd https://medium.com/a-wikipedia-librarian/youre-a-researcher-...

JJMcJ 3y ago

Some universities, especially public ones, may offer library privileges for relatively low costs.

Bostonian 3y ago

Often a preprint can be found on arxiv.org, SSRN (for social science research), or searching "pdf <article title>". My local public library has obtained published papers for me on a few occasions.

dredmorbius 3y ago

Sci-Hub (scientific articles) Library Genesis (Nonfiction & fiction books, scientific articles, mass-market magazines) Z-Library (Books, articles) annas-archive (Books, articles) Out-of-copyright / open-access materials can be found through the Internet Archive / Open Library, Project Gutenberg, and Standard Ebooks (latter drawing mostly from the former). Preprints can be found on preprint servers such as ArXiv and SSRN.

sigtstp 3y ago

Re: all the mentions of Sci-Hub, I assume the organization intends to keep a professional image and avoid legal trouble, so they won't just come out and say "just pirate it". Plenty of institutions consider the use of Sci-Hub as misconduct. (I'm just presenting the stance, not defending it, if not clear.)

kragen 3y ago
can you name and shame
notcensored02 3y ago
[dead]

kzrdude 3y ago

Wikipedia has a program for established editors (with 10+ edits the last month) to access journals through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Librar...

cguess 3y ago
Reporters straight up don't have time to edit that much unfortunately. It's a grueling, underpaid and under appreciated job. Most aren't senior reporters at The NY Times (and even then... it's not as good pay as you'd expect).

abbassi 3y ago

[dead]

bikenaga 3y ago

If all you need to do is read an article (but not download), you can register for a free acount with jstor that allows you to read 100 articles a month: https://www.jstor.org/register?redirectUri=%2F https://www.jstor.org/register?redirectUri=%2F I have jstor access elsewhere (through a school) which allows me to actually download pdfs, but it doesn't carry all the journals that going straight through jstor does. And often I just need a single result from a paper or the article is short, and reading online without downloading is fine. arxiv.org is best if the article is recent and available there. Journals published by professional societies sometimes have free access - e.g. some, but not all, of the American Mathematical Society journals. Go to the organization's web site and search the journal there. If you know the author(s) of the paper and they're still active, a search on the author(s) will often turn up faculty web pages with download links. I've found that it's useful to search (ddg, google, etc.) on the author + title of the book/paper, as opposed to going to a site that aggregates works and then searching, because a given site might not have that book/paper. I've often found books, for instance, that were not on places like Project Gutenberg.