Hello Reader,

Studying research publications speeds up any research process. It allows us to work at the edge of available knowledge instead of having to "reinvent the wheel" all by ourselves.

But there is one problem...

Access.

If you are not in academia, you may have already faced too many paywalls. Something like $20 or $30 to get access to a single paper.

Now imagine the cost for 100s of papers, some of which you later realised were not even the papers you were looking for (i.e. you were fooled by a nice abstract).

Well.. let me save you from my rant about the research publication system and focus on a practical solution.

In this playbook I will teach how you can get access to (most) research publication for free, without breaking any publishing licensing.

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If there is a free version of a research paper anywhere. Here are 6 options you can try:

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Option 1. Search the article in Google Scholar. If there is a free PDF version of it, it should appear just besides your search result.

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Option 2. Install the Unpaywall Browser Extension (for Chrome and Arc). This will search an Open Access database used by pretty much all apps you use for literature search. If you open the website of a research paper, a green icon will appear on the corner if there is an open version available, otherwise a grey icon will appear.

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Option 3. If you happen to use Zotero for your source collection, just use the option to “Find Available PDF”. It will search the unpaywall database (from option 2) for you.

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Option 4. Search pre-print databases and academic “social media”. Here are a few examples:

• ​https://arxiv.org/​
• ​https://www.researchgate.net/​
• ​https://www.academia.edu/​

Authors often retain the rights for distributing the pre-print version of their publications. So these are the places where they distribute them.

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Option 5. Contact the authors directly. You can either check the email they have in the paper itself (usually available on the webpage of the paper) or you can just search for them on Google (name + affiliation).

Even if they can't distribute a given paper, they may have reports, presentations or other papers that walk you through that research. Or you can just collaborate with them, why not?

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Option 6. Get access through a University library near you. Some libraries give limited access to non-academics depending on their agreement with publishers.

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The last resort. What if there is no Open Access option, no pre-print, and the author is dead or has no right to distribute a copy?

Well.. in that case I am afraid you may need to pay 😕

I could say you can borrow from an academic friend, but that is a grey area.

Most licenses only allow the author to distribute a pre-print version of the work. So a friend re-distributing it could be breaching the copyright license.

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That's it! I wish you some happy searching and good findings.

Let me know if you have any questions at all I could help you with. Also, let me know if you happen to be a lawyer specialised in copyrights and have a take on this topic 🙃

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I hope to talk to you soon.

Until then, take care.

Bianca

P.S.: I have just launched a programme where you can get a sneak peek at my research journey. If you want to see how research works, check it out.

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