UC San Diego students, faculty, and staff have access to electronic scholarly resources that are unavailable to most students, researchers and others who do not have access through a university library.
Below are some ways to access scholarly sources (particularly journal articles) that may be freely available. You can also email the authors themselves, who may be able to send you a copy of the paper. Every paper should have a "corresponding author" to handle queries from readers. There's no guarantee the author will respond quickly (or at all), but it is worth a try. If the author is affiliated with a university, check their department/lab website, as some also post copies of their articles in their publications list.
Below are databases and search engines to help you access scholarly books and articles that are "open access," freely available to the public without paywalls.
Unpaywall is a Chrome/Firefox app that can help you find legal, open access copies of scholarly articles, that are freely available to anyone. When you're on a paywalled article, you'll see a lock icon over to the right of the article.
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The article is freely available on this page. Click the lock or look on the page for a download/PDF option. |
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A copy of this article, either a preprint or version that's been accepted, is freely available elsewhere. Click the lock to get that copy. |
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The article is freely available on this page, likely in HTML, but the PDF is still paywalled. |
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A free/open access version of this article couldn't be found. |
