Why You Should Know How to Find Academic Papers, and 7 Ways to do so
- Spencer Greenberg and Travis M.
- 30 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Short of time? Read the key takeaways.
📚 Academic papers are worth seeking out more than most people do. They're often the only place where specific studies exist, and they can offer the most rigorous analyses available on a wide variety of topics. This article is designed as a practical guide to overcoming those barriers.
🎓 Method 1: Academic databases like Google Scholar are usually the best starting point. In fact, studies indicate that Google Scholar has especially broad coverage, so will often be the best first step. It also supports advanced search techniques like Boolean operators.
🌐 Method 2: General web searches can sometimes uncover freely available PDFs. Searching the paper title directly in a search engine often works, especially for influential or widely shared papers.
👨🏫 Method 3: Authors’ personal websites frequently host free copies of papers. These are often preprints or accepted manuscripts that are very similar to the published version.
🧩 Method 4: Browser extensions like Unpaywall and Kopernio can automatically locate open-access versions of papers.
🤝 Method 5: ResearchGate and Academia.edu sometimes provide direct access to papers or allow you to request them from authors.
🤖 Method 6: AI tools designed for research, like Consensus or Elicit, can often link directly to full texts. If you're not ethically opposed to using these tools, they can also make difficult academic writing easier to understand, though remember: they are not perfectly reliable!
📧 Method 7: Emailing the author directly is often highly effective. Many researchers are happy to send copies of their papers to polite requesters.
⚖️ This article also discusses legally or morally controversial methods of accessing papers. It acknowledges that such methods are common and debated within academia, while encouraging readers to follow the laws and regulations of their jurisdiction.
If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in checking the truth of claims they encounter, you may have found yourself trying to track down the full text of an academic paper at some point. This can be quite a frustrating experience because (especially without a university affiliation) the full text of a paper can be elusive. On the other hand, if you've never found yourself trying to track down a paper, it may be something to consider for the future, because there can be a lot of benefits to doing so.
Of course, not all academic papers are reliable, but most studies exist only in academic papers, and sometimes the most thoughtful analyses that exist on a topic are in academic papers as well. There are many other reasons to check academic papers, including:
You want evidence-based ideas for how to address a problem (e.g., problems with your sleep, burnout, or anxiety)
You want to check a claim made in the media, such as a claim about health
You want to understand a topic more deeply
You suspect an article you’re reading is oversimplifying or exaggerating about something
You’re creating educational content (e.g., writing essays or teaching people) and want to incorporate different perspectives
We think there are a lot of benefits to be gained from looking at academic papers more than people typically do. Unfortunately, figuring out which papers to read is only part of the battle. Another substantial part (which people often struggle with) is finding the full text of the specific papers you want. We’re here to help.
This guide to finding the full-text of academic papers aims to be a resource you can put in your bookmarks or favorites and come back to when you need it. And if you know someone who might benefit from the information here, we’d be glad if you would share it with them.
As you consider these approaches, be sure to follow all rules, laws, and regulations in your jurisdiction, and be sure you are aware of potential risks before using any of these methods.
Method 1: Academic databases
There are literally hundreds of databases of academic sources out there. From well-known ones like PubMed to more obscure ones like A&AePortal. Many have their own specialist areas, and different ones are good for different things. If you’re just looking to find a particular paper, it’s worth knowing that studies repeatedly find that Google Scholar has the greatest coverage in most subjects (for example, here, here, and here). This means that the best first step will often be to search for the source you’re looking for in Google Scholar.
If you’re looking for a specific paper, you can just stick the details into the search bar. Google Scholar also lets you search like any search engine (e.g., if you wanted to learn more about what's been proven about meditation, you could simply search for “meditation”). But there’s also a powerful way to use Google Scholar that fewer people know about: using “booleans” like AND and OR and a minus sign ("-") to exclude results. For instance, if you just want randomized controlled trials on meditation, you can search:
“meditation” AND “randomized controlled trial”
But if you also want to allow non-randomized experiments but not pilot studies, you could expand this to:
"meditation" AND ("randomized controlled trial" OR "experiment") -pilot
Using booleans like this lets you hone in on exactly what you're looking for, to find relevant papers quickly.
A very nice feature of Google Scholar is that, if a PDF or full-text is available for a paper, it will show up as a link on the right-hand side of the search result. Sometimes, there’s an option displayed below the search result to see “All X versions” of a paper, so if the first version doesn’t have a PDF showing, it’s worth checking the other versions. Here’s an image showing what we mean:
We recommend starting there when looking for papers.
If you find a paper using Google Scholar that you are interested in, but no PDF version / full text is shown, then try...
Method 2: General web search
A lot of papers have been uploaded to webpages that appear in search engines. This means that just sticking the citation information into Google (or your preferred search engine) will sometimes give you the access you need. This is particularly effective for influential or foundational papers. Just look for search results that have the PDF or docx file type icon next to them:
If that doesn’t work, then try…
Method 3: Author websites
A lot of researchers host their articles on their own personal websites, accessible to anyone, completely free of charge. If searching for the paper in a search engine hasn’t worked, try searching for the author’s name. From there, look to see whether they have a personal website and whether it hosts the paper you’re looking for.
Different disciplines have different norms about this. For example, it’s an extremely common practice in philosophy, but it is less so in psychology. Still, even in disciplines where it’s not the “done thing”, it’s usually worth a look.
One thing to note is that the papers hosted on personal websites are often ‘preprints’ or ‘accepted manuscripts’, which means they’re not the final version that is published in a journal or as a book chapter, with all the same typesetting, formatting, page numbers, and copyright information. If you’re on an author’s personal website and looking at a preprint or accepted manuscript of a paper that has been published, the chances are high that it’s close enough to the published version to be worth reading. It probably includes changes they made after peer review, for example. But it’s possible that you’re looking at the version that the author(s) initially submitted for publication (not the final draft submitted after peer-review), and there are important differences. This means preprints and accepted manuscripts might not be useful for all contexts. If the stakes are very high, you should look for the version that was published.
Any of the following is (by itself) a good indication that you’re looking at a preprint or accepted manuscript of a paper or book chapter, etc:
The file shows no journal copyright information on the first page (typically this is in the header or footer)
The file starts on page 1 (some print versions do start on page 1, but it’s quite uncommon)
The first page explicitly says something like “forthcoming in…” or “version X”
The file shows print marks (like crop and bleed marks)
Here’s an image showing some of these traits:
If that doesn’t work, then try…
Method 4: Browser Extensions
Unpaywall and Kopernio are browser extensions for when you encounter a paywalled article online. When you do, these extensions check (either automatically or at the click of a button) to see whether they are aware of an open-access copy somewhere. If they are, the extension shows you a tab on your screen that you can click to get access to the article.
These extensions only give access to open-access articles, which means that they’ll be less exhaustive than some other methods in this list, but they can significantly speed up the process of finding out whether an article has an open-access version somewhere, by doing the searching for you.
If that doesn’t work, then try…
Method 5: ResearchGate or Academia.edu
If your job or studies relate to research in any way (whether that’s at a university or not), you can create or log in to a free ResearchGate account, and search for the title of article you’re looking for. Sometimes the full text will already be there. If not, you can click the “Request full-text” button to request it from the author (and write them a nice note).
If you’re not eligible for a ResearchGate account, or ResearchGate doesn’t have the paper you’re looking for, another option is to search Academia.edu, which is available to anyone and sometimes has papers that ResearchGate doesn’t have (but the reverse is also true).
One warning about these websites is that they can send a lot of unwanted emails (although you should be able to unsubscribe from them).
If that doesn’t work, then try…
Method 6: Ask an LLM designed for research
If you’re not ethically opposed to the use of LLMs, you might want to consider asking an LLM that has been designed for research, such as Consensus or Elicit. They can often link directly to PDF copies of papers that you might find difficult to source by yourself. Simply ask directly into the chat/prompt box.
Reading a paper carefully is the best way to understand it if it's an area you already know a lot about. But if you’re reading about a domain you're less familiar with, or if you’re struggling to understand the paper, then (as long as you’re not ethically opposed to using generative AIs), you might wish to consider the powerful approach of copying the entire article and pasting it into the best AI you have access to. You can then ask the AI questions about the paper. For instance, you can ask it to explain terms you don't understand, or ask it what the major limitations of the methodology are, or ask it to summarize the key findings of the paper and how robust each of those findings is. While AI isn't always right about these things, and it's a big mistake to treat it as infallible, the popular AIs have been trained on hundreds of thousands or millions of academic papers already, and so have domain knowledge that can be very helpful when navigating complex papers. Using this approach also enables you to explore a paper through “conversation” with the AI rather than through reading, which some people (especially those not used to dense academic prose) find easier and more enjoyable. When putting other people’s work into AIs like this, we generally recommend adjusting the settings so that your conversation isn’t used to train future models.
If that doesn’t work, then try…
Method 7: Email one of the paper’s authors
Researchers are typically very happy to share copies of their papers with anyone who asks. Often they are thrilled. So, there’s no need to be shy about emailing directly and politely asking whether they’d mind sending you a copy.
Sometimes, the abstract of the paper (or the website showing the abstract) will contain their email address but, if it doesn’t, you can usually find a researcher’s contact details by sticking their name into a search engine (if it’s a common name, you may have to enter their name and field of study), and checking either their university department webpage or their own personal website (if they have one).
When none of the above work, some people turn to...
Morally or legally questionable methods
Any article about finding academic sources would be incomplete if it didn’t mention the legally questionable methods people often use. Some people believe it's immoral to access articles using these methods, whereas other people think it's completely morally acceptable. These methods are open secrets in academia. For example, here’s a tweet that makes a joke about using the pretext of condemning piracy to deliberately tell students exactly where to pirate:
We do not wish to get caught up in these legal grey areas, so we’re going to limit what we say about them. However, we recognize that if you look around for information on how to find academic sources, you might find people advocating these methods without telling you that they’re of dubious legality. So, we think it’s important for us to address them and tell you explicitly about their status. Here’s a short list of some other legally dubious (or outright illegal) methods:
The r/scholar subreddit, where people post requests for papers.
Mutual scientific paper aide websites like wosonhj/smartquantai, where people request copies of papers.
Nexus Search bots on the Telegram app.
We recommend you follow the laws and regulations of your jurisdiction, and that you be careful not to use a service that may be unsafe (especially if you don’t understand the risks) or that may cause you to break the law inadvertently.
We hope you've found this article helpful, and that it spurs you to read more papers. Good luck with your searching!
If you found this article useful (or think you might in the future) and plan to read more academic papers, you might want to add it to your bookmarks or favorites. And if you think you know someone who might find it useful, we’d love it if you shared it with them!
If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy our free Predict Correlations quiz (it’s free); see how well you understand human psychology by attempting to predict the correlations found by psychological studies.
