(And legal)

Knowledge is power.

The roman empire used law and bureaucracy to hold power in the first 500 years AD. The Catholic church held exclusive rights to interpret the bible through the Middle Ages, and the British Empire developed and safeguarded knowledge from the industrial revolution, utilised it in their naval fleets and then honed their mapping skills.

And we’ve all seen how that played out.

For us, in this day and age, accessing the worlds knowledge seems simple. Just jump on the internet right? Everything at our fingertips! Sure, couldn’t be easier. And that’s true, until you come across the infamous Journal Article paywall.

Just look up the prices to read a single article!!!

So, if you like knowledge, and don’t like to pay for it.

Here are 7 of the most reliable ways to access journal articles FOR FREE – ranked from most controversial, to most the underutilised (and reliable).

First up is Sci-Hub.

Kind of like the Robin hood of the academic world. Who self-proclaims as the most controversial project in modern science. The goal of Sci-Hub is to provide free and unrestricted access to all scientific knowledge. With a database of over 88 million research articles and books.

And with Many of the accessible articles usually behind a paywall, there’s a good chance what you’re looking for is available here.

Next, is Library Genesis

or Libgen, where you can choose from more than 2.4 million non-fiction books, 80 million science magazine articles, 2.2 million fiction books, half a million magazine issues, and 2 million comics strips. Libgen is not like Sci-hub as most of the articles are available freely somewhere on the internet, Libgen just brings them all to one place.

Frontiers comes in third

And it’s is a little different to the first two, as it’s actually a publisher.

Frontiers provides the world’s scientists with a place to publish their work that is rigorous and efficient. They want to create more collaborative scientific community by producing over 110 cited journals, 15 of which are the most cited in their category. Journals range from Immunology, to Marine Sciences, to Psychology.

They are contributing a staggering amount of information to the world, that is freely accessible.

Unpaywall is a different option

Is a chrome extension that will link you to a freely accessible version of the journal article you are trying to access (if it’s available).

It’s really easy to use. If you’ve found the journal article through google or any large database, it might be the fastest way to check if there is a free full PDF of the article.

Google Scholar is the classic.

When I was at uni, I always found this a frustrating way to search for journal articles as they were very often still blocked behind a paywall, though it has come a long way in the past few years. And especially if you use it in conjunction with something like “unpaywall’ you can find lots of articles quite easily.

This next one won’t be for everyone, however:

Check with your old school, college or University.

Many unis offer an Alumni program.

By signing up to this, there is often a way to access peer reviewed journal articles through one or more of the databases they are subscribed to. Definitely worth utilising if you have been to University or college previously.

And finally - Your State library

A very underutilised resource for many people.

Many states and countries have great public libraries. Some of which give the members of its community access to online research databases for free. Usually just have to sign up.

So that’s it. A few great ways to access the worlds information freely and reliably. My favourite is probably the free library membership and the unpaywall extension.

Get that knowledge, get that power yo. Vid below with the same info

Peace.