[HN Gopher] 8 Ways Journalists Can Access Academic Research for ...
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       8 Ways Journalists Can Access Academic Research for Free
        
       Author : warrenm
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2023-08-09 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gijn.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gijn.org)
        
       | dredmorbius wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | can you name and shame
        
       | JJMcJ wrote:
       | Some universities, especially public ones, may offer library
       | privileges for relatively low costs.
        
       | elektor wrote:
       | 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
        
       | kzrdude wrote:
       | 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_Librar...
        
       | sva_ wrote:
       | 0. sci-hub.st / libgen.is
        
       | abbassi wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | warrenm wrote:
       | 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?)
        
         | kergonath wrote:
         | I have never heard about a researcher who would not provide an
         | article when asked, ever. Most of them would also be happy to
         | discuss the content of the articles, how they can be replicated
         | and whether they are still accurate.
         | 
         | It does have more friction and latency than a search engine,
         | though.
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | What if the researcher is dead?
        
         | generalizations wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | > it's the latency
           | 
           | Journalists are often on deadline.
        
             | kergonath wrote:
             | On the other hand, journalists are also those who would
             | benefit the most from some direct interaction with the
             | authors. The vast majority of them don't have anywhere near
             | the background necessary to actually understand the
             | articles.
        
               | kragen wrote:
               | maybe those journalists shouldn't be the ones covering
               | the papers then
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | > I want to read the papers right then so that I can build
           | off of them to do my next round of searches
           | 
           | I want to read the papers right then so I can figure out if
           | they're actually totally irrelevant or even just garbage, and
           | delete them and move on.
        
         | antegamisou wrote:
         | May be field dependent but unfortunately the most likely
         | outcome is the authors never getting back to you.
        
           | hannob wrote:
           | Not my experience, and I do this regularly. Scientists are
           | often happy when people are interested in their research.
        
             | dredmorbius wrote:
             | Many authors I'm interested in are dead.
             | 
             | Asks are rarely answered.
        
           | warrenm wrote:
           | in this case, the article _does_ suggest asking the journal
           | for a free account - not directly to the authors (that 's #6)
        
       | JimtheCoder wrote:
       | No love for Sci-Hub?
        
         | cratermoon wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | How is it a nod to scihub?
        
             | cratermoon wrote:
             | There's a sci-hub now browser extension.
        
         | antegamisou wrote:
         | 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]
        
         | warrenm wrote:
         | suggest it to the article author :)
        
         | idlewords wrote:
         | Came here to say the same thing. Just use SciHub.
        
       | hunters_laptop wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | Bostonian wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | robwwilliams wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | kergonath wrote:
           | > 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.
        
           | kzrdude wrote:
           | First time I hear about it. Are they likely to stay online,
           | has there been any challenges?
        
       | Bystander22 wrote:
       | 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-...
        
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       (page generated 2023-08-09 23:02 UTC)