Tag Archives: free

Free Journal Articles!

 

I like to keep up to date with current research, but not working in a university means I don’t anything like the access that bought-academics have.

No doubt there are ways of hacking into Athens systems and getting very broad access to all sorts of academic material for free. Unfortunately, while this is ethical (given that most publishers do absolutely nothing to justify the cost of their journals – all the intellectual labour is done for free don’t forget), this wouldn’t be legal, so I would not recommend this – There are however, a few ways you can get hold of journal articles for free….

The British Library – Of course you’ll need to be able to get up there, and you’ll have to register for a reader’s pass in advance – but this is a great way to get concentrated into some serious reading, given that’s pretty much all you can do in one of their reading rooms. The way to use the BL is to blitz it when you’ve got half a dozen or more expensive or otherwise innacessible texts to read. Personally I think it’s a great way to spend a Saturday. You also get free WiFi, and water (outside the reading rooms).

http://www.academia.edu/ – You have to open up a free account, but then you can search and download a whole range of presentations, books and journal articles. Some of these might be works in progress.

http://www.jstor.org/ – This is one for serious tightwads – the free account allows you to store up to 3 articles on your ‘bookshelf’ to read – Once two weeks have passed, you can store more. So you only get 3 articles for free every fortnight, but is’t better than nothing. There are also subscription options that allow you to download more stuff.

http://online.sagepub.com/ – Not normally free, but I mention this because at time of writing, they’d just ended a free trial period during which you could download most of their journals – keep an eye out for future trials, heavy on the sociology content.

Scribd.com – According to the blurb…. ‘On Scribd, readers can find everything from up-and-coming books by new authors, to court filings that have been making the news, to academic papers from scholars around the world. With a Scribd subscription, readers can have unlimited access to best-selling books and premium documents, and read them on any iOS and Android smart phone, tablet or desktop.’ OK It’s not free – last time I checked it was $8.99 a month, but you can always search for what’s there and then blitz-download…. As far as I remember I got ‘coming of age in second life’ and ‘fear of freedom’ from Scribd. NB although I do actually pay, I think you can get a lot of material for free, without subscribtion. Either way, it’s worth a mention here!