10 ways to find relevant research and access scholarly articles for free

Getting rid of the fear of standing on the shoulders of giants

Let me guess why you clicked on this article.

1. You need to (or want to) stay up to date on the newest research in your field.
2. You study in your free time, but aren’t signed into any institution. (Maybe you’re a weirdo like me and read social psychology articles for fun.)
3. You read my article on the value of reading about the social sciences, but don’t know how to get started.

Whatever the reason, you may struggle to find and have access to relevant scholarly literature. You may also be dealing with FOSOSOG (the fear of standing on the shoulders of giants): you get a fight, flight, or freeze response at the mere thought of looking up academic texts.

I can’t do the work for you or cure FOSOSOG, but I can give you a few tips on how to start climbing up towards those shoulders. I organized them under two common obstacles to finding relevant research.

FOSOSOG? Image by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash.

Obstacle 1: “I don’t know how to find the right books and articles.”

Let’s say you’re a computer scientist working in the field of virtual reality. You want to learn about human motivation because you believe it to be useful for your team’s development efforts. So you type in “motivation” in the Google Scholar search box.

5 780 000 results. Yikes.

How do you narrow down your search and find something relevant?

7 ways to find relevant research

1. Learn how to use Google Scholar. Really, I mean it. There are some great YouTube tutorials out there. Watch them. This how-to video, for example, helped me a lot with my master’s thesis literature review back in 2019.

2. Search for popular science books or industry blogs on the topic you’re interested in, and check who’s doing the writing. Then, look these people up on Google Scholar and see what they’ve published. Google Scholar allows you to filter by both the number of citations and publication year, which can be useful.

3. Get a popular science book or two and study its notes section. The referenced books and articles can be an excellent gateway to relevant research. I use this method a lot. (And if you don’t want to spend much money, use the public library ♥, find a used copy, or ask if your employer reimburses professional literature. I’ve found many companies to happily pay for books even if they don’t widely advertise it—so it’s worth asking about.)

4. When you find an excellent article (or a good article with an excellent literature review) really study its references. The author has done some great work on your behalf. Silently thank them — and then reap the benefits. But don’t stop there.

5. Follow the scholarly bread crumbs in the opposite direction; find out who has cited this excellent article (or book) you found. Search for the article on Google Scholar, and then click on “Cited by [number of citations]” (see image below). This will take you to newer papers using the article as a reference.

Tip #5 for finding relevant literature: Follow the scholarly bread crumbs in the opposite direction. In this example, I would click on “Cited by 306.”

5+. If you’re dealing with a highly-cited text, you may want to further limit search results. Tick the box for “Search within citing articles” and add the desired search terms (see image below). If this sounds complex, watch those Google Scholar tutorials.

Tip #5+ for finding relevant literature: Further narrow down the search with “Search within citing articles.”

6. If you have a lot of time, take a relevant online course on a platform like Coursera, Udemy, or edX. These usually include some good readings.

7. If you have even more time, check out the college curricula for the field you’re interested in. What courses do they have? What’s on the reading list of those courses? (Reading the classics is more of a long-term solution, but it does give you a great overview.)

Obstacle 2: “All the best articles are behind a paywall.”

OK, you’ve done your search and found some promising articles. But now you have a new problem: You can’t access the PDFs for free (because you’re not affiliated with a college or university, or another organization with the right credentials). This is a tough one, but I’ve developed some tricks over the years.

3 ways to find scholarly articles for free

1. When you find an interesting article on Google Scholar, click “[PDF]” on the right, not the name of the article. This is blatantly obvious, but I wanted to mention it just in case. . .

Tip #1 for accessing PDFs: Click the PDF link on the right— not the name of the article.

2. If there’s no PDF link in Google Scholar, the text may still exist somewhere in the World Wide Web. Copy the name of the article and write the following into the regular Google search box: “[name of the article] PDF” You’ll be surprised by how often you can find a PDF for free online.

Tip #2 for accessing PDFs. Google Scholar didn’t have a PDF link for this article. But I found it online by adding “PDF” to my search.

3. If you still can’t find the PDF, see if any of the search results is for ResearchGate, a site where scientists and researchers can network and share their work. You’re specifically looking for the magic words “Request full-text PDF” (see image below). Some authors allow you to request a copy from them. I’ve been granted access to a few articles this way.

Tip #3 for accessing PDFs. “The Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification” could also be found on ResearchGate with the option to request a full-text PDF.

These are my 10 tips. Let me know yours in the comments.

I hope they helped relieve your FOSOSOG. So off you go! Take that first step towards those shoulders.

Oh, and one more thing: Don’t worry, it’s a gentle giant. And the view from up there is marvelous!