How to Access Full Scientific Journals For Free
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In the name of science and free access to scientific articles we need to use, I've got a list of two free tools to help you download the full and free versions of full scientific articles.
Web browser extensions
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Method 1:
Unpaywall - Unpaywall is a free browser extension that will check to see if it can find a free article of the version you're currently reading. Simple as that. It will have a little green popup in the right hand corner you can click on if you come across this article. https://unpaywall.org/
Open Access Button - Claims to open up locked articled. Have not tried it myself.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-access-button/gknkbkaapnhpmkcgkmdekdffgcddoiel
CORE Discovery - Again, claims to beat the paywall and access the article. May just be quering Sci-Hub
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/core-discovery/ockidfiihjhkngdalfnbeeepgfbmkmlh?hl=en
There are several other extensions, but I cannot confirm whether or not they work or not: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/paper-download/fglgooccbaafoolhcccnkenjoigcnlpf
These extensions will occasionally work.
Method 2:
Sci-Hub - Sci-Hub is a full free (and pirated) method to find journal articles you're looking for. Generally, just paste the full link of the journal article that's restricted. It will almost fine all articles 100% of the time if you just know how to paste in the URL properly. It generally works really well if you use a DOI (Digital object identifier) url. Here is an example of a DOI url Redirecting. Sci-Hub has to change URLs frequently because of the crackdown on the from the academic industrial complex.
Some of the Sci-Hub links aren't working, so you can visit a site that has mirrors of Sci-Hub URLs. It has a small popup on the front page, but if you hit ESC it will go away.
Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of Science → Latest Sci Hub links:
The best place to find the most up to date and working Sci-hub mirror is Reddit's Sci_Hub section: https://www.reddit.com/r/scihub/ or Alexandra Elbakyan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ringo_ring
Library Genesis has tons of links to articles, ebooks and much much more. Their current URL is https://libgen.li/ However, they also have a Reddit with their most up to date mirrors:
https://www.reddit.com/r/libgen/
Zlibrary. Current working URL: https://b-ok.cc/ or https://z-lib.org/ and, of course, they have their own Reddit as well (although it seems to be volunteer manned): https://www.reddit.com/r/zlibrary/
Method 3:
#ICanHazPDF - This is kind of the method of last resort and I've never had it work for me, but it's worth a shot. You can post the title of the article along with a URL along with the hashtag #ICanHazPDF and other researchers online will see if they can share it with you. It's worth a try if you can't find it anywhere else.
Still can't find it? Try the helpful folks at Reddit's Scholar Section. Here is how you have to format a post for it get accepted
⭐ Required format: [Tag] Title and Author(s)
⭐ Possible tags: [Article], [Book]. [Chapter], [Supplement], [Thesis], [Standard], [Other], or [Meta]
⭐ Body:
⭐ Please only replace "insert identifier here/insert link to paywall here". Leave everything else alone, including punctuation.
DOI/PMID/ISBN: insert identifier here
[URL]( insert link to paywall here )
So, if you're looking for an article titled "How many penguins can live on a school bus?" You would start the title as [Article] How many penguins can live on a school bus?
Then in the body you would post a link to the article you found. So, it would be:
How many penguins can live on a school bus?
https://penguinstudies.org/article123
Then you would include the PMID (PubMed ID), DOI (Digital Object Identifier) example: 10.1000/182, or ISBN (a number assigned to a book) International Standard Book Number
So, the title would be [Article] How many penguins can live on a school bus?
The body would be:
How many penguins can live on a school bus?
https://penguinstudies.org/article123
10.1000/182
Thanks for your help,
so and so
Make sure and include ALL the information you can about the document you are looking for. Also, make sure you turn email notifications because often a user will post a link to the PDF file, then immediately delete the post, so if you don't have emails on, you won't see the post.
Access Subscription Only Newspapers for Free
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One other thing I wanted to recently post about is a really awesome website paywall killer browser extension called bypass-paywalls-chrome. Now, unfortunately, this extension requires a little bit of technical knowledge to install, but it's explain very well in the read me a file.
Here's an extensive list of all the sites they prevent you from getting the "Sorry, you're not subscribed" error message when trying to access a paywalled website.
Bypass the following sites' paywalls with this extension: ByPass Firewalls Chrome
INSTRUCTIONS BELOW
Adweek
Algemeen Dagblad
American Banker
Baltimore Sun
Barron's
Bloomberg Quint
Bloomberg
Brisbane Times
Business Insider
Caixin
Central Western Daily
Chemical & Engineering News
Chicago Tribune
Corriere Della Sera
Crain's Chicago Business
Daily Press
De Groene Amsterdammer
De Tijd
De Volkskrant
DeMorgen
Denver Post
Dynamed Plus
Eindhovens Dagblad
El Pais
Encyclopedia Britannica
Examiner
Financial News
Financial Times
First Things
Foreign Policy
Fortune
Genomeweb
Glassdoor
Haaretz.co.il
Haaretz.com
Handelsblatt
Harper's Magazine
Hartford Courant
Harvard Business Review
Herald Sun
Het Financieel Dagblad
History Extra
Il Manifesto
Inc.com
Investors Chronicle
L'Écho
L.A. Business Journal
La Nación
La Repubblica
La Stampa
La Tercera
Le Devoir
Le Parisien
Les Échos
Loeb Classical Library
London Review of Books
Los Angeles Times
MIT Sloan Management Review
MIT Technology Review
Medium
Mexicon News Daily
Mountain View Voice
NRC Handelsblad
NT News
National Post
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
New York Magazine
New Zealand Herald
Nikkei Asian Review
Orange County Register
Orlando Sentinel
Palo Alto Online
Parool
Quartz
Quora
Republic.ru
San Diego Union Tribune
San Francisco Chronicle
Scientific American
Seeking Alpha
SOFREP
Statista
SunSentinel
Tech in Asia
Telegraaf
The Advertiser
The Advocate
The Age
The American Interest
The Athletic
The Athletic UK
The Atlantic
The Australian Financial Review
The Australian
The Business Journals
The Canberra Times
The Courier
The Courier Mail
The Daily Telegraph
The Diplomat
The Economist
The Globe and Mail
The Herald
The Hindu
The Irish Times
The Japan Times
The Kansas City Star
The Mercury News
The Mercury Tasmania
The Morning Call
The Nation
The New Statesman
The New York Times
The New Yorker
The News-Gazette
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Saturday Paper
The Seattle Times
The Spectator Australia
The Spectator
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Telegraph
The Times
The Toronto Star
The Wall Street Journal
The Washington Post
The Wrap
TheMarker
Times Literary Supplement
Towards Data Science
Trouw
Vanity Fair
Vrij Nederland
Winston-Salem Journal
Wired
World Politics Review
So, how do you get this extension installed. Well, first of all you need an unzip client (one comes with Windows), but you can also use my personal fav, WinRAR or 7Zip.
Second, you download the ByPass Firewalls Chrome ZIP file (apparently there is a version for Firefox as well). Since this version is for Chrome, it will work on browsers that use the Chrome engine like Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Brave. Then you unzip it into a folder or your choice and here are the further 3 instructions:
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
1. In Chrome go to the extensions page (chrome://extensions, or edge://extensions, brave://extensions, opera://extensions, etc).
2. Enable Developer Mode.
3. Drag the bypass-paywalls-chrome-master folder anywhere on the page to import it (do not delete the folder afterwards).
And you're done. It works great on sites like the WSJ which are impossible to read without some kind of bypass.
Firefox Extension: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/releases/latest/download/bypass-paywalls-firefox.xpi
Find Old Deleted Web Pages
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I've found a very new cool extension if you're looking for copies of old web pages that have vanished off the internet and you can't find them. It's very helpful if you know the direct URL of the site and knew it existed in the past but has just vanished completely. The Wayback Machine works for most things, but for forums and other miscellaneous links it isn't so great.
This is an extension called Web Archives and you can download the extension here:
https://github.com/dessant/web-archives/blob/master/README.md
Web Archives is a browser extension which helps you to find archived and cached versions of web pages. Searches can be initiated from the right-click context menu, the browser toolbar, or the address bar in case of a server error.
Supported search engines, archive and cache sources:
Wayback Machine
Google Cache
Bing Cache
Yandex Cache
Archive.is
Memento Time Travel
WebCite
Exalead Cache
Gigablast Cache
Sogou Snapshot
Qihoo 360 Search Snapshot
Baidu Snapshot
Naver Cache
Yahoo Japan Cache
Megalodon
Thank you and please share this with your friends/family/comrades who are fighting for the freedom of information for everyone!
If you would like to get in contact with if you found an error, an update, or anything else of importance, you can just DM me here, or you can find my email here http://scr.im/poguetwitter and I would prefer if you used a PGP key, which you can find here: https://bitbin.it/vuu4W8xG/
Thanks!
@pogue25
