Alumni and Retirees Resources & Services

Even if you can’t get access to resources through a library, there are many high quality, peer-reviewed articles that you can access for free online. These resources may include journal articles that are free to read by anyone or articles that authors have made available themselves so that others can freely access their work. Resources that are made openly available are called open access. You can learn more about the movement to make all research open access on our Open Access Guide.

So, how do you find these resources?

• Search resources that collect and provide free/Open Access full text articles. 
• Search Open Access articles via WCM's OneSearch - The Library's Catalog.
• Search PubMed Central.
• Install a browser extension/plugin that will help you find Open Access full text as you’re searching online.

ResearchGate/Academia.edu

ResearchGate and Academia.edu are for-profit sites that are popular among researchers for networking and posting PDFs of their articles. You may find that articles that you’re searching for have been posted on these sites. However, two words of caution:

• Many of the articles that are posted on these sites are posted in violation of copyright law. A lawsuit is pending against ResearchGate, filed by some major publishers.

• In order to download PDFs, you may be prompted to create an account with these sites. Keep in mind that these are for-profit sites that can use your personal data in many ways and change their terms of service at any time.

Sci-Hub

When searching for articles, you may hear about Sci-Hub. This is a site that provides access to research papers without any regard to copyright and often infringing on copyright. Sci-Hub is the subject of numerous lawsuits by publishers, and any use by individuals of Sci-Hub may constitute copyright infringement. Read more about Sci-Hub in the New York Times analysis "Should All Research Papers Be Free?"