Accessing Research Behind Paywalls -- Let’s Build a Shared Resource

A question that comes up often in our community is how to access research articles when individuals don’t have institutional library access or when institutions can’t afford the fees. This is an equity issue in knowledge access and production, and one we’d love to address together.

Following a great suggestion from a member after our recent virtual writing workshops, we’re starting to gather tips, tools, and strategies to support access to research papers, with the goal of compiling these into a shared article/resource for QMNC members.

Some starting ideas from the community:

• Unpaywall (https://unpaywall.org/welcome) – a browser extension that finds legally available open-access versions of papers, including preprints

• Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com) also includes preprints 

• Academia.edu and ResearchGate.net – where you can request papers directly from authors

• PubMed Central – carries author-accepted versions of peer-reviewed manuscripts

• Contacting corresponding authors by email (many are happy to share a copy)

We know many of you already have creative, practical approaches, especially those working outside academic institutions.

👉 Please reply in the comments below with your favourite tools and tips. We will compile suggestions into a resource that everyone can reference.