Hey, guys, who do academic writing!

[Nikas Kunitz]

(I certainly remember that some of you do)
I wanted to ask for a help in this field. We all need other scientist-writers' works to provide basis and references for works of our own. And, of course, newer, freshier works are usually better (or atleast provide a good revise and commentary on older, well recognised, works). Moreover, for me, a Russian student with (nearly) free knowledge of English language, using fresh publications in English is like mining a mother lode for research, compensating lower quantity (and often quality), as well as near absence, of Russian publications on the themes of interest. That is were the problem arises - it's often quite hard to find these fresh English publications in free access on the internet, as they are actively protected by copyrighting and aren't even nearly as often pirated, as films or some artistic literature is. Yes, it's not really fine to seek for free things which others sell, but prices which bookselling sites offer for some book of interest are really too high for a typical student. Especially when you need several such books for research and out of them, only some exctract, some chapters are really needed.
So, I would like to ask if you use or know any sites where you can get new, fresh publications in free access. I need some works for my research project at the university, and I'm already stuck with unavailability of needed works in free access.

 

[DutchGuard]

Best advice: contact the authors of the papers you want to read directly via email. They are allowed to, and often will, send you copies for free.

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

Best advice: contact the authors of the papers you want to read directly via email. They are allowed to, and often will, send you copies for free.

Hmm, yes, I saw it as an option on some sites and I think I even had, accidentally, requested something on different subject months ago, don't really remember if I got a reply (I found needed book by "normal" search back then). I'll consider this option, though it requires some personal contact, which I tend to avoid, with some stranger persons, hehehe (don't understand me wrong).
I'll check this option, but still some sites with free access would be a nice additional option. In any way, thank you!

 

[eag_inc]

The prices are indeed insane, especially for textbooks. I don't know if this is against the rules (feel free to delete if so), but libgen is what everyone typically uses for books/articles etc. I get almost everything I need from there. Otherwise you could try the mirrors if the main website doesn't have it, or the internet archive which is also useful for fringe publications that are hard to find elsewhere.

However I would of course never endorse using sites like libgen. Never. Absolutely not. Fr.

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

The prices are indeed insane, especially for textbooks. I don't know if this is against the rules (feel free to delete if so), but libgen is what everyone typically uses for books/articles etc. I get almost everything I need from there. Otherwise you could try the mirrors if the main website doesn't have it, or the internet archive which is also useful for fringe publications that are hard to find elsewhere.

However I would of course never endorse using sites like libgen. Never. Absolutely not. Fr.

Thank you! Will check out these options!

 

[Agonizes]

Another place I like to use is Academia.edu, you do need to make an account but beyond that its basically free, many researchers post their papers and books on there and you can download them for free.
There's also Z-library, which, like libgen, I very strongly do not endorse that you use at all to find books and articles.

 

[Agonizes]

I assume that the institutional access offered by Russian Universities is quite limited?

 

[Azulejo]

I personally don't use it a lot, but for starters there's Google Scholar, a search engine based on Google that is centered around academic publications. It may be good for a first rough round of scouting. ResearchGate is free after making an account and has a decent amount of publications. If you are interested in stuff about Spain, Portugal and Latin America there's Dialnet. Obviously most of the publications are on Spanish/Portuguese, but you may find some stuff in English as well. (around 15% of the journals they service). I use it a lot. JSTOR is pretty big and houses many articles of many topics. It is not free, but many universities provide free access to it when you are connected with your student account or/and with the university's internet.

As Agonizes suggested, I recommend you checking what journals, publications and repositories your university is paying for, it is very likely that you have access to some thanks to being enroled. Also as Dutch, said reaching authors is a really good option, most of the time people are delighted to help with their work. Be careful however with sites like Z-library, Libgen or Sci-Hub, those are not recommended for finding enlightenment.

One more thing: Love Academia.edu. That being said, be prepared for being bombarded with article suggestions and suprised by how much of your work is allegedly being quoted by others. There was a whole summer when I received constant recommendations for publications about Seleucid coinage because of an assignment I did the semester before. I would say it is kinda useful when it harasses you with a topic you are actually researching hahaha​

 

[Gealrüable]

Use Sci-Hub
just google sci-hub and see which link currently works
remove all barriers in science, and give Alexandra a medal!

 

[Wazgamer]

Use Sci-Hub
just google sci-hub and see which link currently works
remove all barriers in science, and give Alexandra a medal!

Yeah I was going to say the same you might need to use a vpn to access but try this link https://www.sci-hub.st/

Often the people who wrote the publications dont actually see any of the money from the sites that make you pay to fully view publications. So if you have no luck with contacting authors then try this.

Learning is important and progress should not be hidden behind payment walls driven by corporate greed.

 

[Wazgamer]

Yeah I was going to say the same you might need to use a vpn to access but try this link https://www.sci-hub.st/

Often the people who wrote the publications dont actually see any of the money from the sites that make you pay to fully view publications. So if you have no luck with contacting authors then try this.

Learning is important and progress should not be hidden behind payment walls driven by corporate greed.

P.S I’ve never encountered any issues from these sites just be careful to reference the publication correctly and not credit sci hub as your source <3

 

[Nikas Kunitz]

Thank you, guys, for all the sites and advices! Actually, I already encountered many of them (the more "legal" ones), so I guess I'll just have to use them, so to say, more deeply (I already checked Academia.edu, but it seems that some of needed works aren't here). Anyway, thank you, I just wanted to know what methods of searching you use to try them myself.
Talking about Russian universities. I at the moment had to come back to my hometown and to the shitty university here (Personally, I think it doesn't really earn the title of university). The thing is that most of universities in Russia don't have either money (be it real lack of it or just corruption) or interest (often universities subscribe only to Russian journals if at all) or, as it is usually in real world, some combination of both. The much better and influential university in Nižnij Novgorod, where I had pleasure to study for a year (I had to leave it due to some personal reasons) had had subscription to some English journals, but even that was cut off due to the costs (and low interest in fact). The higher education in Russia is in really bad condition. For most professors this all is not about science or education (even if they really do it so), but merely a job to get money for living (university workers are really underpaid, especially in provincial universities, like my current one. There's even a joke that I heard from several professors - doing academic work is not about earning lots of money, but about doing what is interesting for you and getting money enough to not die from starvation), while most students go to university just to get some nominal high education degree to find a better job with it, regardless of how their specialisation matters in that job (so, an university degree is not really about science or knowledge, but merely about socio-economic prestige). This is why Russia wasn't fully integrated into European university system over past 20 years - we have too much "universities" which provide too much "specialists". It seems to me that there are only 10-20 proper universtities in whole Russia, which provide profound and deep academic education, while nominally we have hundreds of "universities" nearly in every city and town, which provide "degrees" for mere prestige.
So, our goverment doesn't really care about policing academic research - it simply is so detached from social life and media that noone really cares about what these scientists really do (unless they start openly criticising goverment). And university system is really disorganised in general, underfunding because of corruption and corruption because of underfunding.