Having just recently dropped out of college, the one thing I miss the most so far is the ability to access a large swath of primary literature for free. Is there any way for someone not in academia to get a similar level of access for a reasonable price – say less than $50 a month?
The hard part is that there isn’t one particular journal I want to subscribe to, but I’d like to read maybe five articles from four disciplines in any one month.
Can it be done without bribing someone still in college?
I have this problem myself, and I am going to go with no, there is no way, short of signing up at college for a course again.
If anyone has a better answer, I will be very glad to hear it.
Of course, there days, more and more of the new academic literature is available “open access” in one form or another, either originally published that way, or made available by the authors (or others) on their personal web sites or at “repositories”. The best way I know to find such stuff is to search on Google Scholar. Downloadable links usually appear to the left of the item. Sometimes they do not work, but, sometimes, if this is the case, you can find another link that does work by clicking the “other versions” link. Unfortunately, though, availability of this sort is very hit-and-miss, and tends to be much worse for older (and, to some extent, very new*) publications. Some of the very old stuff is sometimes available for free on JSTOR, but again, hit-and-miss.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
*Quite often, due to “embargoing” the very latest publications are not even available online even if you do have a university library account, and your library has a subscription! In some cases, you can only get the print version for the first year after publication. The whole system is in turmoil, and seriously fucked up as the traditional publishers desperately try to hold on to their cash-cow profits.
Find out about guest passes to a local college library. Some are quite liberal on allowing entry after they check your ID and find out why you want to visit. State colleges even more so since they are intended to provide resources to the citizens of the state. A few used to not even check ID, although I think this is a thing of the past.
Just don’t go in looking like a homeless person or a perv.
You might be able to access some things with your local public library account. My library is part of the state-wide system which lets me access various reference sources like EBSCO. I’m not entirely sure what journals would be available here.
The trouble with this is that a community college will probably not have access to a very wide selection of journals, and there is a fuckton of journals out there these days. You would presumably have interlibrary-loan rights in this circumstance, however. (Your local public library can also get interlibrary loans for you, but this tends to be slow, and there will probably be a fee, though it may be a good deal lower than the absurd prices charged by publishers for online single articles. If you are signed up at a college, interlibrary loans may well be free, though still rather slow.)
This might get you access to stuff on the shelves, but probably not to online journals, and most of the academic journal literature is online-only in practice these days. (And what is not Open Access is heavily paywalled.)
That’s a good idea, but rather less convenient than being able to do so at home, of course =/
You mean you can do this online, or do you have to physically go into a library? If you can do it online, can you tell me which library system it is so I can see about setting up an account with them? Thank you
Another trick, if you want something specific, is to email the author and beg politely for a copy. They will often be more than happy to find someone cares. This probably should not be overdone, however, and is probably best avoided for very high-profile publications.
Incidentally, you may, if you are lucky, find that even your local public library provides access to the really top journals such as Nature and Science.
This is for Rhode Island. I think you’d have to get an account in person at a local library, but once you do you can access their system online. I have vague recollections of similar online access to academic literature collections available through the Michigan library system and the Boston public library. My WAG is that your local public library should give you access to something similar.
ETA: Specifically, a few years ago I used the Michigan E-library to access some Chilton car repair manuals. They let me login just by giving my long-expired Michigan drivers license number.
I’ve also heard a few things about DeepDyve, which operates on a sort of “rental” model. I think it gives you a chance to briefly preview entire articles, and 30-day rentals of an article for a few dollars each. (Their website is very vague until you sign up for an account with them…) It’s not free but it’s a hell of a lot better than the usual obscene paywall price of fifty fucking dollars.
That’s awesome, thanks! It turns out that if you sign up for a free trial and immediately cancel it, you get another 14 days free. If you cancel it again immediately, the $40/mo price goes down to $10 a month! It didn’t have the articles or journals I wanted to read right now, but for that price it’s definitely worth having a subscription for a month or two to see how it goes.
You don’t even have to provide a real credit card number because their system doesn’t run an actual authorization. The sample Visa number 4111 1111 1111 1111 works just fine, with any CVC. (Don’t worry, nobody actually has that number – it belongs to no valid Visa issuing organization).
One last note about DeepDyve: As far as I can tell, it seems like they also changed their pricing structure so that if you’re a member, you can read everything in their library for one monthly price, no more per-article rentals. (It still costs money to download the PDF, or to rental individual articles without a monthly plan.)
From one of their old newsletters:
The Professional plan allows virtually unlimited rentals and is designed for users who have a recurring need for content and don’t want to worry about any limits or constraints. Compared to the cost of purchasing individual PDF’s or driving to a nearby library to “save” money, the Professional plan offers immediate benefits and savings.
The Freelancer plan is ideal for those users who work on short-term projects that require access to research articles only for the duration of the project. This plan allows you to pre-pay for a bundle of rentals without any ongoing commitment.
I have had pretty good luck with academic libraries letting me access electronic journals if I physically visit their library, but remote access from home is never available unless you’re faculty, staff, or a student. Public colleges are more likely to be accommodating, but some private colleges are helpful. If it’s a Federal Depository Library (as many major academic libraries are), they have to let you in the door to access the federal documents, but they don’t have to let you use their computers or wireless networks. Many will let you use them, however.
Here in Maine, we have something called the Marvel Virtual Library that includes access from home to a significant but not comprehensive selection of academic journal articles. You need to be a Maine resident to use it though. You might ask your public librarians if your state has a similar program.
Some university libraries will let you pay for access to the library. UCLA, for instance, will give you a library card for a $100 fee. You can check out five books at a time, but the page doesn’t indicate which databases you can access. So call around to university libraries, starting with that of your alma mater.
The Directory of Open Access Journals is a pretty comprehensive listing, but as already noted, Google Scholar is generally the easiest way to find specific articles, and will find stuff that is formally and informally self-archived by authors (and others), even when the “official” copy is still behind a paywall. Some of this stuff is in the form of preprints (“penultimate drafts” - which is basically an end-run around copyright restrictions, used by authors forced to sign away their copyright) and the like, and scans, but generally the content is the same or virtually the same as the published version, even though the formatting may be different.
DOAJ seem to have fucked with their interface since I was last there, however, and it seems to be much harder to browse by subject than it used to be. :mad:
… Having experimented with it a bit more, it seems they have managed to turn a once-useful resource into one that is virtually useless. :rolleyes:
Google Scholar is good. Or if you already know the paper you are looking for, you can try the (first or later) author’s academic website and some may post it there or share it if emailed. They are generally allowed to share the preprint.
Or if you’re desperate take a few basketweaving credits at the local community college, if they have good subscriptions (do they normally?) and if a non-traditional student is allowed to access them.
The computers at a university may require login credentials even in the library but maybe worth checking.
I don’t know about other places, but the University of Washington has four or so terminals near the help desk where they allow the general public to access the full online catalog. You have to actually go to the library (Suzzalo) to do that, though. You have to be at the right computers, most of them will expect you to log in with student info.
You’d be surprised what a large public library offers. Obviously our collections do focus on more general titles but there’s some academic stuff in there.
Actually, if you don’t have full paid access, you can register for a free JSTOR account and access three new articles every two weeks, or about 78 per year. Also, if the OP is serious about being willing to pay, you can get full JSTOR access as an individual for $20 a month, or $200 a year. Whether that is worth the money will depend on whether JSTOR has the types of journals that you need.
UC San Diego has an almost identical program, and i’m pretty sure you can’t get remote access to the databases under this arrangement. From the UCSD library website:
This is excellent advice. Many academic authors would love to have their work available to a wider audience, but the realities of tenure and promotion mean that they submit their work to journals that end up hidden behind expensive paywalls. Plenty of them are happy to send you a copy of the article if you send them a polite email explaining your circumstances.
The prices charged for individual articles by some of the scholarly journals and databases are fucking ridiculous. Thirty or forty dollars for a piece of work that has, in many cases, been produced by academics paid with public money, or working for non-profit (and therefore tax-exempt) institutions. The public subsidizes academic labor, the academics produce the scholarship as part of their job, and the people who rake in the money from journal articles are private, for-profit gateways. There’s a real push in some academic circles for more open-access publishing, and i really hope that it moves forward.
