Scaling the journal paywall
How (and why) to access to scholarly articles for your research
Hello, welcome back to BookSmarts! Thanks for being here. I was planning to send this out yesterday and make BookSmarts a Thursday thing. But with two young kids at home, plans are just fodder for the fates 🧀 And better late than never, right?
In the first post, I offered some Big Thoughts on how research supplies the necessary ingredients for good nonfiction writing. Now that that’s out of the way (whew!), we’re ready to talk shop. And I thought we’d start with the basic matter of tracking down research material.
In the internet age, it’s blissfully easy to find scholarly articles, books, and other documents related to your subject. But unless you have access to an academic library, actually getting your hands on these documents can be a major hurdle, not to mention an enormous time-suck!
I’m going to address the specific challenges associated with each type of research material one at a time, so look out for future posts on books, archival papers, and other kinds of sources. Today, we’re taking on journal articles — those dense, jargon-laced, hedge-riddled but also invaluable ingots of scholarly labor that contain a huge chunk of collective human knowledge and keep it maddeningly locked up behind paywalls.
First, though, I want to share a little gem of advice I found this week while researching research. It comes from the acclaimed environmental historian William Cronon, who has assembled a truly encyclopedic guide to the research process on his website. And it’s this: before you start ravenously hoarding research materials, pause and picture what you would find in a perfect world.
Perhaps it’s the private papers of your main character, in which they reflect eloquently and insightfully on the issue at the heart of your story. Or maybe it’s a newspaper article with vivid, eye-witness accounts of a key historical event. Perchance it’s a poem that deftly illustrates what your subject means to society at large (looking at you, Leaves of Grass).
Cronon and his team write that, while you should obviosly base your research on the documents you find in the real world, “thinking of ideal sources helps you to expand the realm of the possible and look for documents in places you wouldn’t normally consider.” In my experience, it also helps me to quickly recognize quickly when I’ve found what I need, and keeps me from falling down too many unnecessary rabbit holes (although not all — rabbit holes are part of the fun!). It’s a small step that can yield big rewards.
If you try it, I’d love to hear how it goes!
What even are journal articles and how do they figure into research?
Ok, back to scholarly articles, which are likely to be on many writers’ list of ideal sources.
Papers published in academic journals are the primary means by which researchers in many fields share data and observations, propose and refute hypotheses and arguments, and generally hash out their ideas. They are vetted by peer review, well-cited, and often reflect the most up-to-date thinking on a subject, which is important for accurate reporting.
They’re not perfect, though. Journal articles are often painful to read, even for the initiated (see here and here for helpful tips). And they never represent the capital-T truth. Academic research is not the only way of knowing things (see its long-standing problem of ignoring Indigenous and traditional knowledge) and researchers are just people, complete with biases, blind-spots, and big egos that influence their work.
Even so, journal articles are useful as both primary and secondary sources:
They serve as primary sources when they provide empirical information about your subject, like the biodiversity of “old-growth” grasslands, which I discussed in a book-adjacent story for The Atlantic last year. Journal articles are also indispensible for understanding how scholars have thought about something at different points in time. In the case of grasslands, for instance, old studies described many grassy ecosystems as stunted and artificial, while new ones recognized them as ancient and natural. These articles provided direct evidence of a sea change in the field of grassland science.
Journal articles are good secondary sources when they describe such a change, or when they summarize a mystery or controversy involving your subject. This is especially helpful when you’re quickly trying to grasp an entire field of scholarship, which has likely evolved over the course of decades or centuries and almost always involves a substantial degree of technicality and nuance. Also, article reference lists are a great place to find even more primary sources.
Ok, enough already. How do I get access?
Sometimes, thankfully, it’s a breeze. You just type some keywords into Google Scholar and it returns the very thing you wished for when you fantasized about ideal sources. Best of all, right there on the right-hand side of the screen is a handy link to a pdf of the entire paper hosted on who-cares-what website. Boom. You’re done.
Usually, though, finding out that a paper exists—and that you badly want it—and downloading it onto your computer are two separate acts, often separated by a gulf of frustration. And when this gap can’t be bridged, our work contains holes and our readers’ understanding of the world suffers. Which is why I believe it’s important to a functioning society that writers (and other creators) be able to read journal articles. (Plus, academic publishers seem to be doing just fine.)
So, without further ado, here are all the ways I know of to gain access, organized by speed and reliability. Feel free to skim for what’s most useful to you. And please pipe up in the comments or chat if I’ve overlooked something!
Fast but unreliable strategies
These methods take little time but can be hit or miss.
Google Scholar
As discussed above, and as I’m sure most readers already know, Google Scholar is by far the easiest way to locate academic journal articles. It has an enormous reach and can filter results by publication date, article type (i.e. reviews), and so much more (I’ve got a whole post coming on the thrilling matter of search syntax and how it can expand your research — just you wait!).
Most of the time, however, Google Scholar can’t find a full-text version of a given article, and you must proceed to one of the other methods below.
Your public library
Back in the days before Google Scholar, researchers used proprietary databases to search for articles. These still exist, and your public library may very well have subscriptions to some. For instance, the Multnomah County Public Library here in Portland provides access to JSTOR, a massive digital library, and Gale Academic OneFile, a massive academic database.
Anyone can search JSTOR, which contains a treasure trove of historic papers, and independent researchers can access 100 articles per month online. But with my library account, I can download full copies of almost everything in its collection, which I much prefer. The library benefits are even greater with Gale, which provides wide access to scholarly journals. A quick search for “grass” turned up roughly 140,000 full-text peer-reviewed articles.
I have not been able to get everything I need from the library—far from it, in fact—but it’s an excellent place to start.
(Pro tip: You can connect to your library in Google Scholar and it will link to articles that are available through your institution’s subscriptions. Go to “Library links” in settings.)
Sci-Hub
I cannot officially endorse sci-hub, which posts copyrighted articles on foreign servers in the name of sharing scientific knowledge. I’m just noting that it exists and that it sometimes has the article one needs. Also, it keeps getting shut down because of legal defeats and its URL is always changing, so Google to find the current link.
Twitter
Twitter isn’t home to the vibrant community of researchers and writers the way it once was (to say the least), but there is a long-standing tradition of asking for scholarly articles with the hashtag #icanhazpdf. Again, no comment on legality.
Reliable but slow strategies
These methods work but take a lot of time and do not help you the next time you need something.
Interlibrary loan
If your library doesn’t have access to the journal article you need, you can usually request it through Interlibrary Loan. However, it usually takes a few days and, at least at my library, there’s a limit of three loan requests at a time. Since I often have books checked out through ILL, that doesn’t leave much room for requesting articles. I also feel bad tasking a librarian with tracking something down just to see if it might be relevant, so I reserve this for things that I’m pretty sure I’ll need.
Looking on a researcher’s website or emailing the author
Some researchers post the full version of their papers on their websites (look on the publications page). If not, they will usually send you an article if you ask. I don’t mind doing this if I’m already interviewing the researcher, or I’m fairly sure that their article is important for my research. But as with ILL, I wouldn’t want to bother someone just to see if a paper might be useful, which makes this approach something of a last resort.
Visiting an academic library. In person.
Academic libraries are stingy about offering journal access to alumni and community members because they pay a high price for journal subscriptions (costs are notoriously opaque, but some universities spend millions on them). I have tried to get journal access through both of my alma maters with no success. I did have temporary access to MIT’s library as a Knight Science Journalism Project Fellow and, oh, how sweet it was…
Anyway, the trick is that the actual, physical libraries at many universities, especially state schools, are open to the public, which means you can go in person and access their collections. A few months ago, I spent an enormously productive day at a public kiosk in the Oregon State University library scrounging up loads of stuff about grass. Unless you live in a college town, you probably can’t do this very often, but it can be worth it once in a while.
My approach: the initially-slow-but-then-fast-and-reliable method
This involves doing the up-front work of gaining access to various academic publishers, which can be annoying but provides easy access for all future research. Most publishers require you to show some proof that you are a member of the media, and each has a slightly different system of registration. I’ve included all the relevant links below.
EurekAlert!
EurekAlert! provides press access to a number of high-profile scientific journals including Science, PNAS, The Lancet, and others. The website is designed to show off press releases for the latest articles, but if you poke around a bit, you can find links to free access to all journal content and archives.
You must be a working journalist or public information officer to be granted access. Apply here: https://submission.eurekalert.org/Registration
NatureSpringer
NatureSpringer provides media access to the Nature family of journals as well as 2,900 periodicals published by Springer, and another 300 from BioMedCentral.
Apply here: https://press.springernature.com/
Elsevier
Elsevier is a publishing powerhouse that puts out roughly 2,800 journals across fields ranging from physics to architecture.
Contact someone in Elsevier’s newsroom for access: https://beta.elsevier.com/about/newsroom/media-contacts
Wiley
Like Elsevier, Wiley publishes journals on topics from law to veterinary medicine. I have access through my membership to the National Association of Science Writers, which provides access to a number of other scientific journals too.
You can join NASW here: https://www.nasw.org/join
Taylor & Francis
For a long time, T&F was the publisher where I always hit a wall. I didn’t need their articles very often, but when I did, I always struck out with other methods. Finally, I got frustrated and started digging around on T&F’s website. It turns out that they too offer access to the media. They have one of the more confusing processes I’ve encountered, but it’s worth trying if you find yourself wanting T&F articles frequently.
Apply here: https://newsroom.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/journalist-access/
Final miscellaneous thoughts
Open Access Journals
There are a growing number of journals out there that make their content freely available to the public, including those published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), Frontiers, and by many of the publishers above. Open access journals are simultaneously hailed as a democratizing force and a predatory scarm. It’s far too complicated to explain all the ins and outs here.
Suffice it to say that open access articles vary widely in quality and rigor but that, with some caveats, they can be extremely useful. You can find them through normal channels like Google Scholar and Gale, and through DOAJ, a dedicated open-access search engine.
Britannica
This is not a scholarly journal, but I learned recently that Encyclopedia Britannica provides free access to journalists.
Here’s who to contact: https://corporate.britannica.com/free-subscriptions-for-journalists
Thanks for this. I love research - I do it both for work and fun. I'm not writing a non-fiction book but I'm writing a historical novel and I write non-fiction articles and research reports.