One of the biggest challenges students face during their academic years is finding a reliable database that contains research papers and articles related to their fields. Moreover, the search for these platforms does not stop here. Students usually can not afford to purchase a paper written by a renowned scholar and considering how every task requires extensive reading of such articles, they often fail to get access to papers that have been published in a famous journal. You might also be one of them and this is probably why you clicked on this article. 

Don’t worry, we have got you covered!

In this article, we are going to walk you through some of the reliable websites that allow you to download research papers for free. However, we also wouldn’t want you to go through the frustration with any internet issues while you are downloading these papers. Therefore, you can look for satellite internet providers near you so that you can stay connected to the internet no matter where you are. If you want our recommendation, then you can visit HughesNet Español (if you belong to a Hispanic household) and talk to the sales executive directly. HughesNet® provides a decent internet connection, which enables you to download all the research papers you want without facing any issues. 

 Having said that, here are 5 sites you can visit to download research papers for free. 

• Sci-Hub

Sci-Hub is one of the most popular platforms housing almost 99% of all scientific research papers. Interestingly, it was launched by a student from Kazakhstan in 2011. Rapidly, it gained massive popularity due to the ease it provides to all students and scholars around the globe. 

It has several controversies surrounding it, mainly people accusing it of copyright infringement. This is predominantly why multiple telecom companies have blocked this site. However, you can still access it by enabling a VPN on your browsers. 

The users of Sci-Hub donate the logins of their institutions to the site and whenever you look up a research paper, Sci-Hub retrieves and downloads it through that account and saves a copy of it in its database. 

• Library Genesis 

You probably have already heard great things about Library Genesis. If not, then don’t worry, we are going to tell you everything you should know about it. Library Genesis is an incredible platform that not only lets you get access to research articles but famous handbooks and textbooks as well. 

It collects and arranges the descriptions of items along with the metadata of files. It contains over 2.7 million titles and more than 58 million science magazine files. Similar to Sci-Hub, it has also been sued by one of the major publishing companies in the world. 

This is why it has also been blocked by some Internet Service Providers (ISP). But the good thing is, you can still access it by enabling a VPN on your system. In this way, you can download all the academic material you want. 

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

DOAJ has been around for two decades now. It started with 300 openly accessible journals and now you can find more than 17,500 peer-reviewed and open-access journals on this website. The platform is famous for covering a wide array of fields. You can find articles related to science, arts, medicine, technology, and many other areas. 

In addition to this, DOAJ also contains articles from all the countries, which means, you can find one in your native language as well. Unlike the other two abovementioned sites, DOAJ is completely legal and it also gets donations from libraries and organizations. Because of this, it keeps providing a platform for learners like you to download academic material without paying a single dime for it. 

• Open Access Button

Open Access Button was founded by students just like you, who were also seeking sites with free access and downloadable option without subscriptions or fees. This platform makes publicly funded research papers accessible to everyone and that too without asking for any payment. 

What’s more? Whenever you search for an article and by any chance, it is not currently available on the site, it automatically notifies the author and requests its free access. The more you submit the request, the more chances of the author sharing it into the database increase. 

• PubMed

As the name already indicates, the site is a great source for finding research material related to the science and medicine field. It was launched by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and to your surprise, PubMed has been around since 1996. 

The website allows you to access over 33 million academic materials from MEDLINE, and other life science journals and books. It should also be mentioned here, PubMed does not provide full-text articles directly, however, it fetches them from other free sources such as PubMed Central (PMC). PMC has an extensive archive filled with full-text articles, and that too for free! It surpasses the number of 6.000,000 and all the content is provided by the owners and authors themselves. 

To Sum It Up

It has increasingly become difficult for students to purchase academic material of any sort. However, thanks to technology like the internet, learners and scholars can now get access to every material for free. For this, the abovementioned websites play their due role in making the lives of everyone a whole lot easier. So, check out these platforms today and start accessing all the material you have been planning to.