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Download Research Papers for Free: Legal and Ethical Methods

14 Legal Ways to Download Research Papers for Free: The Ultimate Guide

Are you a student, researcher, or curious individual looking to access scholarly articles without breaking the bank? You’re in luck! This comprehensive guide will walk you through various legal and ethical methods to Download Research Papers for Free. We’ll cover everything from open-access databases to contacting authors directly, ensuring you have all the tools to fuel your academic pursuits.

Why Access to Research Papers Matters

Before we dive into the methods, let’s quickly address why free access to research papers is so crucial:

• Advancing knowledge: Open access to research promotes the spread of ideas and accelerates scientific progress.
• Equalizing opportunities: Free access levels the playing field for researchers and students worldwide, regardless of their financial resources.
• Encouraging collaboration: When research is freely available, it’s easier for scientists to build upon each other’s work and collaborate across institutions.

Now, let’s explore the various ways you can legally and ethically obtain research papers without spending a dime.

10 Legal Ways to Download Research Papers for Free: The Ultimate Guide

1. leverage open access databases.

Open-access databases are treasure troves of freely available scholarly articles. Here are some of the best options:

• PubMed Central (PMC): A free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.
• Directory of Open Access Journals ( DOAJ ): A community-curated online directory that indexes high-quality, open-access, peer-reviewed journals.
• arXiv: A repository of electronic preprints for physics, mathematics, computer science, and related fields.
• CORE: The world’s largest collection of open-access research papers.

Pro tip: Many of these databases offer email alerts for new papers in your area of interest, helping you stay up-to-date with the latest research.

2. Utilize Academic Search Engines

Specialized academic search engines can help you find both open-access and potentially accessible papers:

• Google Scholar: The most popular academic search engine, with features like cited by and related articles.
• Microsoft Academic: A free public web search engine for academic publications and literature.
• Semantic Scholar: An AI-powered research tool for scientific literature.

These search engines often provide direct links to free full-text versions when available or point you towards institutional repositories.

3. Explore Institutional Repositories

Many universities and research institutions maintain their own repositories of scholarly work produced by their faculty and students. These repositories often make papers freely available to the public. Try searching for “[University Name] repository” to find these goldmines of information.

4. Check Author’s Websites and Social Media

Many researchers maintain personal websites or profiles on academic social networks where they share their work. Try searching for the author’s name followed by their institution or area of expertise. Platforms to check include:

• ResearchGate
• Academia.edu

5. Contact the Authors Directly

If you can’t find a free version of a paper, don’t hesitate to reach out to the authors. Most researchers are happy to share their work and may send you a copy of their paper. Look for the corresponding author’s email address in the paper’s abstract or contact information.

6. Use Browser Extensions

Several browser extensions can help you find free versions of paywalled articles:

• Unpaywall: A legal and simple tool that searches for free versions of scholarly articles.
• Open Access Button: Searches for free, legal copies of research papers.
• Kopernio: Helps you access PDF versions of scientific articles.

7. Take Advantage of Preprint Servers

Preprint servers host early versions of research papers before they undergo peer review. While these papers should be approached with caution, they can be valuable sources of cutting-edge research:

• bioRxiv: For life sciences
• chemRxiv: For chemistry and related fields
• SocArXiv: For social sciences

8. Utilize Your Library’s Resources

Don’t forget about your local library! Many public and university libraries offer:

• Access to academic databases
• Interlibrary loan services
• Remote access to digital resources

Even if you’re not currently a student, some libraries offer cards to community members that include database access.

9. Explore Sci-Hub Alternatives

While Sci-Hub is popular, it operates in a legal grey area. Instead, consider these alternatives:

• Open Access Button: A legal tool that helps you request access to research papers.
• Lazy Scholar: A browser extension that finds free full-text PDF versions of articles.
• Unpaywall: Another legal alternative that finds open-access versions of articles.

10. Stay Informed About Open Access Initiatives

Keep an eye on developments in the open access movement. Initiatives like Plan S are working to make all publicly funded research freely available. Following these developments can help you stay ahead of the curve in accessing free research.

Ethical Considerations and Best Practices

While accessing free research papers, it’s crucial to keep these ethical considerations in mind:

• Respect copyright laws and publisher agreements.
• Use obtained papers for personal research and educational purposes only.
• Properly cite all sources in your work.
• Support open access initiatives when possible.

Accessing research papers for free is not only possible but also increasingly important in our interconnected world. By utilizing the methods outlined in this guide, you can tap into a vast wealth of knowledge without breaking the bank. Remember to always respect copyright laws and support the open access movement to ensure that knowledge remains freely accessible to all.

14 Websites to Download Research Paper for Free – 2024 – Alternative Methods

Collecting and reading relevant research articles to one’s research areas is important for PhD scholars. However, downloading a research paper is one of the most difficult tasks for any research scholar. You must pay for access to high-quality research materials or subscribe to the journal or publication. In this article, ilovephd lists the top 14 websites to download research papers, journals, books, datasets, patents, and conference proceedings for free.

Check the 14 best free websites to download and read research papers listed below:

Sci-Hub is a website link with over 64.5 million academic papers and articles available for direct download. It bypasses publisher paywalls by allowing access through educational institution proxies.  To download papers Sci-Hub  stores papers in its repository, this storage is called Library Genesis (LibGen) or Library Genesis Proxy 2024. It helps researchers to download free articles by simply using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article.

Visit: Working Sci-Hub Proxy Links – 2024

2. Z-Library

The Z-Library clones Library Genesis, a shadow library project. Z-Library facilitates file sharing of scholarly journal articles, academic texts, and general-interest books (including some copyrighted materials). While most of its books come from Library Genesis, further expanding the collection, users can also directly upload content to the site. This user-contributed content helps to make literature even more widely available. Additionally, individuals can donate to the website’s repository, furthering their mission of free access.

Z-Library claims to have a massive collection, boasting more than 10,139,382 Books books and 84,837,646 Articles articles as of April 25, 2024. According to the project’s page for academic publications (at booksc.org), it aspires to be “the world’s largest e-book library” as well as “the world’s largest scientific papers repository.” Interestingly, Z-Library also describes itself as a donation-based non-profit organization.

Visit Z-Library – You can Download 70,000,000+ scientific articles for free

3. Library Genesis

The Library Genesis aggregator is a community aiming to collect and catalog item descriptions for the most scientific, scientific, and technical directions, as well as file metadata. In addition to the descriptions, the aggregator contains only links to third-party resources hosted by users. All information posted on the website is collected from publicly available public Internet resources and is intended solely for informational purposes.

Visit: libgen.li

4. Unpaywall – Free Research Paper Download

Unpaywall harvests Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and makes it easy to find, track, and use. It is integrated into thousands of library systems, search platforms, and other information products worldwide. If you’re involved in scholarly communication, there’s a good chance you’ve already used Unpaywall data.

Unpaywall is run by OurResearch, a nonprofit dedicated to making scholarships more accessible to everyone. Open is our passion. So it’s only natural our source code is open, too.

Visit: unpaywall.org

5. GetTheResearch.org

GetTheResearch.org is an  Artificial Intelligence(AI)  powered search engine for searching and understanding  scientific articles  for researchers and scientists. It was developed as a part of the  Unpaywall  project. Unpaywall is a database of 23,329,737 free scholarly Open Access(OA) articles from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and make it easy to find, track, and use.

Visit: Find and Understand 25 Million Peer-Reviewed Research Papers for Free

6. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) was launched in 2003 with 300 open-access journals. Today, this independent index contains almost 17,500 peer-reviewed, open-access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Open-access journals from all countries and in all languages are accepted for indexing.

DOAJ is financially supported by many libraries, publishers, and other like-minded organizations. Supporting DOAJ demonstrates a firm commitment to open access and the infrastructure that supports it.

Visit: doaj.org

7. Researcher

The Researcher is a free journal-finding mobile application that helps you to read new journal papers every day that are relevant to your research. It is the most popular mobile application used by more than 3 million scientists and researchers to keep themselves updated with the latest academic literature.

Visit: 10 Best Apps for Graduate Students 

8. Science Open

ScienceOpen  is a discovery platform with interactive features for scholars to enhance their research in the open, make an impact, and receive credit for it. It provides context-building services for publishers, to bring researchers closer to the content than ever before. These advanced search and discovery functions, combined with post-publication peer review, recommendation, social sharing, and collection-building features make  ScienceOpen  the only research platform you’ll ever need.

Visit: scienceopen.com

OA.mg is a search engine for academic papers. Whether you are looking for a specific paper, or for research from a field, or all of an author’s works – OA.mg is the place to find it.

Visit: oa.mg

10. Internet Archive Scholar

Internet Archive Scholar (IAS) is a full-text search index that includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth-century journals through the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web.

Visit: Sci hub Alternative – Internet Archive Scholar

11. Citationsy Archives

Citationsy was founded in 2017 after the reference manager Cenk was using at the time, RefMe, was shut down. It was immediately obvious that the reason people loved RefMe — a clean interface, speed, no ads, and simplicity of use — did not apply to CiteThisForMe. It turned out to be easier than anticipated to get a rough prototype up.

Visit: citationsy.com

CORE is the world’s largest aggregator of open-access research papers from repositories and journals. It is a not-for-profit service dedicated to the open-access mission. We serve the global network of repositories and journals by increasing the discoverability and reuse of open-access content.

It provides solutions for content management, discovery, and scalable machine access to research. Our services support a wide range of stakeholders, specifically researchers, the general public, academic institutions, developers, funders, and companies from a diverse range of sectors including but not limited to innovators, AI technology companies, digital library solutions, and pharma.

Visit: core.ac.uk

13. Dimensions

The database called “Dimensions” covers millions of research publications connected by more than 1.6 billion citations, supporting grants, datasets, clinical trials, patents, and policy documents.

Dimensions is the most comprehensive research grants database that links grants to millions of resulting publications, clinical trials, and patents. It

provides up-to-the-minute online attention data via Altmetric, showing you how often publications and clinical trials are discussed around the world. 226m Altmetric mentions with 17m links to publications.

Dimensions include datasets from repositories such as Figshare, Dryad, Zenodo, Pangaea, and many more. It hosts millions of patents with links to other citing patents as well as to publications and supporting grants.

Visit: dimensions.ai

14. PaperPanda – Download Research Papers for Free

PaperPanda is a Chrome extension that uses some clever logic and the Panda’s detective skills to find you the research paper PDFs you need. Essentially, when you activate PaperPanda it finds the DOI of the paper from the current page, and then goes and searches for it. It starts by querying various Open Access repositories like OpenAccessButton, OaDoi, SemanticScholar, Core, ArXiV , and the Internet Archive. You can also set your university library’s domain in the settings (this feature is in the works and coming soon). PaperPanda will then automatically search for the paper through your library. You can also set a different custom domain in the settings.

Visit: PaperPanda

I hope this article will help you to know some of the best websites to download research papers and journals for free. By utilizing open-access databases, free search tools, and potentially even your local university library, you can access a wealth of valuable scholarly information without infringing on a copyright. Remember, ethical practices in research paper downloading are important, so always prioritize legal access to materials whenever possible. Happy researching!

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15 Best Websites to Download Research Papers for Free

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Is your thirst for knowledge limited by expensive subscriptions? Explore the best websites to download research papers for free and expand your academic reach.

Today, navigating through the academic terrain often feels like being stuck in an intellectual desert, parched for knowledge.

With paywalls acting like impenetrable fortresses, accessing scholarly articles becomes a herculean task. However, a beacon of hope exists in the form of free-access platforms, quenching our thirst for intellectual wisdom. Let’s set sail on this scholarly journey.

Table of Contents

Do you recall the Z Library, a once-prominent source of free academic resources? While its seizure by the FBI was a stark reminder of copyright considerations, it also marked a transformative phase in the digital academic landscape. 

Today’s champions of academia aren’t just about offering free access, they uphold ethics and copyright respectability. Let’s delve into these repositories that are reshaping the academia world. You can download free research papers from any of the following websites.

Best Websites to Download Research Papers

#1. sci-hub – best for accessing paywalled academic papers.

Sci-Hub is the defiant maverick of the academic sphere. Often termed the “Pirate Bay of Science,” it presents an unconventional solution to the paywall barrier, freely providing access to a vast range of scholarly literature.

Despite its contentious standing, Sci-Hub offers an invaluable service to knowledge-seekers. While navigating the tightrope between access and legality, it represents a game-changing force in the world of academic research.

#2. Library Genesis (Libgen) – Best for a Wide Range of Books and Articles

It’s not just a repository, but a vibrant confluence of multiple disciplines and interests, catering to the unique intellectual appetite of each knowledge seeker.

Source: https://libgen.is

#3. Unpaywall – Best for Legal Open Access Versions of Scholarly Articles

Unpaywall doesn’t just give you a key; it gives you a legal, ethically sound key to the treasure chest of academic wisdom. This website is not merely a tool; it’s a testament to the idea that knowledge should be accessible to all, without compromising on legality and respect for authorship.

What are the benefits of Unpaywall?

#4. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) – Best for Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journals

The DOAJ, in its essence, manifests the democratic spirit of academic research. It’s an indispensable platform for researchers seeking high-quality, peer-reviewed, open-access resources across a wide range of subjects.

Source: https://doaj.org

#5. Open Access Button – Best for Free Versions of Paywalled Articles

What are the benefits of Open Access Button?

Open Access Button serves as the ethical bridge between knowledge seekers and the scholarly content they need. Its commitment to providing free, legal access upholds the values of respect and fairness in academia.

#6. Science Open – Best for a Wide Variety of Open Access Scientific Research

Consider Science Open as a bustling town square in the city of scientific knowledge, where scholars from all walks of life gather, discuss, and dissect over 60 million articles. 

Science Open is more than a tool; it’s a community fostering open scientific discourse. Its vast resources and collaborative platform make it a vital player in modern scientific research.

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#7. CORE – Best for Open Access Content Across Disciplines

With its unparalleled aggregation and comprehensive access, CORE embodies the grand orchestra of global research. It stands as an essential tool in the modern researcher’s toolkit.

#8. ERIC – Best for Education Research

What are the benefits of ERIC?

#9. PaperPanda – Best for Free Access to Research Papers

PaperPanda is always there to assist you in your quest for knowledge. With its vast collection of research papers spanning various disciplines, PaperPanda ensures that you have the resources you need right at your fingertips. 

It’s like having a personal research assistant, guiding you through the maze of scholarly literature.

#10. Citationsy Archives – Best for Research Papers from Numerous Fields

As you navigate through the vast corridors of this digital library, you’ll discover a wealth of academic resources from diverse fields. 

Source: https://citationsy.com

#11. OA.mg – Best for Direct Download Links to Open Access Papers

OA.mg presents a no-nonsense approach to providing direct download links to scholarly articles, ensuring that you have immediate access to the knowledge you seek. With its simplicity and efficiency, OA.mg streamlines the process of finding and accessing open access papers.

Source: https://oa.mg

#12. Social Science Research Network (SSRN) – Best for Social Sciences and Humanities Research

SSRN fosters collaboration and knowledge-sharing, creating a vibrant community at the forefront of social sciences and humanities research.

SSRN serves as an invaluable resource for researchers in the social sciences and humanities, fostering a community that drives innovation and advancements in these fields.

#13. Project Gutenberg – Best for Free Access to eBooks

Project Gutenberg opens the doors to a world of literary exploration, providing access to timeless wisdom and captivating stories that shape our intellectual landscape.

Project Gutenberg serves as a testament to the power of literature and the accessibility of knowledge. It enables readers worldwide to embark on intellectual journeys through its extensive collection of free eBooks.

#14. PLOS (Public Library of Science) – Best for Open Access to Scientific and Medical Research

As a leading publisher of open access research, PLOS fosters the dissemination of cutting-edge scientific discoveries to a global audience. 

With a commitment to quality and peer-reviewed excellence, PLOS supports the collaborative spirit of scientific advancement, empowering researchers and scientists to share their findings freely.

#15. arXiv.org – Best for Preprints in Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science

arXiv.org stands as a catalyst for scientific progress, offering a glimpse into the future of research. By providing early access to preprints, it fuels innovation, collaboration, and the acceleration of knowledge in science, mathematics, and computer science.

In a world where knowledge is king, accessing a research paper shouldn’t feel like an impossible task. Thanks to these free and innovative websites, we can escape the barriers of paywalls and dive into a vast ocean of intellectual wealth. 

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5 Websites to download Research Papers for Free

There are several sources from which researchers can download/ read research papers for free. Researchers can download almost any scientific paper in PDF format through these legitimate websites. In case, you are not able to download any particular research paper, you can reach the authors of the research paper through email. The authors will be more than happy to share their research paper.

Also, read Tips for publishing in high-impact factor journals ,

Difference b/w journal paper, conference paper & Book chapter

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Download research papers for free

DOAJ is an extensive index of diverse open-access journals from around the world, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone.

All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed. All data is freely available.

Articles  are searchable by author or title, ISSN, subject, and journal title.

The official website of DOAJ is: https://doaj.org/

2) Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes scholarly literature’s full text or metadata across multiple disciplines.

The official website of Google Scholar is: https://scholar.google.com/

3) ReserchGate

ResearchGate is a professional network for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. Researchers and scientists post PDFs of their articles on ResearchGate, so it is a source of free scholarly articles. 

The official website is https://www.researchgate.net/

PubMed is a free search engine for searching MEDLINE, the most popular bibliographic database in the health and medical sciences. It contains more than 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

The official website of PubMed is https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

ArXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for 2,205,657 scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering, systems science, and economics. Researchers can download and read these research articles free of cost.

The official website of Arxiv is https://arxiv.org/

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Share this article, 8 best free research paper download websites 2024.

These online websites also offer an easy download feature for better research and note-making. Let's check out a well-curated list of the best free sites for research paper download in this SwifDoo PDF article.

Sci-Hub is clearly the number one free research paper download website. The site allows you to find and download research papers with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) or other methods. It hosts more than 84,794,279 research papers in various academic disciplines. It's often called the Robin Hood of Research as it offers unlimited access to millions of scholarly literature without publisher paywalls.

Among the famous research paper download sites, Sci-Hub helps users access invaluable knowledge with its user-friendly interface and simple navigation. Let's discuss the steps to download your needed research paper for free from a DOI.

Step 1: Find the Digital Object Identifier of the paper you wish to download.

Step 2:  Get to Sci-Hub & add the DOI in the search bar. Click Open.

Step 3:  Access the research paper and click Download to save the paper.

2. CORE - COnnecting REpositories

The second in the list is CORE. This website is a popular site for research paper downloads. It meticulously collects 219,537,133 OA articles and extensive papers from global repositories. The website hosts a simple interface with seamless navigation. Moreover, it provides an advanced search option for journals and papers.

The research paper download website offers free access to millions of articles and research papers. A straightforward description of how to download a research paper for free is mentioned below:

Step 1: Find the desirable research paper on the Core website.

Step 2: Open the paper and click on the Download PDF to access the full research paper free download option.

3. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another essential academic research search service that hosts around 200 million articles, publications, theses, books, and research papers. It is among the free research paper download sites that lets you explore many abstracts with a direct link to download any research paper for free.

Google Scholar boasts an extremely amicable interface with a rich search option for finding research papers in varied academic disciplines. Moreover, it is also a perfect website for IEEE and other research paper downloads. Check out easy steps to download the research paper here:

Step 1: Go to the free research paper download website and log in with your account.

Step 2: Search for the desirable research paper and star the paper to add it to your My Library.

Step 3: Go to the My Library option and find the paper. Now tick the check box of the saved sources and click Export for online research paper download.

Step 4: Next, choose the desirable output format and select Save As to save the research paper to the right destination.

It is another helpful academic paper website with about 240 million titles and 40 million open-access papers in categories including history, geography, arts, philosophy, etc. OA.mg is among the famous sites for downloading articles, including a direct download link to most of its articles.

The research paper PDF search engine offers quick access to papers with a straightforward interface and effortless navigation. It is a reliable platform to access and download research papers using DOIs from links to other websites. Let's check the detailed steps to download documents here:

Step 1: Go to the OA.mg research paper free download website and search for the paper using the title, author, or DOI.

Step 2: Open the paper and find the download option. Click a research paper download link and save the PDF to access it offline.

5. DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals

DOAJ is a popular open-access website where you can download free research papers with just a few steps. The research paper free download site also provides a no-cost download button for most articles without any paywall or subscription fees. It hosts community-curated and peer-reviewed work from around 17 thousand journals. The famous platform includes over 2 million articles in various categories, including science, technology, art, and humanities. The steps to use it are as mentioned below:

Step 1: Go to the DOAJ research paper download website and choose to download metadata.

Step 2: Save the CSV file on your PC, but don't open it.

Step 3: Open a spreadsheet application like Excel or LibreOffice Calc and choose import the CSV file option. Now, import the CSV application into the application to initiate research paper downloads in PDF for free.

SSRN is also a research paper download website that includes 1,058,739 abstracts and 915,452 articles. The website hosts many scholarly papers from social science and the humanities. The Social Science Research Network also provides an excellent way to interact with other scholars for easy research.

The research paper site supports an easy download feature with an advanced search option and seamless navigation. Let's discuss easy steps to download a free research paper from this website.

Step 1: Search for the research paper on the SSRN website.

Step 2: Open the paper and click on the PDF file option. Now, choose the Download icon to download the research paper PDF for free.

7. Library Genesis

Library Genesis is a perfect platform for accessing high-quality books and articles. The website has more than 1.2 million records ranging from research papers to textbooks, comics, magazine issues, and popular novels. Furthermore, it is among the free scholarly paper and ebook download sites that host some of the finest papers and rarest textbooks for its readers.

Libgen supports an extremely friendly platform with a collection of research papers for free download in PDF format. Check the easy-to-download process here:  

Step 1: Go to Library Genesis and search for the book.

Step 2: Open the book using the title. Find and click the download button to save the file.

JSTOR, short for Journal Storage, is last on the list of free research paper download websites. The fantastic platform is the primary source of 12 million records in around 75 disciplines. It has thousands of well-researched journals, articles, books, and images.

JSTOR is the best research paper site with the best peer-reviewed articles, offering a wide choice of free journal articles to download. Users may choose to download a few pages or the complete pages by following steps:

Step 1: Log in to JSTOR to find and download the research paper online.

Step 2:  Search for the article to download and open the article.

Step 3:  Find and click the Download PDF option. Now accept the terms and conditions and save the article to your device.

How to Edit Research Paper PDFs Downloaded from Websites

The article mentions a list of the top eight websites that offer a vast collection of well-researched articles and research papers. Choose any of the best websites for research papers to study and create your own. Download all information from this website and use an advanced PDF manager to manage and edit collected documents easily.

SwifDoo PDF is one such software that enables you to write smarter. The PDF manager supports efficient features for viewing PDFs in a well-managed way. It supports dark mode for easy reading and allows you to change the book layout without changing its original format. The software lets you read and edit the PDFs downloaded by research paper download websites most conveniently.

Readers may also choose SwifDoo PDF to edit PDF with just a few clicks.

• The software lets you add comments, images, and pop-up notes for easy reviewing.
• It also enables varied features to change the original text or summarize the document in minutes.
• The editor also supports modifying the collected paper templates to create your research paper.
• It is the best software for students to complete their tedious projects effortlessly.
• It offers an intelligent way for teachers to provide valuable feedback on research papers and theses.

SwifDoo PDF is everyone's software that allows you to get a research paper from the above websites. It offers dedicated apps for Android, iOS, and MAC to read, edit, and annotate PDFs while on the go,

The article lists the top 8 research paper websites where you can download academic or scientific papers for free. Download the research paper of your choice from any of them. However, choose SwifDoo PDF to write your paper smartly and effectively. The efficient PDF manager helps you edit and modify research papers accurately to create a well-readable and interactive research paper.

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For macOS 15 sequoia and below

Q：How do I download an IEEE research paper for free?

Step 1: Find official research papers on IEEE Xplore or IEEE Member Digital Library.

Step 2: Copy the paper's Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

Step 3: Open the Sci-Hub website and paste the copied DOI to open the paper.

Step 4: Download the paper and save it for offline access.

Charlotte has been in the software industry for 8+ years. She works for AWZWARE now as a passionate writer. She is good at providing simple guides to use various video, office and entertainment software. Charlotte also recommends many other useful tools to make your work and life easier. A food lover too.

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Download Research Papers and Scientific Articles for free (Sci-Hub and Library Genesis links updated September 2025)

Many students and researchers need to find a paper for their research, to complete the review of an article, or while writing their thesis. Many papers can be found through your university library, but for those that you may not have access to through your institution, we take a look at the three largest open access sites, as well as sci hub and Library Genesis .

Unpaywall Unpaywall is a website built by Impactstory, a nonprofit working to make science more open and reusable online. They are supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. What they do is gather all the articles they can from all the open-access repositories on the internet. These are papers that have been provided by the authors or publishers for free, and thus Unpaywall is completely legal. They say they have about 50-85% of all scientific articles available in their archive. Works with Chrome or Firefox.

Kopernio Kopernio is a free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera that gives you one-click legal access to journal articles. It automatically searches your library journal subscriptions, open databases, PubMed and Google Scholar to find full-text PDFs.   -->

PaperPanda PaperPanda is a free browser extension for Chrome that gives you one-click access to papers and journal articles. When you find a paper on the publisher’s site, just click the PaperPanda icon and the panda goes and finds the PDF for you.

Open Access Button The Open Access Button  does something very similar to Unpaywall, with some major differences. They search thousands of public repositories, and if the article is not in any of them they send a request to the author to make the paper publicly available with them. The more people try to find an article through them, the more requests an author gets. You can search for articles/papers directly from their page, or download their browser extension.

Library Genesis Library Genesis is a database of over 5 million (yes, million) free papers, articles, entire journals, and non-fiction books. They also have comics, fiction books, and books in many non-english languages. They are also known as LibGen or Genesis Library. Many of the papers on Library Genesis are the same as sci hub, but what sets them apart is that Library Genesis has books as well.

OAmg OAmg lets you search for journal articles and papers, download them, and of course cite them in your Citationsy projects. After entering a query it searches through all published papers in the world and shows you the matches. You can then click a result to see more details and read a summary. It will also let you download the paper through a couple different, completely legal open access services. www.oa.mg

Sci-Hub (link updated September 2024) Finally, there’s Sci Hub . Science-Hub works in a completely different way than the other two: researchers, students, and other academics donate their institutional login to Schi-Hub, and when you search for a paper they download it through that account. After the articles has been downloaded they store a copy of it on their own servers. You can basically download 99% of all scientific articles and papers on SciHub. Just enter the DOI to download the papers you need for free from scihub. Shihub was launched by the researcher Alexandra Elbakyan in 2011 with the goal of providing free access to research to everyone, not only those who have the money to pay for journals. Many in the scientific community praise hub-sci / sciencehub for furthering the knowledge of humankind and helping academics from all over the world. shi hub has been sued many times by publishers like Elsevier but it is still accessible, for example by using a sci hub proxy.

You can find links to Sci-Hub on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub ) or WikiData ( https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21980377#P856 ).

Referencing and Writing Advice Unlocking Knowledge Getting the green light when using plagiarism detection software doesn’t mean you haven’t plagiarised.