A guide to accessing journal articles for those without access to university libraries
People working outside academia will sometimes want to read full-text journal articles, but unless they are associated with a university they usually won’t have easy access to journal databases. Research that could be useful to them is often hidden behind a paywall – or seems that way. This is one of the reasons all CREST outputs are open access by default and available via the CREST website.
We have written a guide summarising the ways in which it is possible to access full text journal articles for free (legally). It focuses on behavioural and social sciences, and the humanities (although is relevant to most disciplines).
Some of the places we have listed where you can find material include:
- Google scholar
- Author's websites
- ResearchGate
- Academia.edu
- Institutional repositories
The guide will take 10 minutes to read.
Copyright Information
As part of CREST’s commitment to open access research, this text is available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence. Please refer to our Copyright page for full details.