Here are 4 free websites that will provide you millions of free research papers which you can read to satisfy your appetite for science. You can easily browse through the research papers by field or search for them by their author. Downloads of these papers are mostly available in PDF format but you can read the
m in HTML. Additionally, you can create alerts for new papers and even track latest news in the academic world of different sciences and philosophy.
The Links I am providing will help not only nerds, but will also provide a lot of resource to scholars writing thesis for their doctorates. Scholars can easily use the citation of the papers provided with ease. Let’s take a better look at these websites so you can pick the right one for you. With all those research papers, you might want download Docear to manage them.
Microsoft Academic
Microsoft Academic is a free website where one can browse and read millions of academic research papers. Apart from research papers, Microsoft Academic gives you the latest news and articles on current scientific discoveries and inventions. The articles and papers are neatly categorized into different fields which you can browse.
The site also shows a leaderboard of authors and articles that you should definitely check out. Moreover, one can track scientific events and conferences around the world. To download and read a research paper, click on its link and you will find its PDF listed under ‘Sources’ on the right.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a specialized search engine that helps academicians with tons of free research paper. It aggregates search results from the internet. You can just search for a paper by its title or related keyword. Additionally, if you have a research paper of your own, you can add your own citation from ‘My Citation’.
This is the only site which lets you create alerts than sends an email when it meets a new paper related to the alert you have created. You can make alerts from the searches as well as ‘Alerts’ on the main search engine. Use Google keywords like ‘intitle:’ to make the alert syntax. You can browse the papers from top publication under ‘Metrics’ where papers are categorized in their respective fields too.
arXiv
arXiv is a host to millions of free research papers, unlike the aggregator websites above. It hosts research papers on almost all the science disciplines including Quantitative Finance and Statistics. The site files the papers according to their freshness in ‘new’, ‘recent’ and ‘current month’.
You can search for a paper published on a specific date too. You can search for an article by its article ID on the top of the page. Like other sites in this list, it’ll provide you with an abstract of the paper before you download a paper.
Directory of Open Access Journals
Directory of open Access Journals or DOAJ is a free website which houses more than 10,000 journals and articles. You can browse them by subjects from ‘Browse Subjects’. Apart from Scientific papers, it also categorizes papers written on philosophy and religion, unlike the sites mentioned above. In the search results, you can refine your search by toggling the subject, journal license and author.
Download link of the paper will be provided directly on the bottom of each search result. You can also download journal metadata under ‘Download Metadata’ on the right of DOAJ’s main page. The metadata will be provided in a CSV file format listing all the journals the site has. Additionally, you can embed the paper’s link on other pages too.
Final Words
Out all the above, I loved using Microsoft Academic since it not only provided academic papers, but also conference dates, latest science news and interesting articles. Google scholar has the ability to create email alerts which helps in tracking scientific development of a specific field. arXiv has a vast host of research papers but lacks interesting features. DOAJ is a good website you should check out but it lists lesser resources than the other entries above.
Know more such free sites which offer research papers? Make sure you share them in the comments!
