: These platforms collectively offer over 10 million books and 85 million articles.
: A Chrome extension that finds the DOI of a paper on your current page and automatically searches for it across various open-access repositories like ArXiV and the Internet Archive .
: A completely legal resource that indexes high-quality, peer-reviewed, open-access journals across all areas of science and technology. Download Zh092022 pdf
: Many researchers upload their full-text papers here; you can often download them directly or request the full text from the authors. Helpful Browser Extensions & Tools
: Similar to Unpaywall, it helps users find legal, free versions of research articles that are behind paywalls. Specialized Academic Search Engines : These platforms collectively offer over 10 million
To download research papers and academic articles for free as of late 2022 and early 2023, several specialized websites and tools are recommended:
For discovering these papers, the following search engines are highly effective: Google Scholar Semantic Scholar CORE Baidu Scholar The best academic search engines [Update 2025] - Paperpile : Many researchers upload their full-text papers here;
: A legal tool that harvests open-access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, providing access to roughly 20 to 55 million scholarly articles.