Paywalls: New Angles for Bad Actors
January 2, 2025
Information literacy is more important now than ever, especially as people become more polarized in their views. This is due to multiple factors such as the news media chasing profits, bad actors purposefully spreading ignorance, and algorithms that feed people confirmation biased information. Thankfully there are people like Isabella Bruno, who leads the Smithsonian’s Learning and Community department, part of the Office of Digital Transformation. She’s dedicated to learning and on her Notion she brags…er…shares that she has access to journals and resources that are otherwise locked behind paywalls.
For her job, Bruno uses a lot of academic resources, but she knows that everyone doesn’t have the same access as her. She wrote the following resource to help her fellow learning enthusiasts and researchers: How Can I Access Research Resources When Not Attached To An Academic Institution?
Bruno shares a flow chart that explains how to locate resources. If the item is a book, she recommends using LibGen, Z-Library, and BookSC. She forgets to try the Internet Archive and inter-library loans. If the source is a book, she points towards OA.mg and trying PaperPanda. It is a Chrome extension that accesses papers. She also suggests Unpaywall, another Chrome extension, that searches for the desired paper.
When in further doubt, Bruno recommends Sci-Hub or the subreddit /r/Scholar, where users exchange papers. Her best advice is directly emailing the author, but
“Sometimes you might not get a response. This is because early-career researchers (who do most of the hard work) are the most likely to reply, but the corresponding author (i.e. the author with the email address on the paper) is most likely faculty and their inboxes will often be far too full to respond to these requests. The sad reality is that you’re probably not going to get a response if you’re emailing a senior academic. 100% agree. Also, unless the paper just dropped, there’s no guarantee that any of the authors are still at that institution. Academic job security is a fantasy and researchers change institutions often, so a lot of those emails are going off into the aether.”
Bruno needs to tell people to go to their local university or visit a public library! They know how to legally get around copyright.
Whitney Grace, January 2, 2025
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