Shit Rich College Kids Say — theloveyoumake: Hey, saw a post on shitrichcollegekidssay about difficulty accessing research articles because journals are usually closed access...

"For a lot of articles in journals, if you’re interested you can try contacting the authors of the article. Most of the time they will just send you the pdf. Also, if you’re someone who is interested in research and being part of research and academia, making a researchgate.net account is a good way to find articles by scholars whose work you’re interested in. Researchers will usually upload their articles and it’s free. However I am not 100% how many areas of research and types of scholars are on researchgate since when I’m on there I’m looking for articles within my own realm of research, and explore very little into other areas. All of that being said, yes, access to research articles is a HUGE pain in the ass if you aren’t affiliated to a major research university, and it is a very big issue in academia right now.

I’d also like to add that there are a lot of open access journals available now, exactly because of the ongoing discussion in academia about limited access to research. Here are 2 that I am aware of:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/

http://home.frontiersin.org/

Open access journals, and the publishing process for research in general, is a big topic right now in academia (some people like open access, some people don’t). But I would argue that regardless of whether you’re reading a research article from an open access journal or a closed access one, ALWAYS be critical of what you read and come to your own well informed conclusion about about the research you read. It’s what we have to do as academics, and I would hope that if you’re interested in reading up on research you’re coming to it with a critical eye. That doesn’t mean you need to constantly try to rip an article to shreds but notice ways that the research could have been better (a bigger sample size, a more diverse population, minor things that could make a difference in the outcome)."