Anyone get free access to journals like Nature etc?

Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone could help me out a little. I'm doing some research (particle physics) and I've hit a quite literal block: I'd like to access some interesting-looking journal articles but they all seem to be hidden away behind paywalls.

I was wondering if anyone here got free access to any science journals, and if so, wouldn't mind using their access to download some PDFs and email them to me?

I wouldn't usually ask a question like this but I don't get free access to any journal archives through my sixth form college. The alternative as far as I see it is to pay potentially $35 per article; bearing in mind that I don't know for certain which articles will contain useful information and I may have to download a good few to get a nice range of information, this isn't really something I want to do.



P.S. I'd like to take this opportunity to note my disgust at the scientific community at large for allowing this to go on. "If you aren't affiliated with a University or a large company then good luck researching anything, heh!" isn't how science is meant to work.

Sure, I'd be happy to help. I might be able to access the papers through uni.

Post up/ PM me the links and I'll be happy to upload the pdfs.

Thanks dude! I guess there's no harm posting up the links, considering what people get away with in the USTV thread and all:

Nature, vol. 133 (Apr. 1934), pp. 532-532
Philosophy of Science, vol. 8, no. 4 (Oct. 1941), pp. 614-617
Review of Modern Physics, vol. 20, no. 1 (Jan. 1948), pp. 278–295
American Journal of Physics, vol. 27 no. 3 (Mar. 1959), pp. 198-198

Thanks again for any help you can give (no worries if it turns out you can't get at them).

Unfortunately I couldn't get hold of the Nature paper, my uni only has access to those papers published post 1987.

The rest I've just emailed to you.

The AJP one seems only to be a short book review of this, hopefully the other two contain something more interesting.

Edit: Mind if I ask what kind of research you're doing? If it's about the discovery of/ research into neutrinos in general, may I recommend (if you haven't already) looking into the 'solar neutrino problem'. It shows neutrinos have mass and can oscillate between their flavours.

I don't know how far you are from London, but you can use the Royal Society's library and archive for free. It looks like it might be more to do with science policy, but it might be worth a visit/investigation to see if they have what you're looking for:-
http://royalsociety.org/Using-the-Library/

You can also use the RSC's library (don't know if you count as a student, so you might have to pay):-
http://www.rsc.org/Library/About/Whocanuseus.asp

I briefly looked for a Royal Society of Physics, but the closest thing I found was the IOP, and they don't seem to have a library. However, you can become a member for free if you're studying Physics A-Levels:-
http://www.iop.org/membership/how/page_38036.html

I'd help with the journals if I could, but I don't have access to Liverpool Uni's journal database anymore.

Thanks so much again for those, Potterton. The Review of Modern Physics one looks like it could well be really helpful, and the Philosophy of Science looks pretty useful too, so that's fantastic.

I'm doing an Extended Project, if you've heard of that -- it's basically a reasonably in-depth piece of research, the product of which (usually an extended essay) results in an AS-level. I've decided to do mine on "The Role of the Neutrino in the Standard Model of Particle Physics", which is a fascinating and broad subject. I've just begun researching over the last few days really: I decided to start at the beginning, as it were, and find out more about why the existence of the neutrino was postulated in the '30s and '40s. But I did come across the solar neutrino problem; I understand from some very light reading on it that it resulted in an extension of the Standard Model, so I think it's definitely worth exploring further!

I managed to find a couple of decent-looking articles available on the Cornell University Library website for free just now, too, so potentially that's a great handful of journal stuff to get me going. (Cor, what a brilliantly productive evening! )

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Thanks for the links, Dowbocop. Unfortunately I'm afraid I do live quite a way out of London (Hampshire). While I would rather avoid extensive travelling where possible (again purely because of costs) I'm not averse to train journey; I have to admit I didn't know that the Royal Society had a library, so that's certainly a useful bit of info! I was considering paying either the British Library in London or the Bodleian in Oxford a visit at some stage -- do you think they could be useful places to visit, dude? (If I went to the British Library I could go to the Royal Society one as well, I imagine.)

I am indeed a member of the IOP through virtue of being an A-level Physics student, but I'm afraid I found that I didn't really get much in the way of access to journals through that; at least, all of the journal articles I was interested in seemed to be blocked off. I do get their monthly magazine though!

When I went to the British Library, it looked like more of a literary/historical attraction. Having said that, I was a visitor for pleasure and not for research, so I don't know whether they cater for your needs. Likewise, I think the Bodleian is famous for things like medieval manuscripts, but it might keep scientific journals there as well. Just ring them up beforehand, they'll be happy to help, and they'll probably have directed people before you in the right direction if they don't have what you need.

Good luck with the project anyway, and if you need to do a bibliography, start putting everything you use into a referencing database (using a program such as Endnote or Reference Manager) if you haven't already. They plug into Word, and make constructing your bibliography and referencing correctly a lot easier than doing it by hand. You might be able to get a free copy through your college (and chances are they'll teach you about referencing themselves better than I could), but it was an absolute lifesaver for me during my dissertation.