Search Google Scholar. I can often just search the paper’s name, and if I find it, there may be a link to the full paper (HTML or PDF) on the right of the search result. The linked paper is sometimes not the exact version of the paper I am after—for example, it may be a manuscript version instead of the accepted journal version—but in my experience this is usually fine.
Search the web for "name of paper in quotes" filetype:pdf. If that fails, search for "name of paper in quotes" and look at a few of the results if they seem promising. (Again, I may find a different version of the paper than the one I was looking for, which is usually but not always fine.)
Check the paper’s authors’ personal websites for the paper. Many researchers keep an up-to-date list of their papers with links to full versions.
Email an author to politely ask for a copy. Researchers spend a lot of time on their research and are usually happy to learn that somebody is eager to read it.
Here’s what I usually try when I want to get the full text of an academic paper:
Search Sci-Hub. Give it the DOI (e.g.
https://​​doi.org/​​...) and then, if that doesn’t work, give it a link to the paper’s page at an academic journal (e.g.https://​​www.sciencedirect.com/​​science...).Search Google Scholar. I can often just search the paper’s name, and if I find it, there may be a link to the full paper (HTML or PDF) on the right of the search result. The linked paper is sometimes not the exact version of the paper I am after—for example, it may be a manuscript version instead of the accepted journal version—but in my experience this is usually fine.
Search the web for
"name of paper in quotes" filetype:pdf. If that fails, search for"name of paper in quotes"and look at a few of the results if they seem promising. (Again, I may find a different version of the paper than the one I was looking for, which is usually but not always fine.)Check the paper’s authors’ personal websites for the paper. Many researchers keep an up-to-date list of their papers with links to full versions.
Email an author to politely ask for a copy. Researchers spend a lot of time on their research and are usually happy to learn that somebody is eager to read it.
This now also exists as a slightly expanded blog post.