Not finding the medical or health articles you’re looking for? Or want to find more trustworthy sources on a medical topic? No problem!

We have search engines for that! There are hundreds of thousands of scientific articles available, and even scientists need an easy way to search through them all. 

Find free articles through search fields in various websites. Scientific search engines similar to Google (or owned by Google) are designed specifically to find original scientific studies. 

Official search engines to find (sometimes) free articles

These websites list publications from a variety of journals—scientists and anyone can access them. 

• PubMed Central. This library is run by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This is where many journals’ publications are combined and listed, although some journals, especially newer ones, have yet to be recorded in Pubmed. 

Find either links to journal websites or free copies of articles in their online library. 

*Note: Sometimes there are no free copies listed on PubMed. If you find an article you would like to read but it’s behind a paywall, check out my “unofficial search engines” section below.

• Google Scholar. Like PubMed, it’s free and easy to use, though sometimes it can be harder to find free articles. It generally links articles to the original journal source. 

  
  

Dr. Haltom's opinion: When I’m looking for, say, a study on whether a particular drug was ever tested in cancer, I search both resources on a particular subject. This is because they often return different results (I have no idea why. Different algorithms?).  

Unofficial search engines to find (always) free articles

While there is an ongoing movement to make studies and scientific research freely available to the public, journals are slow to adopt this model.  

Therefore, a few scientists have started “shadow” open repositories (where people can donate and access articles) in the name of open science and with the belief that knowledge is a human right.  

These websites also list publications from a variety of journals—for free, thanks to scientists who compile them—called “shadow” because they’re unofficial. Anyone can access these, too. 

• SciHub. Because of its, we’ll say, non-law-abiding nature, SciHub is constantly getting shut down. But, lucky for us, the creators generally just move the site to a different web address. I have linked a reddit page that lists all the current working web addresses for SciHub. 

SciHub is a shadow library website providing free access to millions of paid research articles, without regard to copyright laws. Started in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan in Kazakhstan, she protests high cost research papers by making them available to everyone at her own risk. 

Dr. Haltom's opinion: Just go for it. We all do it. 

Other shadow libraries exist, which are mentioned on the Sci-Hub Wikipedia page, but I’ve never personally used them. These three search engines I’ve listed usually get me what I’m looking for.