How to Find Free PDFs on Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a search engine for academic work. It does not host papers itself, but it indexes copies wherever it finds them, including on university sites and authors' personal pages. That makes it good at turning up a free PDF of a paper whose official version is paywalled.

Look to the right of the result

Search for the paper's title. If Scholar knows of a free copy, a link appears to the right of the result, labelled [PDF] or [HTML] followed by the name of the site that hosts it. Click that link rather than the title. The title usually leads to the publisher's page, which is where the paywall is.

On a phone the same link appears beneath the result.

Check "All versions"

Under each result is a row of small links. One of them reads All versions, with a number. Scholar groups every copy of the same paper together, and this link lists them all: the publisher's page, repository copies, preprints and sometimes a PDF on the author's own site. If the main result has no free link, one of the other versions often does.

Search for the exact title

Put the title in quotation marks to search for it as an exact phrase. This removes papers that merely share some of the words. If the title is very common, add an author's surname after the quoted title.

Connect your library

If you belong to a university or another library, Scholar can show links to the articles your library subscribes to.

• Open the menu, choose Settings and then Library links.
• Search for your institution and tick it.
• Save. Results now show a link to the full text through your library where it has access.

You can add several libraries, which is useful if you have access to more than one.

Use "Cited by" and "Related articles"

If you cannot get the paper you wanted, these two links help you find one you can. Cited by lists later papers that reference it, which often summarise its findings. Related articles lists similar work. Either may lead to an open-access paper that answers the same question.

What Scholar does not do

• It does not tell you which version a PDF is. A linked file may be a preprint, an accepted manuscript or the published paper. Our guide to the kinds of open access explains the difference.
• It does not check that a copy is there legitimately. Scholar indexes what it finds on the open web.
• It misses some repository copies. The open-access indexes track university repositories systematically, so the two approaches complement each other.

For that reason it is worth running the paper through the finder on our home page as well. It checks the open-access indexes, tells you which version each copy is and gives you a page you can share. If neither finds a copy, our guide to reading research papers for free lists the remaining routes.