1. The old-school method is to simply send a request for a PDF to the contact email address. I usually get 24 hr turn-arounds on requests.
2. Check pre-print servers for the research.
3. Sci-Hub
One final comment on the impact of LLMs: If the need for a very specific paper is not critical AND IF the research research had deep content before the cut-off date of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, THEN one can often get good context on a topic in a useful Q&A format I have come to love.
The implications and impact of LLM on pay-walls are enormous. Most users and scientists do NOT need a specific reference. They need some information or insight on a particular question.
In this context I find Claude highly reliable when my questions are relatively broad (e.g: “Claude, please explain Wright fixation index, F<st>, and its use in comparing genetic similarities and differences among chimpanzee populations?”). For that question and others of this type I get great first-pass answers, better than I would from all but a dozen experts in the world.
In contrast if I ask Claude for specific citations on the fixation index in chimps it is very likely to provide a confabulated reference. I will occasionally luck out but every citation you get from an LLM now needs to be vetted unless you have a RAG front-end.
All of these methods are available to almost anyone with internet access.
1. The old-school method is to simply send a request for a PDF to the contact email address. I usually get 24 hr turn-arounds on requests.
2. Check pre-print servers for the research.
3. Sci-Hub
One final comment on the impact of LLMs: If the need for a very specific paper is not critical AND IF the research research had deep content before the cut-off date of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, THEN one can often get good context on a topic in a useful Q&A format I have come to love.
The implications and impact of LLM on pay-walls are enormous. Most users and scientists do NOT need a specific reference. They need some information or insight on a particular question.
In this context I find Claude highly reliable when my questions are relatively broad (e.g: “Claude, please explain Wright fixation index, F<st>, and its use in comparing genetic similarities and differences among chimpanzee populations?”). For that question and others of this type I get great first-pass answers, better than I would from all but a dozen experts in the world.
In contrast if I ask Claude for specific citations on the fixation index in chimps it is very likely to provide a confabulated reference. I will occasionally luck out but every citation you get from an LLM now needs to be vetted unless you have a RAG front-end.
All of these methods are available to almost anyone with internet access.