Illinois Tech’s library, like most university libraries, restricts access to most research databases to current students, faculty, and staff. Alumni, students at other schools, and members of the public do not generally have access to these tools (for more information on alumni or visitor privileges, see below), This makes finding scientific and technical journals articles and research papers more difficult. New research tools, especially artificial intelligence (AI) tools like Research Rabbit help, but their strength lies in finding papers related to a paper you already have, not in finding papers on your topic. Because of this, the most difficult part of finding sources when you don’t have access to library-subscribed research tools is finding your first relevant paper.
This guide is intended to help those without access to the library’s restricted resources find the resources they need.
There are some full-featured research databases that are accessible to the public, but they tend to be more limited in subject area than the paid databases. We list the best public research databases in our database A-Z list. To search them, go to the database A-Z list and select “Open Access” in the “Vendors” dropdown. You can also choose your subject area and the type of resource you’re looking for from the other dropdowns. These free research databases tend to work like their paywalled counterparts. For more information on using them, see our research databases guide. Please note, though, that these free resources may not have some of the features described.
Google Scholar is a specialized web search engine that claims to search only academic or scholarly sources. There are, however, thousands of low quality “academic” journals that are rife with misinformation, disinformation, and outright fraud and they are included in Google Scholar’s results. You will still need to evaluate any sources you find.
For more information on Google Scholar, see our “Getting the Most Out of Google & Google Scholar.”
There are a number of free artificial intelligence (AI) tools are now available to help researchers find relevant papers. As of the end of 2024, all of the AI tools are limited in the range and selection of journals they search, often due to exclusive contracts between one AI tool and one publisher. For that reason, it is best to use several AI tools. They also seem to be optimized for finding papers related to one or more papers you have already found. Rather than searching for papers based on a topic or concept. For more information on AI tools see our artificial intelligence guide.
For more information on the library's services for alumni and the public, see the following guides:
This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
