Access to physics (especially astrophysics) research journals

AI Thread Summary
Accessing research journals without university affiliation can be challenging, but there are several strategies to consider. Utilizing remote access services provided by universities can allow individuals to log in and download articles, even after their official affiliation ends. It's advisable to check if the local university offers similar remote virtual computing services. While arXiv.org is a valuable resource for recent publications, older articles may not be available there. Maintaining some form of university affiliation or accessing a local university's library can also facilitate access to desired journals like MNRAS, The Astrophysical Journal, and The Astronomical Journal.
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Hello

My association with a University is coming to an end and with it ends my free access to a panoply of research journals. Can anyone suggest how someone without University affiliations (and who is unable to pay the fee for private use!) could go about accessing at least some journals/ journal articles. (The only free database I am aware of at the moment is arxiv.org).
Some journals that I am particularly interested in accessing are MNRAS, The Astrophysical Journal and The Astronomical Journal.

Any help here would be much appreciated.
 
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I thought I found myself in a similar predicament, but I found I can still get access to most journals (those you mention included) if I log into a WTS remote cluster at my university remotely and download articles that way.

Check if your university has a similar remote virtual computing service where you can log in with your usual username. It might not be as user friendly or windows based as what I have though.
 
Luckily, the arXiv should contain the vast majority of all of the new and recent publications you might be interested in. The problem will be looking up some of the older references not on the arXiv.

I don't really have a good suggestion for that, other than "try to find a way to maintain an affiliation with a University." If you can get access to a local University's library, you should at a minimum be able to download the articles you want from there.
 
Hey, I am Andreas from Germany. I am currently 35 years old and I want to relearn math and physics. This is not one of these regular questions when it comes to this matter. So... I am very realistic about it. I know that there are severe contraints when it comes to selfstudy compared to a regular school and/or university (structure, peers, teachers, learning groups, tests, access to papers and so on) . I will never get a job in this field and I will never be taken serious by "real"...
Yesterday, 9/5/2025, when I was surfing, I found an article The Schwarzschild solution contains three problems, which can be easily solved - Journal of King Saud University - Science ABUNDANCE ESTIMATION IN AN ARID ENVIRONMENT https://jksus.org/the-schwarzschild-solution-contains-three-problems-which-can-be-easily-solved/ that has the derivation of a line element as a corrected version of the Schwarzschild solution to Einstein’s field equation. This article's date received is 2022-11-15...

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