A long time ago, a colleague of mine made a powerful statement: "As scientists, it's our responsibility to give science away." And this is why retrievalpractice.org exists. To give away the science of learning, empower educators, and transform classrooms by unleashing evidence-based strategies.

But science isn't always accessible. What can you do? Read below for a quick tip to access research and download templates and resources from the book Powerful Teaching. The science of learning has been under lock and key. Until now.

How to Access Paywalled Research Articles

Found a fascinating research article, but having trouble accessing it?

Here's a quick and easy way to access research articles when you hit a pesky paywall. Try it out, share it with teachers, and tell your students, too!

Copy the title of the article you want to read
Paste it into scholar.google.com
Click on the PDF link on the right side of the page

Voila! This can take a little practice, but soon, you'll be a Google Scholar pro.

Here's an example from a brand new research study on interleaving:

Doug Rohrer and colleagues (authors of our Interleaving Guide) published a study demonstrating large benefits of interleaving on mathematics learning for nearly 800 7th grade students across Florida. Wow!

Here's the abstract from the Journal of Ed. Psychology. The article costs $17.95.

Here are the Google Scholar results when you search for the article title.

Click on the [PDF] link on the right and voila!

This isn't guaranteed to work, but it comes in handy most of the time. If it doesn't work, search "regular" Google for the title and you might happen upon a blog post or news article summarizing the research.

Still can’t access a research article on Google Scholar?

Google the authors and find their lab website. Many scientists have their publications available for download on their website.
Email the first author of the publication and ask for the research article. They’ll be thrilled to hear from you.
Get in touch with your local library. They’re there to help!

Lucky for us, Andrew Watson at Learning & the Brain wrote a detailed blog post all about Rohrer’s research on interleaving.

Want to stay on top of the latest research by cognitive scientists? Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and read more tips and tricks on our website.

Read Our Top 5 Tips for Accessing Research