A Four Step Approach to Find Research Papers
Step 1: Turn on VPN!!!
Step 2: Search for the exact title on www.ssrn.com and on google.com (title in ““) – if you find a pdf downloadable for free, great. If it’s only a working paper version instead of the final publication, work with that first. If not:
Step 3.1: If the paper is published in a journal go to rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml and search for the Journal (e.g. Journal of Finance) on the left-hand side. This will show you if the volume of the journal in question is available to members of the University of Konstanz. Typically you are now directed to either the Journal itself or the EBSCO database summary page for it. On the right hand side you will see the years (volumes) available and you can either browse from there, or you’ll see the button “search this publication” above. Attention: If the link goes to EBSCO, sometimes it does not work. In this case find another journal where the link to EBSCO works and change the title of the journal in the search terms inside the EBSCO database. Searching in EBSCO is somewhat difficult. Make sure to select Business Source Premier and EconLit with full text as databases in your search.
Step 3.2: If the paper is a working paper, try to find the institution where it’s originated or the author’s homepage. In many cases it’s available there. However, you normally should have found it on Google then.
Step 4: If none of the above attempts were successful it gets tricky. Search for the paper at www.zbw-kiel.de/e_catalogues.htm in ECONIS at the German central library of economics. If you find it there, there are delivery services namely Goportis www.goportis.de, Subito www.subito-doc.de or the Fernleihe www.kim.uni-konstanz.de/en/literature/document-delivery/ at our library through which you can obtain a copy of the desired paper for a charge of 0.5€ to 8€. Also www.repec.org is worth a try. If all this fails, you might want to consider a different paper!