How to get access to university's library online resources as an independent researcher [duplicate]

Question

I've recently found a place in industry and left academia after working there for more than 12 years.

I benefitted while in academia the free online access to online journals and research publications provided through my University's library. Now I have the only affiliation with my university as alumni and that's it.

What I am terribly missing now is that university's library online resources that are absent in my current industry job.

I checked with my university's library whether they provide any kind of paid/unpaid access to alumni, and they answered in 'No' due to the publishers requirements. My current industrial employer does not have membership of many of the top publishing platforms for instance IEEE, Nature etc. (paid memberships).

So, I tried to look around and checked with various public libraries, but they do not have the memberships of the publishers in which I have an interest in.

My question to you folks is: what you might suggest in these circumstances of mine that I get access to online paid research work? (Taking individual IEEE membership might be an option, but that is way expensive and still it would be providing me an access solely to this specific publisher. I can not buy individual memberships of many of the publishers). I am willing to pay though for membership of any library if they provide me wide access to paid online work. (I am U.S. based, BTW)

Any leads or workarounds would be quite beneficial for me.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

I run into a similar problem when I left the US to go to Uruguay. I survived with an IEEE and ACM membership and asking sometimes friends to make copies of articles we needed for joined research.

I am not sure what to make of your statement that you cannot afford an IEEE membership. If you went from academia to industry, you should have gotten more salary and be able to afford one (as well as an ACM membership if you are in computing.)

The other question I have is why you need to get this access for yourself. If your need is job related, you need to talk to your supervisor.

If you want to stay up in your field, you should really get an IEEE membership and start using the resources they give you.

Unfortunately, editors like Springer and Elsevier are really expensive. Even IEEE has this weird idea that a single article is worth $30.00 or so just for scanning whether the article has anything useful in it. This will slowly change as authors that want to be cited will more likely choose open access or just host their articles on their own websites where Google Scholar will find them. You can of course try to contact authors for a courtesy e-copy, but in my experience, finding an author's actual address is quite difficult. So, for the time being, you are stuck.