Suppose you want a complete research paper but you only have the abstract

Sometimes the abstract is so brief that you want to know more.  Sometimes it doesn't summarize anything including the conclusions (grrr).  Or maybe people are talking about it and you want to know what they are talking about.

What are some ways to get the paper?

1.  The NIH requires that any study it funds must open their research results to all; some foundations do this, too.  (But not enough of them.)  Some journals only publish as "open access," so all their papers are available, too.  For these, you will see some variant of this, over on the PubMed abstract, upper right side:

2.  If you click on the DOI number on the PubMed abstract (right under the authors' names), sometimes that will give you a full version of the paper, even though the official link (see #1)  does not.

3.  If there is a corresponding author and email available on the abstract, you can email this person asking for the paper (give the precise title because they may be involved with a lot of papers and projects).  Most will give it to you.  Quickly, too.

4.  Google the exact title.  Some researchers have placed their paper on a university website.

5.  Ask a friend/family member who may have access to bio-medical journals on-line at work.  Know anybody who works for a college or university?  (Just don't wear out your welcome.)

6.  Rent the article (available for a fee from some publishers, but much less than the $35/article that many publishers charge for purchasing the article.)  Some publishers offer this.  Copy and paste the article into your word processor so that you have time to read it without worrying about the limited rental period.

7.  Then there is the illegal way.  A Russian maintains a website for access to full papers - sometimes an early version of the paper is available.  https://sci-hub.tw/   

Here's the rationale behind Sci Hub:

Donations are accepted in Bitcoin which means they're untraceable.  The Russian internet seems to be the Wild West, so Sci-Hub operates there without benefit of a government enforcing copyright law (that's the illegal part). There is probably some risk because this is Russia.

Sometimes on Sci-Hub instead of the paper, first there will be incomprehensible directions in Russian.  This is very like Captcha.  Type in the English letters that are shown and click the Russian word below.  Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't.

Lots of different ways to get the full paper if you really want to read the whole thing.  

I find that the particularly useful parts of the paper are:  # of patients who participated in the study, and # of participants by gender, if it's a clinical trial; Discussion; Conclusion.  

What do you want to find out?