GRASP

Continuing your research journey after your PhD

July 22nd, 2026, by Kitty Delaney Tag(s): Publishing, HDR resources

Have you finished your PhD and lost access to university library resources? Do you want to stay current in your field, even if you are no longer in academia? The good news is that you can still keep up with research, find credible sources, build your research profile and publish without an institutional affiliation. This post shares practical tips, tools and strategies to help you keep researching as an independent scholar far beyond your PhD.

Publishing as an independent researcher

You do not need a university affiliation to publish in peer-reviewed journals. Many publishers accept submissions from independent researchers but always check the journal’s author guidelines before you submit. The tips below are from the SAGE blog post “7 tips to publish as an independent scholar”.

These tips are relevant to any researcher who wants to publish their work, but they are especially useful if you are submitting without a current university affiliation:

Check journal guidelines to make sure the journal does accept submissions from unaffiliated researchers.
Focus on high-quality topics that are original, well-argued and address a significant gap or research question.
Follow journal formatting and submission guidelines.
Respond thoughtfully to peer review.
Build a research network and connect with other scholars.
Stay current in your field through attending seminars and conferences.
Explore funding opportunities outside traditional channels.

Resources

Access to academic resources can be challenging if you are no longer affiliated with a university. A practical approach is to draw on a range of options, including alumni library membership, joining public and national libraries, identifying open access tools, preprint servers and professional networks as sources of information.

Alumni access @ Curtin

Curtin University provides graduates with a range of services that you can access, including physical access to the library, alumni-only mentoring programs, Alumni Awards, and much more. There are also Curtin alumni chapters and networks in Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan that connect graduates across all disciplines. More information is available here.

As a Curtin alumnus you will still have remote access to the following databases:

ProQuest
Project Muse
PubMed
SAGE journals
SAGE Knowledge
SAGE Research
Wiley Online Library

There are even more databases available for onsite use. You can sign up for membership here.

State and National libraries

Every state and territory in Australia has a state library that you can join for free. Many provide access to electronic books, journals and databases. Note that use of the electronic resources is for private research and study only. Use is not permitted for business, commercial or work-related purposes. If you are working in another country there may be local and national libraries that you can join there.

The National Library of Australia

Overseas visitors and Australian residents can apply to join the library while living in Australia. Through the eResources portal you can access thousands of eBooks, newspapers, databases and journals. Join the Library here.

State Library of Western Australia

The State Library of WA is open to WA residents and provides access to eBooks, eNewspapers and eMagazines. It also provides access to databases such as:

Gale Research Complete
IBISWorld
Lexis Advance Pacific
Informit Explore

Free databases

The internet has made access to information much easier for independent researchers. It has enabled open access publishing to flourish, making peer-reviewed research more accessible without a paywall. The flip side is that the internet has also made fake, predatory, and low-quality research just as easy to find.

Therefore, independent researchers need to be vigilant about where they access information and how they check for quality. The list below is just a selection of databases to get you started:

Google Scholar is well known to all of us. It is a specialised search engine that tracks scholarly literature and is especially useful for academics and researchers. It provides citation information, related articles, and advanced search options, and allows you to set up alerts and save articles to a library. You can also set up a Google Scholar profile to track citations to your work. Check out Google Scholar Labs – an AI powered tool that allows you to interrogate Google Scholar using natural language.

Semantic Scholar is a free artificial intelligence-backed search engine for academic publications, developed at the Allen Institute for AI. You can set up an account to create alerts and save searches. It is best used alongside other databases rather than as your only search tool.

JSTOR provides access to some open and free content including journals, books, research reports and some primary source collections. As an independent researcher you can also sign up to JPASS for a reasonable fee that will provide access to thousands of academic journals. You can explore the open and free content here.

PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature. It contains more than 40 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It does not include full text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources. Find it here.

ERIC is offered free for public use by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education. There is no membership or subscription required. Find it here.

GreenFILE is a free research database provided by EBSCO. It covers all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles include content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. Find it here.

Preprints

Preprints are early versions of academic research outputs that have been uploaded to a public server. They can help independent researchers keep up to date with emerging work in their field, but they have not yet been peer reviewed. Many preprint platforms allow other researchers to comment on posted work, which can help you assess new research more critically. Examples of preprint repositories include:

SSRN (Social Science Research Network)
BioRxiv (Biology)
MedRxiv (Health Sciences)
ArXiv (Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Research Square (Multidisciplinary)
Zenodo (Multidisciplinary)

The Directory of Open Access Preprint Repositories provides a list of preprint repositories that are available to the research community. It helps researchers find the most appropriate platform for them, enabling them to browse through existing repositories by discipline, location, language, functionalities, and other facets.

Submitting to a preprint server is also a way in which you can share your research and gain citations without having an academic affiliation.

Open Access

The shift towards open access means many academic and research articles are now available without access to an academic library. Although commercial open access publishing models can create challenges for researchers who need funding to make their work openly available, they have also given independent scholars access to millions of peer-reviewed articles.

You can find lists of trustworthy open access journals by searching:

Directory of Open Access Journals
SCImago – searching for open access journals by subject.

You can also find access to some free E-books through the following:

If you still can’t find that article that you want, consider contacting the authors directly. You will find that many will provide access to their articles upon request.

Predatory publishers

Predatory publisher and journal lists can help you check whether the research you are referencing has been published in a credible outlet. You can also consult the Curtin Library Research Toolkit list of predatory publishers here.

A warning note: when researching for this blog post, I found several posts and tips from Lambert Academic Publishing. Lambert Academic Publishing is frequently cited in discussions of questionable or predatory publishing practices and have been included on predatory publisher lists.

Before using advice from any publisher or publishing service, check independent sources and look for warnings from universities, libraries and researcher communities.

Useful tools

Unpaywall – Unpaywall is a free web-browser extension that hunts for papers in more than 5,300 repositories worldwide, including preprint servers and institutional databases. The papers are freely accessible (and legal) copies of research articles.

GetFTR – GetFTR is a free browser extension that checks whether you have access to the full text of articles found through Google Scholar or other search tools. It can also alert you to changes in an article’s status, such as a retraction or amendments.

Zotero – Zotero is a free reference management software tool to help you collect, organise, annotate, cite and share research. Similar in purpose to EndNote, the Zotero online community is large and there is plenty of documentation available to support new users.

SCImago – SCImago is a free portal and analytical platform that evaluates and ranks journals based on citation data from the Elsevier Scopus database. This allows you to check if the journal articles that you retrieve from a search are from quality journals.

Your research profile

As an independent researcher or scholar, it is important to make sure your profile is discoverable and up to date. The strategies below can help you and your research be found by potential collaborators, readers and publishers.

Leverage your networks!

Reach out to former supervisors, colleagues or academics in your field to stay connected and explore possible collaborations. Professional networks can also help you hear about publishing opportunities, conferences and research communities beyond your former institution.

Join professional associations!

A number of professional associations provide access to resources such as databases or a small library. For example, as a member of the Australian Institute of Management (WA) you have access to the Business Source Corporate Database.

Join LinkedIn

Don’t use LinkedIn to post formal peer-reviewed academic research. Instead, you can use this platform to post information about your research and showcase what you are working on. If you have research that is published, link to the publication with the official DOI.

Get an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)

You will most likely already have an ORCID. Make sure that you keep your ORCID profile current. The ORCID is not restricted to researchers affiliated with an institution and it is provided free of charge. Most publishers require you to have an ORCID when you submit your manuscript, and it is a great way to highlight your research and make sure that the work you produce is visible and identifiable as yours. You can get an ORCID here.

Final thoughts

I hope that you have a better idea of the many resources and strategies that are available to let you continue to do research and publish your research. Losing university access does not mean losing your place in the research community. With a combination of open access tools, library memberships, professional networks and a visible research profile, you can continue to read, write, publish and connect with others in your field. Your PhD may be finished, but your research journey can continue.