On: Why you should read academic papers

[xtacy]

You mention two problems: * Finding good papers * Obtaining a copy of those good papers.

For finding good papers, use Citeseerx or Google scholar or Microsoft Academic Search. One popular metric is to look at the # citations :)

[hessenwolf → xtacy]

A complementary approach is to find a really recent general one and skip to the end for the citations. Where possible, finding the original paper on a topic (e.g. gelman & gelman on mcmc) always makes me feel like a child with ten pence for sweeets.