I wonder what's your poison when it comes to doing some research and you need to see whether there's any recent research in certain area / on some subject?
Most of the sites I get in google search results charge either subscription fee or once-off per paper fee.
So far I managed to find these resources that list some papers for free:
http://www.doaj.org/
http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/search
http://www.freefullpdf.com/
Thanks!