REDDIT COMMENT
Academic here — to get a PDF of a paper you can usually email the author and ask for one, the times I’ve tried this they’ve been happy to share. After checking if it’s available on https://oa.mg of course.
Don’t mess around with formatting your references manually — use something like https://citationsy.com to automate the whole process
Don't be shy about "bothering" them, either. The two times this has happened to me, it made my entire goddamn month, lol. Many  academics will just be thrilled that someone wants to read their work. 
Saw this on Twitter and tried it once. Didn’t realize I was basically emailing the leading expert in a niche field. He sent me the paper, plus 2 others that he assumed I didn’t have access to, in 4 hours.
It was like 3am his time when I sent the request
The more niche the field the more excited the expert will be that someone else is showing an interest, presumably.
sounds like every weird niche expert I know
I couldn’t find a copy of a book I wanted from decades ago that was out of print, but I figured the author was still alive, so I found that she had a website and contact info, emailed her, and she mailed me a book free of charge!
Researcher here--in the U.S., if any portion of a research paper is federally funded or has federal scientists working on it, it must be publicly available free of charge. Check authorship and if you see any .gov email addresses, it will be available through a federal website somewhere. There are dozens of potential federal research repositories, so an (imperfect but good) way to find it is search for it on Google Scholar, then when you find the title, click on the link below the title that says "All X versions"--this will list all the places online Google has found the paper and will also show which ones have a PDF available, which almost always includes the free .gov site.
Edit: For context, there are 20+ federal statistical and research agencies that either conduct research, employ scientists or provide extramural funding. Some of them are very significant--if not the most significant--sources of research in their individual fields. Some fields that I know have a ton of federal involvement are anything related to health, ecology/conservation/natural resources, earth and atmospheric sciences, and agriculture--but the federal research sphere touches everything.

REDDIT COMMENT
Sometimes teachers do just pull grades out of their ass.
I only got through high school because my teachers liked me. They can give you any grade they want within reason. It never pays to be an asshole.
I tell my students that every time they're polite, respectful, and reasonable, it's like putting a quarter in their piggy bank. One day, they might make a bad decision and need to break open that piggy bank for a favor.
Nothin' in there? Sucks to be you. Full of quarters? Imma let it slide.
You just gotta have at least one redeemable quality. Some people don't even have that.
Trust is earned in drops and spent in buckets.
Had a student like that when I was a TA. The guy basically lacked this writing class to get his officer's commission in the Army. He was not fantastic at written work, but god damn the guy could lead a class presentation and get other students involved and asking questions like no other. He definitely got a little help to slide with a C.
I TA’d a course with a student who plagiarized some answers. He whined and moaned to the professor that it was a culture difference and he didn’t know that copying answers wasn’t allowed in the US education system. Despite the fact he has to complete an online module stating that every semester which I pointed out. Ask the guy to explain to me how he would derive the answer since he claims total understanding. Cusses at me instead, calls me a bitch among other things, curses Allah (both prof and student are Muslim, prof is visibly upset), etc. 
Guy gets a warning from professor. Copies again but carefully rewords his answers still getting 100s on homework assignments and Ds and Fs on quizzes/exams. 
I absolutely took some liberty in grading his final to ensure an F (he had a D) and have zero regrets. If he wasn’t such a tool I would’ve shrugged or tried to help him study prior to the exam. Kid wrote me a bunch of nasty emails after that
My favorite student review ever was from the serial plagiarizer who complained that he should have gotten an A because the person he copied from got an A. :facepalm:
I had one student say it was fine that he had copied an assignment because he had paid the kid he had copied it from.

[Ask HN: Teach me something new | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31204611)

It is a difficult reality that it's very hard to discern the following as a student:
1. a meaningful and well-intended exposition and explanation of a deep set of ideas
2. a deep exploration of otherwise-untold concepts, intended to push new limits
3. a pontificating complication of someone who doesn't really understand a topic but wants glory for one of the two above
- this is especially true between #2 and #3