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I've seen this meta question already, but that deals with a slightly different case I think. I'm wondering if questions like this should be allowed. Specifically, I'm wondering if requests for papers and/or reviews on something should be allowed.

Something like this strikes me as "easily googleable" more so because someone looking for a review is (most probably) affiliated to some institution or the other, and hence will presumably have some journal access.

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    $\begingroup$ We generally allow reference-reqs, though I'm personally not particularly fond of them. While some (like the one you linked to) are googleable, that's not all of them. I may write up an answer to this later, but don't count on it--I'm busy drafting a rather large meta post atm. $\endgroup$
    – Manishearth
    Dec 27, 2012 at 12:38
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    $\begingroup$ The particular example linked here may be too broad to be a reference-request. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Dec 27, 2012 at 20:13
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    $\begingroup$ Related: meta.physics.stackexchange.com/q/358/2451 and links therein. $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic Mod
    Mar 8, 2013 at 15:20

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Paper and reference request questions have always been allowed and they should be allowed in the future too.

However, the answers to such questions should not just contain a link or the result of a google search, but roughly explain what is in the papers and references the answerer suggests.

So such questions are legitimate, valid, valuable, and useful, in particular for people who want to familiarize themself with a new topic or who are doing research.

Disallowing new such questions suddenly or even start closing down the exixting ones would be wrong and a disfavor to the site.

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