These days, all the published academic papers are assigned the DOI identifier. If you type this number after "http://dx.doi.org/" in your browser address bar, you can directly access to the webpage from which you can download the paper.
It's annoying that you need to type "http://dx.doi.org/" every time, however. If you are an Apple user, there is an excellent solution. Check this out.
Updates on September 11, 2009: The plug-in is now called Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X. Although Firefox 3 now lets you browse PDF documents within the browser window, it doesn't seem to work properly. Scrolling down the document messes the screen. All the icons on the top work weirdly. It's still better to install this plugin in my opinion.
I've been using Mac OS at home for more than a year. One thing that keeps bugging me is the browser. Mac OS's default browser, Safari, is sometimes unable to show a website designed for Internet Explorer. In such a case, you need to use Firefox for Mac.
The problem of Firefox for Mac is, however, that you cannot view a PDF file within the browser window. Everytime you click the link to a PDF file, the PDF file is downloaded onto your computer even if you don't know if it's worth saving on your computer until you actually read it.
Finally, I learn this problem can be fixed by downloading firefox-mac-pdf.
Now I probably do not need to use Safari anymore. Let's see...
