I don't think that the research process is different for academics and non-academics since most databases are publicly available (although the actual papers might be not).<p>If you have already found a paper on your topic, locate that paper in a field-specific database (e.g. RePEc for economics, IEEE for computer science, the Web of Science for a more general database, PubMed for medicine, ...) and look at cited and citing articles which are relevant. Also, search for other publications by the same author.<p>If you don't have a paper on the topic: I believe that some databases offer a list of keywords, so you might wanna look at that list and see if anything relevant pops up.
You are probably using the wrong keyword. One trick is to select the article that is closer to the topic you want, and try to pick a few keyword from that article. And then iterate this. Sometimes it converges to the right location.<p>(What topic? Perhaps we can help.)
Apart from Google scholar, search in Library Genesis scientific papers search. Once you have a result, can click on journal title to check out everything in each issue.<p><a href="http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/" rel="nofollow">http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/</a><p>I think it's same database as SciHub, but LibGen has keyword/author search, don't need exact paper title. So useful!! Only gives the first 100 results though..
You can do advanced Google searches:<p>healthcare disparities among transgender patients "doi" after:2015:09-01<p>When you find an interesting article, use the doi number (e.g. 10.1371/journal.pone.0156210) here to get the full article:<p><a href="http://sci-hub.tw/" rel="nofollow">http://sci-hub.tw/</a>