Find Articles is a service by LookSmart (remember them?) which provides access to a massive library of research quality articles from over 900 magazines and journals, dating back to 1998. While it's unclear how they define "research quality", it appears that the average quality of article is quite high, even for the free ones. It's imaginable that this might be a useful resource for students, however it's not going to replace Google or Wikipedia for up-to-date information on any topic imaginable any time soon.

For someone looking to find articles to reference or hyper-focused articles, Find Articles might be helpful.