[dumitrue]

Sure, but it does depend on the field. In my field (Machine Learning) most (if not all) papers are essentially available online for free (mostly because of very strong actions like http://jmlr.org/statement.html). There might be some obscure papers on perceptrons from the 70s which are behind paywalls, but you are very unlikely to need them. To a somewhat smaller extent, this is true of most computer science and math.

Now, if you're doing research in biology, then this is a bigger problem. Pubmed is great, especially when you get access to freely available papers, but open access is not the norm yet. The tide is turning though, and I think most (all?) NIH-funded research is supposed to be open access.

However, if you're doing research in biology, not having a PhD is not really the main issue -- you need a lab, money, equipment, mice etc. There's no AWS for biology, sadly, though in fairness it would be a need idea! :)