.local is reserved for mDNS, that’s why I don’t use it. Since it’s reserved, Firefox “knows” that if you type something.local it shouldn’t search the web.
I’m using Fedora, I know I can edit my hosts file to point to a domain, but I don’t want to do that. I map the domains with a pihole instance, and I’d like to keep the record of domains centralized. Also, editing the hosts file won’t solve the issue with Firefox not pointing to the site.
You could try Sci-Hub and LibGen. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can always email the authors or other scholars who may have access to the paper you’re interested in. A less alternative site would be arXiv, but it just has preprints.