Research suggests that the more open your scholarship is, the more likely it is to be found, read, and cited (find more on this topic in our Open Access guide, in the section titled, Reporting/Analytics in the FAQs.)
Below are quick, easy ways to find open access content that is published in digital repositories and beyond.
Unpaywall
Unpaywall is an open database of over 22 million free scholarly articles. Unpaywall harvests Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and makes that content easy to find, track, and use. Not only can you skip the paywall on millions of peer-reviewed journal articles, but the database is fast, free, and legal.
Adding this browser extension is a cinch!
1. Go to https://unpaywall.org/products/extension
2. Click on the blue button that says, "Add to" your browser (Unpaywall currently works on Chrome and Firefox).
3. Click on "Add extension"
4. Find an article on the open web.
5. If there's a freely available version, you'll be able to click the green tab to open the full text content.
Learn more:
Get The Research is a website where regular people can find, read, and understand the scholarly research on any topic. It’ll be built on the 20 million open access articles in the Unpaywall index, and feature AI-powered tools that help make the content and context of scholarly articles more clear to readers. We won’t be dumbing down or interpreting science, but we will be giving motivated readers scaffolding to help them build their understanding.
BUT... HOW IS THIS DIFF THAN GOOGLE SCHOLAR BUTTON? DIFF CONTENT? WOULD BUTTON SUFFICE? SUSTAINABILITY? TRANSPARENCY?
Google Scholar searches a hodge-podge, whereas Unpaywall searches open content only.