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Fed up of paywalls?

by Mary Barden on 2020-04-30T09:50:58+01:00 | 0 Comments

Although you can access thousands of full-text journals via Library subscriptions, there may be times when you use Google scholar to search for extra information. This can lead to frustration if you find a good article, but full-text is not available - unless you are willing pay for it. You can order it free via the Library's inter-library loan service, but you want immediate access. So what can you do? 

You can add Unpaywall and CORE Discovery to your Chrome browser and these will pick up an open access copy of an article (when available) if you hit a paywall. The open access version will often be the author's preprint submitted to a university repository. There is often very little difference between the preprint and the published article.


undefinedUnpaywall and Core D are permanently in my Chrome browser – it has to be Chrome

 

When you click on an article link, this is what you see at the side of the screen.

Core Discovery is the core (!) and Upaywall is the green padlock.

 

In this case Unpaywall has found a copy – and shows green. If it couldn’t find an OA copy it would be greyed out.

Core does something slightly different. It also finds related articles. So it is worth having both browser extensions.

They are both very easy to install. Follow the links and instructions below to add them to your Chrome browser.

 

 

 

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For Unpaywall go to https://unpaywall.org/products/extension - click on Add to Chrome - it's free. It’s just a couple of clicks.

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For Core Discovery go to https://core.ac.uk/services/discovery/ - scroll down to the brown Get browser extension button below and follow the instructions. Again, it’s just a couple of clicks.

 

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