Research Guides: Open Access at Washington University: Finding OA Articles

Finding OA Articles

Authors will often upload pre-publication manuscripts of articles to repositories or other platforms for open access. These tools can assist researchers with limited institutional access to find legally accessible free versions. Also ask your local library about interlibrary loan services.

Unpaywall
A browser extension for Firefox or Chrome that identifies legal open access versions of research articles.
Open Access Button
This website searches for legal open access copies and has the option to request a copy from the author.
Google Scholar
Check for open repository or other availability in the Google Scholar results. It may show as a PDF link on the right, or among the versions (when available, listed in the links at the bottom of the entry).
Endnote Click
A Chrome/Firefox browser plug-in from Clarivate Analytics that offers free access to over 20,000 open access sources, as well as providing access via Purdue institutional subscriptions.

Other Open Access Content

PubMed Central
Free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals.
arXiv
Articles in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Preprints in biology.
bioRxiv
Preprints in biology.
CogPrints
Self-archive papers in any area of psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics, and many areas of computer science.
medRxiv
Preprints in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences.
chemRxiv
Preprints in chemistry and related areas.
Social Science Research Network
Open access preprint community specializing primarily in social sciences, including economics, law, corporate governance, and humanities. (Owned by Elsevier)
OSF Preprints
Multidisciplinary preprint repository.
IDEAS
Bibliographic database based on RePEc (Research Papers in Economics). Includes published articles and freely available preprints and working papers in economics.