What is Open Access?

Open access is free, unrestricted access to high-quality research materials. Information is not found behind paywalls.

Repositories

• Creative Commons
• OpenDataSoft
• OpenDOAR
• ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)

Open access Journal Level 

• Directory of Open Access Journals 
• Open Access Journals at WMU

At the Institutional Level 

Academic institutional repositories have off open access to scholarship often through preprints. 

• DASH (Harvard)
• Deep Blue  (U Mich)
• eScholarship (University of California System)
• WMU ScholarWorks 

At the Author level

• BePress

the subject level 

Subject repositories are open to scholars all over the world who publish work in a particular discipline. Some of the larger ones include:

• RePEc: Research Papers in Economics
• arXiv: Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics
• SSRN: Social Science Research Network
• PLoS Public Library of Science
• PubMed Central  Biomedicine and Life Sciences

Adapted from https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/for-authors/open-access/#green

What is the Open Access Browser Extension?

• Tool: Open Access Browser Extension  Works with Chrome only.

"When you use the Button, it'll either take you straight to a free copy of the research article or help you ask the author to freely share the article with you."

What is Unpaywall?

• Unpaywall.org is "an open database of free scholarly articles." 
• Unpaywall  harvests "Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and make it easy to find, track, and use."

How to use Unpaywall

• use Google Chrome browser.
• go to Unpaywall.org 
• Click on "Get The Extension" and follow the instructions to download.  

Once the extension is installed

• a lock icon will appear in the  upper right side of the page when you encounter journal content  
• If the article is open access, the icon will change to an unlocked green button.  You can click on the unlock button and access an open access version of the article. 
• If the article is not available through open access, the icon will change to locked gray button. The article is not available through  open access. 
• If it is not available ou can manually request the article through Interlibray Loan. 

Green Unlocked Icon

Gray Locked Icon