Facilitating your article searches with the Unpaywall plugin (15-minute presentation)
Muller, Floriane; Santos, Anouk
- Publisher
- Zenodo
- Language
- en
Abstract
This is the slide deck of the rendez-vous de l'information scientifique organised by the University of Geneva Library on October 24, 2025 and devoted to Unpaywall. Objective: To access scientific articles that are normally subject to a fee, free of charge and in one click, using the Unpaywall plugin Description: Despite the numerous subscriptions offered by the Library, some articles remain inaccessible unless you pay to access them. Some tools such as unpaywall allow to quickly locate an accessible version of the article if it is present elsewhere on the web (for instance on an institutional publication repository), and to immediately access the pdf in one click. Contents: presentation of the tool demonstration of how it works details on the types of article (versions) obtained through this tool tool customisation mention of alternatives: other similar tools, library services
Full text
Facilitating your article searches with the Unpaywall plugin, in 15 minutes Anouk Santos (& Floriane Muller) October 24, 2025 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17406976
| 2 2 www.unpaywall.org Image credit: https://unpaywall.org/
What is it all about? Unpaywall consists of a database and associated services. 3 Associated services: See also the FAQ: https://unpaywall.org/faq Unpaywall is a project of OpenAlex. Database: For each DOI, it lists the known (legal) places where a PDF is freely accessible, and the information about those PDFs. Image credit: https://unpaywall.org/
Browser extension: a tool for… ✓Legally bypassing the paywall ✓Accessing scientific articles that are normally subject to a fee directly from the journal's website ✓Locate a freely accessible version of an article, e.g. in an institutional archive ✓Facilitating navigation on publishers' platforms? Image credit: https://unpaywall.org/products/extension 4
To install it 1. Go to https://unpaywall.org/ 2. «Get the extension» 3. Download for Chrome or Firefox Examples to try it out: The articles below are not accessible via the UNIGE, but Unpaywall gives results. Click on the button on the right of the browser to see for yourself. https://www.eurekaselect.com/163865/article https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0 0220345860650020901 https://www.nature.com/articles/ s41551-019-0446-8 https://www.epjap.org/articles/epjap/a bs/2015/06/ap150129/ap150129.html https://link.springer.com/article/1 0.1057%2Fjittc.2015.5 https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/ 10.12968/ijtr.2015.22.11.517 Image credit: https://unpaywall.org/products/extension 5
Example https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1057/jittc.2015.5 here: accepted version (=peer reviewed) Uploaded by authors in an institutional archive in Finland 6
Publication versions Publication Layout & editing Peer review Manuscrit submission Schéma adapté de Preprint postprint published de Thomas Shafee disponible sous licence CC BY 4.0. 7
Leads to the "best" version Outside UNIGE’s network and without VPN In the UNIGE’s network or with VPN Via UNIGE subscriptions Via online archive Cardiff 8
Bonus ▪Possibility to configure the extension so that the color of the icon reflects the type of OA ▪Gold: final published version ▪Green: author version 9
