Q. What is Unpaywall? How do I use it?

Answered By: Carol Ido
Last Updated: Apr 27, 2022     Views: 723

What is Unpaywall?

Unpaywall is an open database that provides links to more than 23 million open-access resources. It harvests content directly from over 50,000 journals' open-access repositories and open data from PubMed Central, the DOAJ, Crossref (particulary their license info), and DataCite.

Content is harvested from legal sources, including repositories run by universities, governments, and scholarly societies, as well as open content hosted by publishers themselves. Unpaywall does not harvest from sources of dubious legality like ResearchGate or Sci-Hub.

How do I use Unpaywall?

Unpaywall is integrated with AU library search and also available as a browser extension. 

The browser extension will show a green padlock icon on the right side of your screen when you're viewing an article in a database and Unpaywall has located an open-access version. Clicking this icon will take you to the open-access version.

Unpaywall links may by found in AU Library Search records when you select "Expand My Results" in the "Refine your results" pane on the left side of the results page:

Click on an article title to open the record, scroll down to the "Related Links" section and click on "Look for open access alternative":

The link opens the open resource in a new tab:

More information is available at https://unpaywall.org/faq

 

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