Open Access Helper

Effortless legal access to full text scholarly articles: Open Access Helper will help you identify legal open access copies of academic articles, using unpaywall.org and core.ac.uk

Open Access Helper: Effortless Access to Scholarly Articles

Open Access Helper is a Firefox add-on that helps you effortlessly access legal open access copies of academic articles. It detects the DOI of a research article and queries the APIs of unpaywall.org and core.ac.uk to find a link for an open access copy. The extension also supports EZProxy for university libraries and ensures the links are legal and secure.

Add-on stats

Users: 261
29
Rating: 5.00
(1)
Version: 2025.2.2 (Last updated: 2025-01-07)
Creation date: 2020-10-24
Weekly download count: 17
Firefox on Android: No
Risk impact: High risk impact
Risk likelihood:
Manifest version: 2
Permissions:
  • tabs
  • storage
  • contextMenus
  • http://*/*
  • https://*/*
  • *://*/*
  • https://www.oahelper.org/backend/institutes/
Size: 424.92K

Other platforms

Open Access Helper Web (v2025.2.2)
5.00 (1) 4,000
Not available on Android
Open Access Helper Web (v2025.2.2)
4.50 (2) 1,684
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Add-on summary

Open Access Helper: Effortless Access to Scholarly Articles

Unlock Open Access Easily find legal, free-to-read versions of paywalled scientific articles. Open Access Helper uses the trusted APIs from unpaywall.org and core.ac.uk to locate open access copies, making research more accessible for students, researchers, and curious minds.

How It Works When you view a research article, the extension detects its DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and checks for an available open access version. Simply click the Open Access Helper badge to access the document!

As you hover over the badge, it will indicate whether you’ll be accessing the “Published Version,” “Accepted Version,” or “Submitted Version.”

EZProxy or OpenAthens Made Simple If your university library uses EZProxy or OpenAthens for off-campus access, this extension makes it seamless to connect. Just set your institution’s domain (e.g., harvard.edu), and with one click, you can proxy the current page through your library’s server.

100% Legal and Privacy-Respecting Every link provided leads to officially open-access or legally archived copies of research articles. Plus, Open Access Helper doesn’t collect personal data—just anonymous usage stats to improve functionality.

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User reviews

Great upgrade to the unpaywall extension! Since I am/was a user of that extension, OAHelper's color scheme confused me: I associated a green badge with green Open Access, i.e. the OA version is available at a different location; and a gold badge with gold Open Access, i.e. it is available "here" at the publisher. OAHelper does it the other way around, which is based on a different philosophy (green = all is good, stay here; orange = oops, you don't get it here). But given that OA levels are associated with colors, did you consider to flip those two colors - or provide an option in the settings? I have a feature request: the unpaywall extension treated the link in the badge as a regular link, so that on hover, one could see the target URL in the status bar. OAHelper does that different, so that one has to click the badge to know where it leads. Any plans to make it a regular link like the unpaywall extension did? Thanks for your work! Highly appreciated.
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Add-on safety

Risk impact

Open Access Helper requires some sensitive permissions that could impact your browser and data security. Exercise caution before installing.

Risk likelihood

Open Access Helper is probably trust-worthy. Prefer other publishers if available. Exercise caution when installing this add-on.

Upgrade to see risk analysis details