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: 257
-8
Rating: 5.00
(1)
Version: 2024.1 (Last updated: 2024-08-10)
Creation date: 2020-10-24
Weekly download count: 11
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: 409.95K

Other platforms

Open Access Helper Web (v2024.1)
5.00 (1) 4,000
Open Access AR (v2.4.9)
3.50 (137) 27,530
Open Access Helper Web (v2024.1)
4.50 (2) 1,531
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Add-on summary

Effortless legal access to full text scholarly articles

FIND OPEN ACCESS

When you view a research article, Open Access Helper detects the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the document and then will query the APIs of unpaywall.org and core.ac.uk to find a link for a legal open access copy. Simply click the Open Access Helper badge to access the document!

Orange: open access is available at another location Blue: Request through Open Access Button or our Library

As you hover your mouse over the Open Access Helper badge, the extension will tell you whether you are going to see the “Published Version”, “Accepted Version” or “Submitted Version”. The two APIs employed are the gold standard for this type of information.

EZPROXY

Many university libraries employ a remote access solution known as EZProxy. This solution functions by rerouting your connection through the institution’s server and thus making it look to the publisher as if you were on campus. All you have to do is access the settings, type the domain of your institution (e.g. harvard.edu for Harvard University) and save.

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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.

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