Alternative routes to open access articles

You can download and use browser extensions or plug-ins, or search directly in your favourite repository in order to find open access articles. Below we list examples of plug-ins, open archives and search services. Many libraries also integrate these services in their link resolvers for seamless access via their discovery services.

Researchers may share articles between themselves if this is permitted by agreements with their publishers, the so-called ‘scholarly sharing.’ Please refer to  Sherpa/Romeo External link.to check current terms for the journal in question. When using the plug-in Open Access Button External link. and hitting paywalled articles, requests to authors are sent asking them to deposit their articles in an open institutional or subject repository. There are also a number of social platforms for researchers, e.g. ResearchGate External link. and  Academia.edu External link..

Scholarly articles which are not open access and cannot be found via plug-ins, search services or repositories can in many cases be ordered via document delivery services (DDS/ILL) by your local library from other libraries in Sweden or abroad. Please contact your library for further information.

There are a number of browser extensions or plug-ins for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari which can be installed to facilitate finding articles which are open access:

General

1findr free edition

1findr External link. is a commercial platform for searching articles in peer-reviewed journals which also offers a free version. This version allows no advanced search option apart from narrowing results to include open access articles only.

BASE – Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine External link. and index for academic resources contains about 120 million documents. Around 60 % of its indexed content is open access.

CORE

CORE’s External link. search engine and index for aggregated research publications from repositories and journals globally. Developed by JISC and the Open University it offers access to around 133 million articles.

Dimensions

Apart from searching for publications and the possibility to search for cited and citing articles, Dimensions External link. also indexes grants, patents, and clinical trials. The free version offers limited possibilities.  

DOAJ

DOAJ External link. is a list of open access journals and a search service finding peer-reviewed and scholarly journals and articles.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar External link. is an index and search engine for academic content on the web.

OpenDOAR

OpenDOAR External link. is a searchable global directory of open access repositories and their policies.

OSF Preprints

OSF Preprints External link. is a platform with openly accessible preprints, or submitted manuscripts which are publically distributed before acceptance and peer-review in a traditional scientific journal. An advantage of publishing preprints is the speeding up of scientific communication and of sharing research results earlier, as it can take a long time between submission of an article till publication.

OSF Preprints is developed by Centre for Open Science (COS), a non-profit organisation with the goal of greater openness and reproducible research.

Zenodo

Zenodo External link. is an open archive developed by CERN where researchers can deposit publications, preprints, software, and research data.