This guide provides information on a range of free tools available to help you locate, access and download the full text of articles and other publications online, wherever you are.
viaDurham is a simple button you can add to your web browser which simplifies the login process off campus when you are on a journal’s web page, so that you don’t need to leave the page and find your way back from the Library website.
It won’t work for everything, and won’t give you access to content we don’t subscribe to, but it will save you a huge amount of time (we hope) for a huge proportion of the over 20,000 journals we do have subscription access to.
The video below shows how it works, and how to get it on your own computer (you can find the link, and instructions, for installing in your browser in the respective tabs in this Guide).
To install the button, follow the instructions below for whichever web browser you are using.
Note: If you only click on the button above, you will get an error message. The button is only there for you to install in to your browser, following the instructions above. Once installed, you can test it has worked on an article such as here https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-8361.12128
To install the button, follow the instructions below for whichever web browser you are using.
Note: If you only click on the button above, you will get an error message. The button is only there for you to install in to your browser, following the instructions above. Once installed, you can test it has worked on an article such as here https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-8361.12128
To install the button, follow the instructions below for whichever web browser you are using.
Note: If you only click on the button above, you will get an error message. The button is only there for you to install in to your browser, following the instructions above. Once installed, you can test it has worked on an article such as here https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-8361.12128
To install the button, follow the instructions below for whichever web browser you are using.
Note: If you only click on the button above, you will get an error message. The button is only there for you to install in to your browser, following the instructions above. Once installed, you can test it has worked on an article such as here https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-8361.12128
Staff and Students at Durham University have access to over 20,000 journals online, alongside many other resources through our subscriptions, but we still cannot afford to provide you with access to everything you may need. Increasingly, many authors, funders and publishers are working together to make scholarly research open access - available free at the point of use to readers, including you!
For an introduction to open access, see our guide here.
Sometimes it can be difficult to know if something you have found might be freely available elsewhere, but there are free tools such as Unpaywall and OA button which you can use to find and access these wherever you are.
UnPaywall is a free service which collects information on open access versions of academic research published globally, from over 50,000 journals and open access repositories.
The video below demonstrates how their free browser extension works to find an open access version of an article you have landed on but cannot access; the video then also shows you how to install the tool, which can be accessed here.
Unpwayall also provides a free REST API and Simple Query tool which you can use to check up to 1,000 DOIs at once to find out their open access status and a location for an open access version of those publications.
OA Button works in a similar way to Unpaywall's browser plugin, but instead appears as a button in your browser bookmarks bar, similar to Google Scholar Button.
You can access OA Button here.
Unpayall also provides a free REST API and Simple Query tool which you can use to check up to 1,000 DOIs at once to find out their open access status and a location for an open access version of those publications.
Similar to Unpaywall's simple query tool, OA sheet allows you to submit a list of outputs and you will be emailed with an indication of their open access status, and where you can access a free-to-read version of the article.
OA Sheet and Unpaywall Simple Query tool (and API) are unlikely to be of use for student coursework etc. They may however be of interest if you are leading a research project and wish to check the status of your team publications quickly, or if you are trying to locate, access or assess a large number of outputs.
Google Scholar provides a quick, simple and freely accessible search engine for searching across a broad range of mostly scholarly publications. The guidance provided here is to help you make the most of Google Scholar, and highlight some of the less used services it provide.
Make sure that when you use Google Scholar, it recognises you as a member of Durham University. This will make accessing the full text of articles, in particular when off-campus or not logged in to the university network.
Google Scholar will often link to and identify multiple versions of papers, although will not always display them in your initial search results page. If you find a result but it is locked behind a paywall, try clicking on the versions link below the result in your Google search page to see if it has found any manuscript versions in an open access repository or on an author's personal web pages which you can access.
Watch our short How to use Google Scholar Button video, which introduces the free browser tool which can help you find academic publications related to anything you find online.
Google Scholar allows you to set up an email alert to notify you of any newly identified articles which match a search you have run. To set up an alert, click on the link marked Create Alert once you have reviewed your results list.
You can then provide an email address to receive the alerts.
Google Scholar's ability to process a complicated Boolean search is limited. Whilst for many purposes this may not be a significant concern (e.g searching using a couple of keywords, or searching for a specific articles), you should be aware of these limitations for more complex searches.
Google Scholar cannot accurately process any search which uses more than one “concept”, each described by multiple synonyms/alternative terms.
(See our Guide on Constructing your Search for further information on connectors and alternative terms in your search)
For example:
... will be interpreted by Google Scholar as...
... although results where multiple of the terms appear will generally appear higher up the results list, so the effect on the search result may not be apparent.
Often, when searching Google Scholar you will be told your search has returned results numbering in their millions or tens of thousands.
However, you will never be able to see beyond the first 1,001 results located.
In itself, for most users this is not a problem - who is going to wade through more than 1,001 search results; but considered alongside the limitations in how complex searches are interpreted (and the amount of "noise" created int he results list), this could potentially mean that some key results may remain invisible to the user, which may be problematic for some research needs.
Publish or Perish is a software programme developed by academics, for academics. Whilst its primary purpose is in citation analysis, it can offer useful ways to search Google Scholar content for literature reviews and systematic reviews, as it allows you to:
See Publish or Perish for further guidance and information.
Kopernio is a free browser plug-in, provided by Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science), which can simplify online access to the full-text of articles you find, and provides an pdf library which can act as a search history, or integrate with reference management software such as Endnote.
Below is a short video providing an overview of how Kopernio works, whilst further help and guidance from Clarivate Analytics can be found here.
