Unpaywall

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iplffkdpngmdjhlpjmppncnlhomiipha

Description from extension meta

Legally get full text of scholarly articles as you browse.

Image from store Unpaywall

Description from store Get full text of scholarly articles as you browse. When you view a research article, Unpaywall automatically looks for a copy in our index of 20 million free, legal fulltext PDFs. If we find one, click the green tab to read the article. Unpaywall points you to legal, author-posted manuscripts that are hosted on university and government web servers. We are pointing to versions that have been posted with the full and explicit authorization of the publishers themselves. These free, author-posted manuscripts are often called "Green Open Access" and are a longstanding and completely legal part of the scholarly communications ecosystem. The majority of scholarly journals permit authors to "self-archive" their papers on university and government web servers. It's these legally self-archived papers that Unpaywall helps users find. Any papers posted outside of publisher permissions are NOT included in our index.

Latest reviews

(2025-06-13) 成光: Reading research papers for free is very user-friendly.
(2025-06-04) TheBobsteg: The best.
(2025-05-27) Sara: journals/studies behind an actual paywall are not free to access with this extension. The papers that show up with a green lock with this extension are already free and open access. Tried over 20 papers across several different providers. This extension acts like a download button for ALREADY open access and free papers and does not bypass a paywall. Not sure what the point of this extension is!
(2025-05-16) Diletta Fabiani: Doesn't work. Shows the green lock, but clicking on it does nothing, just asks for an account to that publisher's platform. Now if I had that we wouldn't be here would we.
(2025-03-20) Md Ishtiak Ahmed Sajib: Great app for downloading paper.
(2025-02-20) Vy Duong: this literally saved my early academic career. I'm eternally grateful for this.
(2025-02-14) Alejandro Hernandez: Anything that makes science more accesible or free (as it should be) is good for humanity.
(2024-12-31) Joel Wigton: Love this extension, but it will stop working soon with the v3 manifest. When it does, you can use the "Spaywall" extension which does the same thing, and works with v3. It's free to use for research papers.
(2024-12-21) Eric Sevareid: So important and useful.
(2024-12-13) jaudat a7med: Could u open this website https://www.intelligenceonline.com news website
(2024-12-05) Fungi :3: Works flawlessly, legally, and quickly. If you have complaints about it not working, then its because your trying to access information that is actually bought, this extension doesnt pirate, it finds free available workarounds and is amazing.
(2024-11-22) jvt: I am not paying for science direct. Life saver.
(2024-10-18) Zach Richardson: It's a dice roll whether it finds a paper or not, but when it works it saves you time for sure. It stopped working today and I'm not sure why. Do I need to switch back to Firefox?
(2024-09-29) Yousef Badran: It's Incredibly terrible...
(2024-09-02) Prabhakar Kumar Mahto: it helped me to get research article.
(2024-08-30) Arash Akhlaqi: unbelievably handy, I'll pay for this! Chrome is being d0u(hy as usual & wants to remove this, I hope either it gets resolved or to get a git, etc link and I'll load it on developer mode.
(2024-08-23) ikab bika: Good. I found a science paper pdf what was locked with payed subscription
(2024-08-10) Kristine Hara: First paper I tried was unlocked, amazing!! Thank you for making science more accessible :)
(2024-06-02) Oliver Ruskin (BLISS): I was looking for a specific article that I had read some while ago and got to access it for free... when I tried recently it was all behind a paywall! This extension really helped me, and even if it can only get 50% of articles, or just the ones that are out there somewhere for free, it's really handy.
(2024-04-20) Fernando Manríquez V.: total garbage. Sci hub is way better
(2024-04-13) hendrik vanvelk: works
(2024-04-09) Soura Bhattacharyya: Simple, to-the-point, and gets the job done. It will NOT help you break past a paywall; rather, it will save you time searching for a legal, open-access version of the manuscript.
(2024-04-01) Selim: doesn't work on wsj
(2024-03-07) Thiago Barros de Oliveira thiagobarros: This is GREAT! Works well and its very practical!
(2024-02-28) Brennan Phillips: I am doing research on Roe V Wade. This did not get me past ANY paywall. NOT ONE. Not from medical journals, not from newspapers, not from Substack or Medium, I hit a paywall for every single article and journal I needed access to. Complete waste of time
(2024-01-14) paul benjamin: best thing ever created
(2023-11-06) Sergio N. Bonacina: una mentira ya lo desinstalo
(2023-10-18) Jo me: Works awesomely
(2023-10-18) Jo me: Works awesomely
(2023-10-16) Mari Leigh: I love it. It can't always find free versions of research papers/journals, which is annoying, but most of the time for me it can. As much as I'd like to support the researchers and buy their research journals/papers, I cannot pay upwards of $40USD for a single article. I definitely suggest if you are a student who needs to use credible sources for research papers, I highly recommend this app. Like I said, it can't always find free versions, but it's worth a try :)
(2023-10-16) Mari Leigh: I love it. It can't always find free versions of research papers/journals, which is annoying, but most of the time for me it can. As much as I'd like to support the researchers and buy their research journals/papers, I cannot pay upwards of $40USD for a single article. I definitely suggest if you are a student who needs to use credible sources for research papers, I highly recommend this app. Like I said, it can't always find free versions, but it's worth a try :)
(2023-10-09) Natanael Leitão: Works only on articles that are already free.
(2023-10-09) Natanael Leitão: Works only on articles that are already free.
(2023-09-20) Adrian Augustus: **Note its for scientific journals not mainsteam media like Wall Street Journal.** The extension name could perhaps be a little less generic. As for use in journals I typically access - this works, rarely. To concur with some of the feedback here - only occasionally does it procide access to a pdf, sometimes it fails when a pdf is available almost at the top of a google search, sometimes a bit more digging is required. Nice idea though.
(2023-09-20) Adrian Augustus: **Note its for scientific journals not mainsteam media like Wall Street Journal.** The extension name could perhaps be a little less generic. As for use in journals I typically access - this works, rarely. To concur with some of the feedback here - only occasionally does it procide access to a pdf, sometimes it fails when a pdf is available almost at the top of a google search, sometimes a bit more digging is required. Nice idea though.
(2023-09-15) Mysan trope: Not working.
(2023-09-15) Mysan trope: Not working.
(2023-08-07) Andrzej Rutkowski: It's kind of useful, but sometimes it fails to detect the available full versions of articles. I mainly spend my time on Pubmed and sometimes there's a paper there with a clear link to the full free version of the article on Pubmed central, but Unpaywall still says that there is no free full version of this paper available. When the Unpaywall padlock icon is open and green - yes it is useful to be able to just click it and go directly to the free full version. But when the padlock is grey and locked, I still do my own search for a free version (often successfully), but I thought that this searching on my own was what this extension was supposed to save me time on.
(2023-08-07) Andrzej Rutkowski: It's kind of useful, but sometimes it fails to detect the available full versions of articles. I mainly spend my time on Pubmed and sometimes there's a paper there with a clear link to the full free version of the article on Pubmed central, but Unpaywall still says that there is no free full version of this paper available. When the Unpaywall padlock icon is open and green - yes it is useful to be able to just click it and go directly to the free full version. But when the padlock is grey and locked, I still do my own search for a free version (often successfully), but I thought that this searching on my own was what this extension was supposed to save me time on.
(2023-06-02) Atharva Kulkarni: Best
(2023-06-02) Atharva Kulkarni: Best
(2023-05-23) Fabien cmoi: faut s'abonner ou pas ? en tout cas ca marche pas
(2023-05-03) Leniero: Funktioniert bei keiner der getesten Seiten
(2023-01-11) Lee B: Doesn't work.
(2023-01-11) Lee B: Doesn't work.
(2023-01-07) David Linder: Only tried it on one article, worked first time, gave me the full article without paying. So super happy, thanks.
(2023-01-07) David Linder: Only tried it on one article, worked first time, gave me the full article without paying. So super happy, thanks.
(2022-11-18) Alkaris: This extension does NOTHING on sites like New York Times, or Washington Post that all use paywalls.
(2022-11-18) Alkaris: This extension does NOTHING on sites like New York Times, or Washington Post that all use paywalls.
(2022-11-01) ZeyTac: not working.

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