Unpaywall for Chrome

Leaving the exciting part involved aside, doing comprehensive research for a thesis or other types of official papers is mostly a tedious and quite possibility frustrating affair, especially if you happen to find a research paper you need but it requires full-subscription in order to be accessed.

It's quite possible that the team behind a very ingenious extension called Unpaywall for Chrome know this feeling all too well, which may explain why they've created a brilliant, must-have tool for everyone who's currently doing heavy research on even heavier subjects. In case you're not exactly a Chrome fan, please note that there's a Firefox version available as well.

Basically, this unobtrusive extension actively scans the research article you're currently trying to access and, if it's paywalled, it automatically looks for a copy in its database of millions of free, legal, and author-uploaded research PDFs.

Its modus operandi couldn't be simpler: once it detects a free version for any research paper, it displays a green button with an open lock on the right side of Chrome's main window. As you may have guessed, this means that there's a free version of the research paper in question, and by clicking the aforementioned icon, you are instantly provided with a free PDF version of it.

One more thing, if the extension is unable to locate a fulltext article (from an institutional repository or official server), then it will display a gray icon instead. Quite surprisingly, you can opt to change the colors from its Options section.

That said, we can't really tell you what Unpaywall for Chrome's success rate is, but we can say for sure that it's the easiest way to find legally open version of paywalled research papers, which translates into saved time; time you can use on further improving your projects.