Three cheers for Unpaywall and oaDOI!

We’ve been working on how to get around paywalls legally and connect people with accessible versions of papers since 2013. It’s a hard problem to solve! That’s why we’re so pleased to see Unpaywall and oaDOI (from the team behind Impactstory) working on this problem.

Unpaywall and oaDOI are terrifically designed browser plugins and websites that instantly and legally find accessible copies of articles, if they are available. You should check them out. Impactstory has done a great job designing effective, user-friendly tools. We’re excited to learn from their work and share some features of the Button, such as our request system that makes more research open.

The wonderful thing about openness is that more contributors can accelerate progress. We’ve been collaborating with others developing useful tools to advance open research, such as Dissem.in, and are excited to work with Impactstory. We hope to continue and deepen that collaboration in order to make more research accessible for all.

We’re committed to making paywalls a thing of the past, research data widely shared, and open the default for research. We’re excited to have more partners in tackling this important work.

Many congrats to Heather and Jason of Impactstory for a successful prelaunch of Unpaywall this week!