Open Access Button is exactly that, it is a button you click through your browser to find legal Open Access versions of research publications that may otherwise sit behind a paywall. It is a way of opening up research to global audiences that can have a positive effect on the world, especially when we think about health research.
The website says:
"We urgently need trusted knowledge that’s fairly owned, created, and read. We’re addressing that by creating a family of library-aligned, open source tools built not-for-profit, but for-change. Our tools make it simpler to do research without subscriptions.
The project started when students got tired of hitting paywalls. Instead of accepting their frustration, they became inspired and took an idea to track the impact of paywalls to a hackday. The Open Access Button was launched in November 2013."
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| Open Access Button |
ScHARR Library Information Officer Sheldon Korpet said about the tool.
"Open Access Button is a website which searches aggregate research repositories (like core.ac.uk) for journal articles that are free and legal to read. Simply paste the URL of the article you can't access and search to see if OA Button can find an open access version to read instantly. If the article isn't available OA Button ask the author to put a copy in a repository, so the tool only gets better with more users and searches." - Sheldon, Information Officer, ScHARR Library