Skip to main content

Top tools for researchers: browser extensions

Image
By
Tools and tips that help shave precious minutes off a laborious workflow appeal to most humans who spend much of their working day at a computer. Thanks to open-source software and code sharing platforms, such as Github and Snipplr, innovative tools can be developed quickly, built upon and often made available completely for free.

This post highlights four useful tools that can help researchers quickly find and evaluate open access (OA) literature. All are freely available extensions for your internet browser, however, it's worth noting that I have only tested them in Chrome-based browsers. If you're a user of other browsers such as Safari, Internet Explorer or Firefox there might be other equivalent services available.

For a more in-depth analysis and demonstration of these and other browser extensions, I recommend reading Aaron Tay's blog post from June and July of this year.

Let's get started...

Google Scholar Button

It might sound an obvious choice since Google Scholar's browser extension has been around since 2015. However, it is the most established of the bunch and had the most downloads from the Google Chrome store (2.2m+ downloads). 

Once installed the Google Scholar button will crawl the internet to find all the full-text versions of any given piece of research, with a very impressive success rate compared to similar browser extensions.

Pros of the GS Button

  • Broadest coverage (though note the associated con!)
  • Simple and free to use
  • Option in Settings to link with institutional subscriptions for paywalled content

Cons of the GS Button

  • A downfall of the broad coverage - includes content uploaded by others that breaches copyright, e.g. from ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.
  • It needs activating each time, i.e. by highlighting a title or DOI then clicking on the button in your toolbar.
  • Google may decide to discontinue it at any time (remember Google Reader and others in the Google Graveyard?)

Unpaywall

Unpaywall launched in 2016 and is an academic-led not for profit service to illustrate to academic just how much of their research output is available for free. It works by harvesting open access content from publishers and repositories.

It has gained really good traction within the academic community since its release, possibly helped by its integrations with publisher citation indices, discovery tools and library link resolvers.

Pros of the Unpaywall button

  • Broad coverage (thanks to publisher integrations)
  • Simple and free to use
  • It doesn't need triggering and automatically indicates when a free version is available.
  • Setting for "OA Nerd mode" with colour-coded green, gold and bronze to indicate modes of OA.
  • Full access to the data, either via download, weekly data feed (subscription only), REST API or simple query tool. Admittedly, these features are for the aforementioned OA Nerds or developers but are nonetheless very useful if you need to do reports or find OA content in bulk.

Cons of the Unpaywall button

  • My observations have shown a tendency to prioritise publisher content over repository content.
  • It sometimes classifies a publisher source is a repository. This doesn't impact on the researcher simply looking to discover OA content, but for the OA Nerd with reporting to do it can pose problems.


CORE Discovery

A new kid on the block launched this year, CORE Discovery is a not for profit service delivered by JISC and The Open University. It works in a very similar way to Unpaywall in that it harvests content from OA infrastructures.

It boasts the "world's largest dataset of open access full texts" with a long history and strong connections with the repository community.

Pros of the CORE Discovery button

  • Broad coverage (thanks to the comprehensive repository links)
  • Simple and free to use
  • It doesn't need triggering and automatically indicates when a free version is available.
  • A plugin for repositories that helps to link their metadata-only records to freely available content held elsewhere.

Cons of the CORE Discovery button

  • It's a new service so errors may arise. I found one example in testing that didn't resolve to a free full text. But reporting inaccuracies is quick and easy.
  • It doesn't have a readily available simple query tool like Unpaywall (yet) but again this is one for the OA Nerds with reporting requirements. 


scite_

One tool is taking the discovery of open access content a step further by using machine learning to offer a citation analysis on the fly. 

Citation counts have been recommended as one way to evaluate the significance of a piece of research, forming the backbone of citation indices such as Web of Science and Scopus. However, some citation practices have become questionable as a result and, at the very least, a straightforward citation count doesn't reveal any context or judgment of research quality.

scite_  is the brainchild of  Virginia Tech postgrad student Josh Nicholson. It will return a summary of papers that have either supported, contradicted or simply acknowledged the work in question, to help the researcher make a surface-level evaluation of whether or not to consider that piece of research in their citing literature.

Pros of scite_ button

  • It's unique! In September the Association for Learned and Professional Society Publishers awarded it an award for innovation in publishing.
  • Simple and free to use

Cons of scite_ button

  • It has a heavy Life Sciences / STEM focus, largely due to the research background of its founder.
  • It's still in beta mode and does additional processing of the OA content to produce results. Last known count is 350M citation statements.


Conclusion

Browser extensions are really useful for bringing the best bits of the internet conveniently into your research workflow. The OA discovery tools are fantastic for bypassing awkward paywalls and getting you straight to the content you want. As for Unpaywall versus CORE Discovery - it's hard to call it, they are both good, I recommend installing both and choosing your favourite. I would opt for either over Google Scholar, using that only as a backup or as a convenient way of searching Google Scholar itself.

scite_ is one to watch. I highly recommend it if you are researching within Life Sciences or STEM. If you like, share your experiences in the comments below!




Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Searching ABS Journals in Business Source Premier

By
In Business and Management Studies, researchers undertaking a literature review sometimes search across a defined group of journals. This is a way of focusing the literature search to make the results more relevant to the questions in hand. Groups are often chosen from the Association of Business Schools (ABS)'s  Academic Journal Guide . Read more how about how they put together the guide here . There are several ways to search across ABS journals. Here is how to do it in Business Source Premier, a leading literature database for this subject area.  1.     Login into the ABS journal guide. If you have never used it before you will need to create an account. 2.     You can use the guide to draw up a group of journals either by using the Rankings information or the Fields. Fields divides up the journals into categories of research focus e.g. Accounting, Finance etc. In this example we will use the Fi...
Read more

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar

By
You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar if you have a Google Account. Go to Google Scholar and sign into your Google Account. Conduct your search. Click on the Star icon (Save) under each reference you want to export. Then click on My Library in the top, right of the screen. Select all the references and click on the Export option: Click the Star/Save Icon Choose Export Option To Export into EndNote Choose the EndNote option. Open the EndNote file that is created. The references should automatically import into EndNote. To Export into RefWorks Choose the RefMan option. Save the RIS file that is created. Login to your RefWorks account. Click on the plus (+) button. Choose Import References. Add the RIS file you just saved. Set the file import option to RIS - Reference Manager. Click import and your references will be imported. --- Good Practice Tip: Always check that all the reference information you need has been...
Read more

How to find a Journal Impact Factor

By
What is a Journal Impact Factor? An impact factor is a measurement provided by Thomson Reuters looking at the average number of citations articles in a particular journal receives.  It is calculated by: The number of times that all items published in a journal in the previous two years (e.g. 2012 & 2013) were cited by indexed publications during the year of interest (e.g. 2014) divided by The total number of "citable items" published by that journal in those two years (e.g. 2012 & 2013) Finding a Journal Impact Factor Go to Web of Science In Web of Science - Click on the link at the top of the page for Journal Citation Reports. Start typing the name of the journal and choose from the list that appears: Remember - not all journals are indexed by the Journal Citation Reports, so not all journals have an impact factor. You will then get an option to click on the Journal Profile, which includes the Impact Factor:  Find th...
Read more