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Top tools for researchers: browser extensions

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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!




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