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Current Awareness

This guide aims to get you started with a selection of current awareness services to help you stay up-to-date in your research field.

Full-text locators and open access

Endnote Click (previously Kopernio) is a free browser plugin / extension offered by Web of Science that finds the best available PDF of an academic article while you browse. Behind the scenes, it will search open databases and (where possible) your own university's subscriptions to find the best version of the paper for you. Here's how it can help:

  1. When you do a literature search on PubMed, Web of Science, JSTOR or Science Direct, Endnote Click will try to find the full-text PDF version. To access click the blue icon on your screen.
  2. The Export Reference button in your PDF viewer will download a RIS file which is compatible with reference managers like EndNote, Zotero or Mendeley. 
  3. There’s also a quick search feature to help you save time when searching on Web of Science. To search click on the Endnote Click button located next to your browser’s address bar. Input keywords or DOI of academic papers.

Core Discovery is a browser extension that offers the option of both finding a freely available copy when it is available and delivering a free copy of the paper. As well as articles in databases it focuses on open content from open repositories

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Unpaywall is a free browser extension run by ImpactStory that harvests content from over 50,000 journals and open access repositories as well as data from DOAJ, CrossRef, DataCite and PubMedCentral. 

Unpaywall harvests content from legal sources including repositories run by universities, governments, and scholarly societies, as well as open content hosted by publishers themselves. Note: this extension currently works best with Chrome or Firefox.

 

Open Access Button will search thousands of scholarly sources to link to free legal full text articles. It will also request articles from authors or start a full-text request all of which can be done via a free browser extension, website or API.

It also offers shareyourpaper.org which helps make research papers open access (legally) and helps generate extra visibility and more citations for authors. 

Scite will check if an article has been supported or contrasted anywhere you read literature online.

The freeware options include: 

  • Scite Reports: see how over 100m publications have been supported, replicated, disputed, criticized, debunked. (Access one Report per month)
  • Visualizations: discover how articles cite each other. (Access one Visualization per month)
  • Search: find publications using generic search terms
  • Scite Browser Extension for Chrome: see how papers have been cited anywhere you are reading research online

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0