Open Access Button

By Sarah Weisang

For sure, everyone is familiar with this frustration: you just discovered the most relevant paper within the last few months, the abstract sounds absolutely promising, but suddenly… „sign in or purchase this content for 30 US$“! This will not only cost you a lot of money, but also your valuable time while trying to get access somehow. Open Access Button, which was developed in 2013 by two undergrads from the UK, offers you a solution! Simply install the software and next time you find yourself in front of a pay wall just push the „Button“! Behind the scenes the Open Access Button app will try to find a free copy of the paper. If there is no free version obtainable, Open Access Button will add it to your „wishlist“ while finding other ways to make one copy available (e.g. by emailing the author). But this is only half of the story! Open Access Button also wants to change the scientific way of publishing by collecting the data and stories of unsuccessful literature searches in order to argue the case for open access publishing.

Links:

• You want to try it out?
• Want to read the story of Open Access Button?