Discovering and citing Open Access resources

LibKey Nomad is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Edge that will give you access to peer reviewed journal articles that the University of Surrey subscribes to, as well as legally available Open Access papers, when you’re browsing the internet. University of Surrey staff and students can download and install it on their computer for free.

Find out more about how to download and use LibKey Nomad (PDF).

Unpaywall, OA Button and CORE Discovery are all free Chrome and Firefox extensions that find legal Open Access copies of individual articles from both publishers and repositories. You can also paste an article DOI (the unique article identifier) into the OA Button and CORE Discovery search bars.

EndNote Click is provided by Clarivate and can be used alongside applications like EndNote. This web browser plugin allows access to PDFs for articles and other resources.

Google Scholar Button is a plugin available for Chrome and Firefox.

LibKey.io provides access to the full-text of an article using either the digital object identifier (DOI) or PubMed Identifier (PMID). If the article is available through the Library’s subscriptions or it is Open Access, you will be able to access the PDF or the article link.

Find out more about how to access and use Libkey.io (PDF).

Here are some further guides on using discovery tools to find Open Access resources. 

• How to use SurreySearch for Open Access materials (PDF)
• How to search online databases for Open Access materials (PDF).

Please contact your Faculty Engagement Librarian for more information on discovering open access materials.

Preprints are works that have been made publicly available via a preprint server before they have undergone peer review.

This is an example of a preprint reference formatted in a standard style:

• Author. (Year) 'Title of article'. [To be published] in Title of Journal, volume and issue numbers (if stated) [Preprint]. Available at: URL (Accessed: date) or DOI (if available).

Postprints, sometimes called the author's accepted manuscript (AAM), are works that have undergone peer review, and have been accepted for publication, but have not been formatted by the publisher.

Many postprint research papers are now available online through Open Access repositories (such as the Surrey Open Research Repository).

This is an example of a postprint reference formatted in a standard style:

• Author. (Year) ‘Title of article’. Title of Journal, [Postprint] volume and issue number, Pages, Available at: URL (Accessed: date) or DOI.