Why does it sound to me that paywalls and passing them, and legit and legal don’t go well together?
An inquiring mind wants to know.

It’s just a tool on the browser that lets you know if there is a copy of the paper you are trying to look at available for free somewhere else. They often are. You can look up yourself how those publishing paywalls work. You pay for the collection of the papers in one place. The writers of the papers do not give up their copy rights and they can put them anywhere they like, like their university online library.

@ScienceChick Thanks for clearing it up for me.

If you are still skiddish about it, here is an article about how and why this exists (also from one of my fav new websites) http://www.openculture.com/2017/04/unpaywall-a-new-and-legal-browser-extension-that-lets-you-read-millions-of-science-articles.html

i book marked your link so I’ll have it available IF I need it. Thanks for the info. When a jelly asks a question about something of which I have NO knowledge, I usually do some quick research before responding. Sometimes, when I lived through it, I often respond from personal knowledge. I’m beginning to notice that with some things that I lived through that some of the major details have been changed over the years.I usually learn of the change in details AFTER I respond!!! LoL

Rad.

I usually just do a google search of the author. But this would be so much more streamlined.

Thanks!

Thanks for the recommendation and the information about accessing research papers, @ScienceChick!

I’ve definitely run research paper articles through a search engine and been able to find free copies elsewhere before, but I’ve never known why, or why it only worked sometimes. An extension that scours the web for me is definitely easier!

Great resource, @ScienceChick , thanks!

I’m interested and have saved the link. Thanks.

This looks like a great tool! Thanks! It beats google scholar

I am not an academic any more, but I used to subscribe belong to AAAS and subscribe to Science magazine. I have academic subscriptions for my field but it’s good to be able to have access to others. Thanks for the link.