Open Access Button

Short description: Browser bookmarklet

Open Access Button logo

The Open Access Button was a browser bookmarklet which registers when people hit a paywall to an academic article and cannot access it.[1] It is supported by Medsin UK and the Right to Research Coalition.[1]

A prototype was built at a BMJ Hack Weekend.[2][3] All code is openly available online at GitHub.[4]

A beta version of the Open Access Button was officially launched on 18 November 2013 at the Berlin 11 Satellite Conference for Students & Early Stage Researchers.[5] It records instances of hitting a paywall, and also provides options to try to locate an open access version of the article.[6] In April 2014 a crowdfunding campaign was started to build a second version.[7]

The second version of the button was launched on 21 October 2014 as part of Open Access Week.[8]

In February 2015 the Open Access Button and its co-founders, David Carroll and Joseph McArthur ("the button boys"), were awarded a SPARC Innovator Award by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).[9]

The third version of the button was launched on 28 October 2016, again, as part of open access week.[10]

On September 18, 2025 OA.Works shut down the project.[11]

## See also

* 12ft
* Anna's Archive
* Bypass Paywalls Clean
* EndNote Click
* Eprint button
* Unpaywall

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "About". Open Access Button. 4 July 2013. http://oabutton.wordpress.com/about/. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
2. ↑ Carroll, David; McArthur, Joseph (2013). "The Open Access Button: It's time we capture individual moments of paywall injustice and turn them into positive change". LSE Impact. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/09/02/the-open-access-button-carroll-mcarthur/. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
3. ↑ "Picture of the week". BMJ 347. July 2013. http://www.bmj.com/highwire/section-pdf/653443/0/1. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
4. ↑ "Open Access Button". GitHub. https://github.com/oabutton. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
5. ↑ "Speakers at B11 Satellite Conference". Right 2 Research Coalition. http://www.righttoresearch.org/act/berlin11/speakers. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
6. ↑ "Push button for open access". Guardian. 18 November 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/18/open-access-button-push. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
7. ↑ Browne, Tania (29 April 2014). "Let's shine a light on paywalls that deny open access to scientific research". Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/apr/29/paywalls-open-access-button-scientific-research. Retrieved 29 April 2014.
8. ↑ "Launching the new Open Access Button. Push Button. Get Research. Make Progress. | Open Access Button blog". http://blog.openaccessbutton.org/2014/10/02/launching-the-new-open-access-button-push-button-get-research-make-progress/.
9. ↑ Adams, Caralee (2015). "SPARC Innovator: The Open Access Button". Association of Research Libraries. Archived from the original on 2015-09-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20150915122630/http://www.sparc.arl.org/initiatives/innovator/oabutton. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
10. ↑ Labs, Cottage. "Open Access Button". https://openaccessbutton.org/blog/new-oab-2016.
11. ↑ "Sunsetting the Open Access Button & InstantILL" (in en). 2025-06-16. https://blog.oa.works/sunsetting-the-open-access-button-instantill/.

## External links

* Official website
* Chrome Webstore Listing

* v
* t
* e

Open access

* History
* Timeline

Concepts|

* Gratis versus libre
* Subscription business model
* Paywall
* Copyright transfer agreement
* Academic journal
* Scientific journal
* Manuscript
* Preprint
* Postprint
* Article processing charge
* Predatory publishing

Statements|

* Budapest Open Access Initiative
* Berlin Declaration
* Bethesda Statement
* Durham Statement
* NIH Public Access Policy
* Research Works Act

Strategies|

* Open access journal ("gold OA" )
* Self-archiving ("green OA" )
* Open-access policy
* Mandate
* Open access repository
* Hybrid open access journal
* Delayed open access journal

Projects +
organizations|

* Creative Commons
* Directory of Open Access Books [ca; ca; DOAB]
* Directory of Open Access Journals
* Initiative for Open Citations
* Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
* Open Archives Initiative
* Open Knowledge
* Open Society Foundations
* Plan S
* Public Library of Science
* Registry of Open Access Repositories
* Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
* Sci-Hub

Other|

* Access to knowledge movement
* Access2Research
* By location
* Africa:
* South Africa
* Americas:
* Canada
* Asia:
* India
* Europe:
* France
* Germany
* Spain
* Oceania:
* Australia
* List of open-access journals
* List of open access projects
* List of repositories
* Public Knowledge Project
* The Cost of Knowledge

Open content \- Open data \- Open education \- Open government \- Open hardware \- Open knowledge \- Open science \- Open source

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