CORE Discovery

One-click access to free copies of research papers whenever you hit the paywall
What is CORE Discovery?
CORE Discovery is a Chrome extension that allows users to discover free versions of research papers. Backed by a vast dataset of open access papers, this extension drastically reduces the time required to access full texts of scholarly papers. It is a free service designed by researchers for researchers, aiming to provide high coverage of freely available content, without any commercial control or profit from user data.

Extension stats

By: CORE
Users: 7,000+
Rating: 3.33 (3)
Version: 1.0.4 (Last updated: 2020-10-02)
Creation date: 2020-04-02
Risk impact: Moderate risk impact
Risk likelihood: Low risk likelihood
Manifest version: 2
Permissions:
  • storage
  • *://core.ac.uk/*
  • *://*.core.ac.uk/*
  • *://api.unpaywall.org/*
Size: 225.28K

Other platforms

Not available on Firefox
Not available on Edge
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Extension summary

CORE Discovery helps users to discover freely accessible copies of research papers. It is backed by CORE's (core.ac.uk) huge dataset of millions of full text open access papers as well as content from widely used external services beyond CORE. Discovery reduces the time it takes to access full texts of research papers and the frustration associated with hitting a paywall on the publisher's site. With CORE Discovery, you can be confident to benefit from the highest coverage of freely available copies of articles anywhere on the planet. So try it, it's free.

Why CORE Discovery?

Our free CORE Discovery service provides you with:

  • Highest coverage of freely available content. Our tests have shown CORE Discovery finding more free content than any other discovery system.
  • Free service for researchers by researchers. CORE Discovery is the only free content discovery extension developed by researchers for researchers. There is no major publisher or enterprise controlling and profiting from your usage data.
  • Best grip on open repository content. Due to CORE being a leader in harvesting open access literature, CORE Discovery has the best grip on open content from open repositories as opposed to other services that disproportionately focus only on content indexed in major commercial databases.
  • Repository integration and discovering documents without a DOI. The only service offering seamless and free integration into repositories. CORE Discovery is also the only discovery system that can locate scientific content even for items with an unknown DOI or which do not have a DOI.

How it works?

Our service processes information from a wide number of authoritative scholarly data sources to discover, download and validate information about free availability of articles wherever they are located on the web. In this way, we are curating a vast database of freely available copies of articles. CORE Discovery has a preference for displaying first the open access content, originating from our approved content providers, and seeks alternative routes, providing access to free versions, only if they are not available from them.

User reviews

does not function as stated
by Jihanie, 2021-05-02

This is great when it works, but could do with more documentation. Specifically, when it finds free and I assume legit copies of paywalled articles, they are produced without fuss or delay. That happens, I'd say, about 60% of the time but more research is needed. What is frustrating is that it will sometimes say "related papers have been found", but nothing whatever happens when you click on that message. Of course related papers have been found This is the academic web. Everything is related. The least the extension could do would be to offer a list of the related papers it has found in that case.
by Andrew Brown, 2020-03-05
View all user reviews

Extension safety

Risk impact

CORE Discovery requires a few sensitive permissions. Exercise caution before installing.

Risk likelihood

CORE Discovery has earned a fairly good reputation and likely can be trusted.

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