Open Access Button

Open Access Button (now powered by OA.Works) is a critical piece of the 2026 open science infrastructure, designed to bypass academic paywalls legally. It functions by aggregating metadata from hundreds of thousands of sources, including institutional repositories, preprint servers like arXiv and bioRxiv, and indexed databases such as Unpaywall and CORE. The tool utilizes a sophisticated discovery engine that matches DOIs, PMIDs, or article titles against a global index of legally shared versions. If a free version is not found, the system automates the 'request from author' workflow, facilitating a direct legal exchange of research. For 2026, its technical architecture has evolved to include 'InstantILL' (Instant Inter-Library Loan) capabilities, which allows libraries to integrate the button directly into their discovery layers (EBSCO, Primo, etc.). This reduces institutional costs by prioritizing open-access versions before initiating expensive loan requests. Built on an open-source framework, it provides a RESTful API that enables developers to build high-volume scholarly workflows, ensuring that research accessibility is a foundational utility rather than a luxury.