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Find Open Access Papers

Locate freely available versions of academic papers that can be read without a journal subscription.

Tool
Academic Research icon
Academic Research

Most academic papers sit behind expensive journal paywalls. But many of those same papers have open access versions -- preprints on arXiv, author manuscripts on institutional repositories, or gold open access publications. Finding the free version saves money and time.

The search_papers skill returns metadata that includes open access status and links to freely available versions when they exist. Instead of hitting a paywall and giving up, you can find the same paper hosted somewhere accessible.

Students without institutional access, independent researchers, journalists, developers building on academic work, and professionals in developing countries all benefit from knowing which papers are freely available. Open access discovery removes the financial barrier to knowledge.

Agent Guides

Claude

  1. Connect ToolRouter: claude mcp add toolrouter -- npx -y toolrouter-mcp
  2. Ask Claude: "Find open access papers on deep reinforcement learning using academic-research"
  3. Claude returns papers with open access availability noted
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ChatGPT

  1. Configure ToolRouter in ChatGPT
  2. Ask: "Find open access papers on computational biology"
  3. ChatGPT returns papers noting which are freely available
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Copilot

  1. Add ToolRouter to Copilot MCP config
  2. In Copilot Chat: "Find open access papers on program synthesis"
  3. Copilot returns papers with access status
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OpenClaw

  1. Connect ToolRouter: openclaw mcp add toolrouter -- npx -y toolrouter-mcp
  2. Ask OpenClaw: "Find open access papers on renewable energy storage"
  3. OpenClaw returns papers with access information
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