Citations: Best Practices
Created by A.L. McMichael
Maintained by LEADR under the direction of Gillian Macdonald
Last Updated: 12/17/2017
There is a common problem that when linking out to academic articles from WordPress pages or other websites, there is not universal access to those sources because they are behind a paywall. While there is not an easy answer, below are some suggestions for best practices and ideas to work around this problem.
There are two tools that may be useful. First is a new Chrome browser plug-in called “Open Access Button” that searches for open access (OA) versions of articles (plug-in homepage). There is another tool called ‘OA DOI’ that looks for open access versions of articles that have a DOI (digital object identifier).
It is possible to look for versions of articles and/or books in institutional repositories or Humanities Commons CORE Repository (CORE homepage where some authors place an open access (OA) or pre-proof version. This can take some searching, but some authors mention the presence of this or give links to them on their personal website. Another way to find this type of resource is to research the author’s home institution and see if it has a repository.
As a last resort, you may want to consider doing an annotated bibliography or footnotes and/or linking to abstracts online (see Active Citations), in addition to the citation.