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RefCopy

Publication Data, Open Access & Citation Counts

Below the reference, the side panel lays out what RefCopy knows about the article. Each item is there to read or to copy — click a field to put just that value on your clipboard.

The RefCopy panel showing title, authors, journal, citation counts from Crossref and OpenAlex, and open-access status

The details you can copy

These come straight from the article’s record, and each copies on its own:

  • Title, Authors, Journal
  • Publication date, Volume, Issue, Page
  • Publisher, ISSN

Copy the authors for an email, the journal name for a cover letter, or the DOI for a message — without retyping or hunting through the page.

Citation counts

RefCopy shows how often the paper has been cited, from two sources: Crossref and OpenAlex. They count a little differently and refresh on their own schedules, so the two numbers won’t always agree — seeing both gives you a fuller picture than either on its own.

Open access and free PDFs

RefCopy checks Unpaywall to tell you whether a legal free version exists:

  • When one is available, you’ll see its open-access type — gold, green, hybrid, or bronze — and a button to open the free PDF or the free version of the page.
  • When no free copy is found, RefCopy says so plainly.

RefCopy doesn’t host anything itself; it points you to what Unpaywall has indexed from publishers and repositories.

License, funding, and subjects

Where the record includes them, RefCopy also surfaces:

  • the article’s license (for example, CC-BY), so you know how it may be reused;
  • the funders behind the work, with award numbers;
  • the subjects and topics it has been classified under.

Authors and references

An ORCID link appears next to any author who has one, so you can jump to a researcher’s profile. The article’s own reference list is here too — expand it to see what the paper cites, each entry carrying a clickable DOI so you can follow the trail.

Handy shortcuts

A few buttons save a detour:

  • Copy DOI link — the full https://doi.org/… address, ready to share.
  • Search in Google Scholar — find the paper and the work that cites it.
  • Impact factor — look up the journal’s impact factor.

RefCopy also adds a View in RefCopy button to Crossref search results, so when you track down a DOI there you can open it in the panel with one click.

Next: Tidy up your Google Scholar results, or adjust what appears in Settings.