Best Chrome Extensions for Researchers and Academics

Research work in a browser is mostly finding papers, getting the full text, keeping track of sources and making notes. A few well-established extensions cover each of those.

Saving citations

• Zotero Connector saves a paper, book, web page or article to the free Zotero reference manager with one click, picking up the citation details and the PDF where available. Zotero then formats bibliographies in any style and plugs into Word and Google Docs.
• Mendeley Web Importer does the same for Mendeley users.
• EndNote Click finds PDFs and connects to EndNote.

Getting the full text legally

• Unpaywall shows a green tab when a free, legal copy of a paper exists, such as an author's preprint or an open-access repository version.
• LibKey Nomad links articles to your university library's subscriptions, so you get the PDF without hunting through the library website. Your institution needs to support it.
• Google Scholar Button searches Scholar for the paper you're looking at, including other versions and citing papers.

Notes and annotation

• Hypothesis lets you highlight and annotate web pages and PDFs, privately or with a group, which is popular for reading seminars.
• Sticky Notes Anywhere pins notes to any web page and keeps a notepad in a sidebar, saved on your computer, for quick thoughts while you browse.

Writing

• A grammar checker helps with drafts, though check your institution's policy on AI writing tools.
• Word Counter counts words and characters on any page or selection, handy for abstracts and word limits.

Keeping sources from disappearing

Web sources move and vanish, which breaks citations. Save important pages to the Wayback Machine as you cite them. Wayback Quick Access has a one-click Save Page Now button and shows earlier captures. Law reviews and courts often use Perma.cc for the same purpose.

Reading comfort

Long reading sessions are easier with dark mode or warmer colors in the evening, and with fewer distractions. See fonts and layouts that make screen reading easier.

A note on permissions

Citation tools need to read the pages you save from. Stick to well-known extensions from the reference manager's own developers, and check your university's IT guidance for anything that connects to library accounts.