Without a University of Edinburgh login, you will be unable to access the journals and other online resources for which the Library pays and which you will find on DiscoverEd, the library catalogue. However, there are many freely available resources which require no payment and need no login to access in full. These are referred to as 'open access'.
Below are some ways you can find articles that are free to access.
DiscoverEd: Open Access filter
You can search DiscoverEd without signing in, and use "Refine my results" options to show only Open Access results.
Edinburgh Research Explorer
People working at the University of Edinburgh are encouraged to deposit work they have published in Edinburgh Research Explorer which is the University's open access repository. You can search it to find relevant outputs, activities and projects.
Search Edinburgh Research Explorer
Tools
Authors of journal articles are often able to share versions of the articles on their own or university websites, or in repositories for specific subjects.
The tools below make it easier to find these shared versions.
EndNote Click
EndNote Click is a browser extension that quickly tells you if you have access to a version of a journal article that you are looking at. It detects when you are viewing an article and, if you have access, it will provide a link to the document. An additional feature is that the PDFs you read are automatically filed in your own private Locker.
The EndNote Click extension will work in Google Chrome.
It is worth noting that this is a closed-source, proprietary tool owned by Clarivate Analytics.
Unpaywall
Unpaywall is an open source browser extension which adds an icon to the right-hand side of any page where it detects an academic article. This icon indicates whether there is an Open Access version available and clicking it will take you to the appropriate document.
The Unpaywall extension will work in Google Chrome and Firefox.
Unpaywall draws on slightly different sources to EndNote Click, so it may be helpful to install both extensions.
Open Access Button
Open Access Button registers when an academic article cannot be read because payment is required. If it cannot provide access, you are invited to request the author(s) make their work publicly available, and they are guided on how to make the work available to you. When an author shares their work in this way it will become available to everyone else who needs it.
The Open Access Button browser extension will work in Chrome and Firefox and as a Bookmarklet for all other browsers. An Edge extension is in development.
Open Access Button website can also be searched independently.
Get Open Access Button extension
Core
CORE is a large open access aggregator that pulls together a collection of hundres of millions of research outputs. Many of the extensions mentioned above use this tool, but you can search the website too.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar searches academic-type resources. It does not find all the material that academic literature databases do, but it can find material those databases will not. Google Scholar can be a good starting point for finding academic literature.
Some of the results returned by Google Scholar will be open access.
Members of education, or other, institutions may be able to connect Google Scholar results to content for which your library has paid. If so you would do this through: Settings > library links > [enter the name of your institution]. When a browser extension like EndNote Click has been installed (see above), the Library Link can work alongside, pointing you to free versions of articles where it has found them.