Google Scholar Button
Tools
Lookup scholarly articles as you browse the web.
Users
3M
Rating
4.6
Reviews
1,427
7D Growth
--|--
Stable signalNo paid features detectedHigh-risk permissions
Lean Library
A library-approved tool to unlock access to academic papers.
Users200KCurrent public install base
Rating3.4Store average score
Reviews142Public review volume
Manifest versionV3Extension platform version
7-day growth0Net users gained this week
7-day growth rate0%Relative weekly velocity
Preview
2 assetsLean Library Media preview
Trend
User growth trend
Review user movement across collected snapshots.
User Growth Over Time
Rating trend
7-day rating trend
View collected rating snapshots from the latest 7-day window to assess rating stability.
7-day rating change
Start
3.43
Latest
3.43
7-day rating change
0.00
2026年7月15日2026年7月21日
Growth overview
Daily, weekly, and monthly growth
Compare 1-day, 7-day, and 30-day net growth and growth rate.
1-day growthFlat
00%7-day growthFlat
00%30-day growthFlat
00%Technical snapshot
Version, languages, and crawl freshness
Review publication date, version, supported languages, and crawl timestamps.
Version2026.5.0
ManifestV3
Size11.91MiB
Languages1English
Published
Store updated
Last crawled
English
Overview
Product summary
Review the store description, core capabilities, and common use cases.
Providing an uninterrupted research rhythm
Lean Library is a free end-to-end research tool that brings your library’s services and resources directly into your research workflow, no matter where you start your research. Whether you are discovering and accessing academic content or saving references, Lean Library puts your library right at the heart of every research journey. Instantly and legally unlock millions of academic articles, eBooks, and open access content, avoid paywalls, and receive customised guidance from your library. Save references, highlight and annotate content, get journal alerts, and build information literacy skills with article retraction alerts and trust ratings—all from within your browser.
Ready to start using Lean Library?
Install the extension, select your institution and begin researching! Even if you aren’t
affiliated with an institution, you can still get quick and seamless redirection to open access materials absolutely free by downloading the extension and selecting Lean Library Open as your library.
Please note, the Lean Library browser extension works together with Lean Library
Reviews
Recent review snapshot
Inspect the latest comments and rating distribution.
Store average score3.4Chrome Web Store aggregate rating, including ratings without synced review text
Synced text average3.1Average computed only from synced review bodies below
Reviews with text103Synced review bodies
Total ratings / reviews142Chrome Web Store public rating/review count
Store average score: 3.4. The bars below are calculated from synced review text only, so they may be empty for extensions that have public ratings but no synced comments yet.
Related products
Similar and related extensions
Review related products from the Chrome Web Store detail page.
Unpaywall
Workflow & Planning
Legally get full text of scholarly articles as you browse.
Users
900K
Rating
4.0
Reviews
280
7D Growth
0|0%
Google Scholar PDF Reader
Workflow & Planning
Supercharge your paper reading: follow references, skim outline, jump to figures, cite and save.
Users
1M
Rating
4.1
Reviews
696
7D Growth
-1M|-50%
Zotero Connector
Tools
FreemiumConfidence 64
Save references to Zotero from your web browser
Users
7M
Rating
4.0
Reviews
2,450
7D Growth
0|0%
Scite
Workflow & Planning
scite allows users to see how a publication has been cited, providing the citation context and classification
Users
100K
Rating
4.1
Reviews
41
7D Growth
0|0%
Электронные ресурсы РГПУ им. А.И. Герцена
Accessibility
Удаленный доступ к электронным ресурсам из подписки РГПУ им. А.И. Герцена
Users
3K
Rating
4.7
Reviews
6
7D Growth
-1K|-25%
Our students love using Lean Library, so easy to bring the library service to their research rather than asking them to come to us. The workspace is the ideal tool to also help them with their referencing for them to cite resources. This was easy to setup and implement and is a great tool to find resources that we already subscribe too and that are open access.
Lean Library is incredibly useful for our students and researchers at UHI, especially those studying off-campus. It makes accessing library resources much easier and saves a lot of time. The Google Scholar integration and Assist messages work really well and having Live Chat built right into the extension means students can get help exactly when they need it. I definitely recommend this to anyone who needs to use library resources regularly, whether on or off campus.
Good tool to get notified when an scientific article or ebook is available through campus licences or when an Open Access version is available. If threre is no e-version available, interlibrary loan is offered.
Our university students, faculty, and staff have given us (KSU Libraries) positive feedback on Lean Library. We have noticed our e-resources usage increase as well.
Lean Library is an excellent tool and has enhanced the research library experience for our students. Its integration into our Library and the easy extension download provides our user with a powerful time-saver research tool. We highly recommend it to our students and researchers looking to streamline their workflow and quickly connect to the valuable content in our library's collection.
Lean Library is a must-have tool for any student or researcher who frequently uses academic resources online. It saves time, increases access to materials, and ensures you're getting the most out of your library’s services
Lean Library has been an absolute game-changer for me! As a student, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), accessing academic resources was never easier. Especially, if I compare it to my Bachelor's when I didn't have this extension. Lean Library has literally saved me countless hours of frustration by connecting me to scholarly articles, e-books, and journals that I needed for my essays, papers, and exam prep. I really appreciated the fact that the VU provides this service to its students!
The plugin itself works quite well. The only issue I recently experience is that for instance YouTube is very slow and crashes often when the plugin is active. The browser uses a lot of memory as well then. I ckecked this behaviour with Chrome and Firefox on Windows and Mac. It happens in all situations. So now I have to inactivate the plugin and make it only active when I need it for library access.
Works well to integrate with university library but every time it updates I have to annoyingly re-disable integrations that I do not want on. 5 stars if they ever fix this problem.
It's a great tool for integrating our university library with the ever expanding plethora of ways to access articles and it really helps me do my job. As a downside though, it recently started bugging out Qualtrics where it trying to retrieve an article from the editing pane would then hide the entire page, making Qualtrics unusable. As I'm sure this tool is mostly used by academics, many of whom also use Qualtrics, I would love to see this fixed.