Research Guides: Open Access: Open Access Resources

Resources on Open Access

Open Access journals can provide higher visibility for your work while allowing you to retain control over your copyrights. Many studies have shown that Open Access articles receive more downloads, and higher citation counts because they are globally accessible, rather than restricted to those who can afford subscriptions. For more information, check out this bibliography from The Open Citation Project:

Effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies

Resources on Open Access:

SHERPA/RoMEO
SHERPA/RoMEO is a directory of copyright and self-archiving polices for most major commercial journal publishers. Simply type in the name of your journal to determine your rights. Note: Small and niche publishers are not always included in the SHERPA/RoMEO database. In some cases it may be necessary to contact your publisher directly.
ROARMAP
To get a sense of open access policies that have been adopted or mandated at research and academic institutions see the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) which includes links to institutional OA policies from the US, Europe Canada and Mexico.

Open Access Journals

BioMed Central
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BMC provides access to over 200 peer-reviewed open access journals in biology, biomedicine and medicine.
DASH: Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard
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A central, open-access repository of research by members of the Harvard community.

Digital Commons Network
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"Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work."
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
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DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Full text.

Elsevier: Open Access
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Open Access titles from Elsevier (note: some overlap with ScienceDirect collection.)
HighWire Free Online Full-text Articles
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Collection of journals with varying levels of free content access.
JSTOR Open Content
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Search thousands of free journal articles and open access book chapters.
PLoS: Public Library of Science
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Collection of open access Science journals including PLoS One, PLos Biology, and PLoS Medicine.
Science Direct: Open Access
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Open Access titles from ScienceDirect (note: some overlap with Elsevier collection.)
SpringerOpen
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Collection of Open Access materials (including books and journals) from Springer.

Pre-print Servers

ArXiv
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Archive of over 1 million preprint and postprint articles in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics. From Cornell University.

bioRxiv.org
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Online archive and distribution service for unpublished preprints in the life sciences, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
ChemRxiv: The Preprint Server for Chemistry
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Repository for open access chemistry preprints. Sponsored by the American Chemical Society.
EarthArXiv
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Preprint server for the Earth Sciences
MarXiv
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Open access repository for ocean and marine-climate sciences (archival-only, submissions no longer being accepted.)
ESSOAr: Earth and Space Open Archive
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Archive from the American Geophysical Union for Earth and Space Sciences

Free and Open Access Books

These books are freely available for download, but are generally not licensed for remixing or other derivatives. Please check individual titles before using in the classroom or online teaching.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
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An online directory that indexes and provides access to over 2300 academic peer-reviewed books from 78 publishers.
Luminos
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Open Access monographs from the University of California Press
National Academies Press
Access to nearly 6,000 free ebooks in the sciences. (Free registration is required to download PDF files.)
NCBI Bookshelf
An online collection of full-text books, reports, databases and other documents in life science and healthcare
Open Research Library
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Selected titles from high-quality academic publishers and university presses (from Bibliolabs & KnowledgeUnlatched)
IntechOpen
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A member of the UN SDG Publishers Compact, IntechOpen is the publisher of over 6,000 Open Access books specializing in technology, science and medicine.
OAPEN - Online Library and Publication Platform
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Online repository and publication platform for Open Access books, providing peer-reviewed books in the humanities and social sciences.
HathiTrust Digital Library
Digital preservation repository and highly functional access platform. HathiTrust provides long-term preservation and access services to digitized content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house member institution initiatives. Items in the public domain are in full-view for everyone and items held in copyright are searchable.