What are Open Access Resources?
Open Access (OA) resources are scholarly resources that have been made freely available online by an author, publisher or University. The resources are generally freely available under a specific licence, with no subscription or access fees. OA resources include journals, journal articles, books, book chapters, databases, subject repositories, preprint servers, Open Educational Resources (OER), software, datasets and other formats. OA resources are a product of OA publishing, you can read about the history of the Open Access movement and its current role in academia in the Research and Scholarly Communications Library Guide.
For a quick overview of the topic, watch the video below.
Open Access Explained by PHD Comics is available under a Creative Commons Licence
Are OA resources high enough quality to use for my University Assignments?
Yes! OA publications are quality checked as part of the publication process and reputable publishers must ensure they meet strict quality standards for publishing. OA books and journal articles are often peer reviewed and meet the same publishing standards as non-OA content. Of course, it is important to be aware of who is publishing the material you are reading and use your own judgement to determine the level of quality. If you are unsure then, refer to our Study Skills Guide to help you to critically evaluate the information sources that you want to use for your assignments.
What about copyright?
Most OA content is made available with a Creative Commons Licence. Usually these licences enable the reader to share, distribute and tweak the original content as long as the correct attribution is given to the creator of the work. There are various types of CC Licences available so you should treat every article or book individually and check the licence it has been released under. As alway, it is still important to reference the original source. You can find out more about CC Licences in our Copyright Guide.
Finding Open Access Resources in the University Collections
The best place to start your search for reputable OA Resources is the Library A-Z databases list where you can use the 'Types' filter to search for Open Access Resources. The databases returned from this search will all contain some Open Access articles.
There are many more, high quality OA resources that you can access online. We have compiled a list of some of our favourites below to give you a head start with finding the best resources for your assignments.
Open Access Browser Extensions for finding OA Materials
Below are links to several OA tools in the form of downloadable browser extension apps.
| Open Access Button | This app detects paywalled content and provides access to OA alternatives. |
| Unpaywall | An open database of 50,985,732 free scholarly articles |
| CORE Discovery | Access to free copies of research papers whenever you hit the paywall |
OA repositories, journal articles, conference proceedings and policy documents
| Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) | opendoar.org | A worldwide index of research repositories |
| J-STAGE | jstage.jst.go.jp/browse | An electronic journal platform for science and technology information in Japan |
| JSTOR and Artstor | about.jstor.org/oa-and-free and about.jstor.org/l/jstor-beyond-journals | Partnerships with libraries and publishers help JSTOR and Artstor make content discoverable and freely accessible |
| NCBI Bookshelf | ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books | Provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare |
| OASIS | oasis.geneseo.edu | A large, user-friendly OER search engine that allows users to search by subject or course material type e.g. textbooks, simulations, audio |
| Paperity Open Science Aggregated | paperity.org | A multidisciplinary aggregator, of open access journals and papers, from Sciences, Technology, Medicine, to Social Sciences, to Humanities and Arts |
| Project Muse | about.muse.jhu.edu/muse/open-access-overview | Offers open-access books, journals, and digital humanities works from several university presses and not-for-profit academic publishers |
| Scientific Research Journals (SCIRP) | scirp.org | One of the largest open-access journal publishers, currently publishing more than 200 open-access, online, peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines |
| SpringerLink | tinyurl.com/springer-oa | Providing access to open-access scientific books and journals |
Open Access books/monographs
| Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) | Service of OAPEN Foundation based at the National Library in The Hague. This database contains more than 5,000 academic, peer-reviewed books from 163 publishers |
| HathiTrust Digital Library | Partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitised from libraries around the world |
| LSE Press | LSE Press is a publisher of high quality, open access research in the social sciences. They provide free online access to quality, peer reviewed books and journals. |
| OAPEN | Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences |
| Open Book Publishers | Founded in 2008 by a small group of academics at the University of Cambridge, Open Book Publishers publishes monographs and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. All books are available to read for free online |
| Project Gutenberg | Offers over 53,000 free ebooks, most of which are primary source texts: choose among free epub books, free Kindle books, download them or read them online |
| National Academies Press Free eBooks | Created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish the reports of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine with more than 8,500 titles in PDF format |