Here are some suggestions for finding open-access articles to read or cite in your own research.
- Journals
- The Directory of Open Access Journals lists more than 2,800 journals that provide free access to the full text of their articles. You can search for a specific journal or browse by subject area.
- The SPARC Publisher Partner Program features non-profit organizations that are pursuing innovative business models to provide affordable, if not open access, to peer-reviewed research.
- Subject repositories: These archives provide open access to articles by scholars in particular fields. Some only include articles with free, full-text access, while others also include articles with only an abstract. They may also include theses, conference presentations, working papers, or other types of scholarly content. This is a sample list.
- openDOAR: an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents. http://www.opendoar.org/
- arXiv: Physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics. http://arxiv.org/
- CogPrints: Cognitive sciences, especially psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics. http://cogprints.org/
- ERIC (Education Resources Information Center): Education. http://www.eric.ed.gov/
- PubMed Central: Biomedical and life sciences. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/
- SSRN (Social Science Research Network): Social sciences, especially law, political science, economics, and business. http://www.ssrn.com/
- Search tools
- OAIster is a tool to search archives compliant with the Open Archives Initiative metadata standard. This can include open-access journals, institutional and subject repositories, as well as other digital archives, which may include educational or historical content in addition to scholarly journal articles. http://www.oaister.org/
- The Directory of Open Access Journals also includes a tool to search the content of some journals listed. http://www.doaj.org/