Open Access Publishing databases

The following resources all provide access to full-text, open access content:

• Directory of Open Access Journals: An online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
• Directory of Open Access Books: The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of open access books.
• COnnected REpositories: The mission of CORE is to aggregate all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public.
• Open Access Publishing in European Networks: The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences.
• Public Library of Science: A nonprofit publisher and advocate of open access research. All PLoS content is free to access, distribute, reuse and remix.
• Open Library of the Humanities: A charitable organisation dedicated to publishing open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs).

Literature and information search tools

• Agricola  The National Agricultural Library (NAL) holds the one of the world’s largest research libraries for agricultural, botany and forestry topics. The library catalogue can be searched with many articles available on-line.* From: U.S. National Agricultural Library   
• Cancer Library This site contains comprehensive descriptions on research; background information, clinical trials, cancer statistics, results and findings.  It also provides information on specific areas of research interest and funding opportunities. From: U.S. National Cancer Institute     
• ERIC Information and materials on education related topics. ERIC has over 1 million records including journal articles, books, technical reports, research, conference papers and policy documents. Many full-text articles are accessible.* From: U.S. Department of Education    
• Google Scholar will find many types of information, such as government reports, “grey literature” and journal articles, From: Google   
• Mineralogy Database Mineral data and information such as data on crystal structures, X-Ray powder diffraction, chemical and physical properties, Dana's classification, Strunz classification, and listings of mineral species, and links to other sites. From: David Barthelmy  
• PubMed is a health and biomedicine bibliographic database that includes 20 million citations from MEDLINE (the U.S. National Library of Medicine's database), science journals and on-line books. Its content covers as well as areas of. From: National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), U.S. National Library of Medicine  
• SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) Contains millions of records on astronomy, astrophysics and arXiv e-prints. Full-text search is available for much of the astronomical literature. Please note that all items are copyrighted by the publisher and are free for personal use only. From: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics  
• Toxnet and Toxline TOXNET (TOXicology Data NETwork) comprises a databases covering diseases, chemicals and drugs, and their environmental, health, safety and toxicology effects. Toxline is one of these databases offering over 4 million citations. From: U.S. National Library of Medicine

Websites with research publications and data

• Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Science Database The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has created this portal to support researchers and practitioners searching for information related to alcohol research. It mainly offers access to citations and abstracts.  From: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

• Earthnet Online A website for those interested in Earth Observation and the scientific and technical information produced and collected by the European Space Agency. The site includes mission information, data sets, research results and news. From: European Space Agency

• European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) As part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (http://www.embl.org/) EMBL-EBI provides freely available data and bio-informatics services to the science community.  From: EMBL-EBI

• Free Medical Journals This website from the medical literature group AMEDEO promotes access to free full text medical journals on the Internet. From: AMEDEO

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A website providing information and publications from the IPCC on climate change.  From: IPCC

• International Energy Agency (IEA) The IEA website is concerned with energy security, environmental awareness, economic development and communication of energy issues. Much of the information requires purchase but a limited number of items are free.*  From: IEA

• National Center for Biotechnology Information A website providing biomedical and genomic information including datasets, software and bibliographic information relating to science research and health.  From: NCBI

• National Institute of Standards and Technology: NIST publishes standards, technical information and measurement science related information to promote innovation, competitiveness and economic security and the quality of life in the U.S.A.  From: U.S. Department of Commerce

• Office of Scientific and Technical Information  Collections of research results and scientific subject portals can be accessed from this web site. Scientific and technical information on energy related topics can be found in the Energy Citations Database and datasets and non-text information can found via the DOE Data Explorer. From: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

• Science.gov A U.S. gateway created from an alliance of government science organizations. Users have access to 60 databases, over 2200 websites and 200 million pages of science information via the search facilities. From: Science.gov Alliance

• Specialized Information Service A portal offering access to a number of information sites covering Toxicology, environmental health, chemistry, HIV/AIDS, disaster health, and topics relevant to specific communities and groups of people. From: U.S. Department for Health and Human Services

• World Health Organization WHO web portal gives access to a data repository, statistical reports and information about global health concerns. From: WHO

Open access journals and books

These resources give free access to scientific scholarly publications.  Many of publications have been peer-reviewed, editorially controlled, and are available without needing a subscription to access the articles.

• Access to Research This service offers walk-in access to over 10 million academic papers from across the disciplines at participating public libraries. Access is available to members of the public, small businesses and independent researchers.

• DOAB is the Directory of Open Access Books. It aims to make open access books more discoverable and invites academic publishers to submit metadata to increase the visibility and circulation of their publications.  From: the OAPEN foundation

• DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals. It aims to list all open access scientific and scholarly journals that have a quality control system (e.g. peer review) in place. Disciplines covered range from humanities to engineering and science.  From: DOAJNational Academies Press

• NAP contains several thousand titles available for free download from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, National Research Council and other U.S. public bodies.  From: National Academy of Sciences

• PloS or the Public Library of Science is an open access publisher of peer reviewed journals and other resources.  From: PLoS

• OAPEN library  A library of open access quality assured (e.g. peer reviewed) books available for download. The library is focused mainly on the humanities and social sciences. The books are published in a number of European languages.  From: the OAPEN foundation

Open archives and repositories

Open archives and repositories are online databases of digital resources such as research archives and preprints. Preprints are usually the draft versions of an article before that is published in journals, at conferences, etc. The archives and repositories often contain media files and other data generally inaccessible to most internet users.

• ArXiv Research papers available for download on topics from physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics disciplines.  From: Cornell University Library

• OAIster is a searchable catalogue of digital resources, including digitized books and articles, audio-files, films, images and datasets; this material that has been “harvested” from repositories around the world.  From: OCLC

Research data repositories

The demand for secure and accessible storage of research data by academics, institutions and research funding bodies has resulted in a number of online resources to help people gain free access to the data behind research publications.   - Databib A directory intended to help researchers find online data repositories from around the world.  From: Databib

• Registry of Research Data Repositories A registry of data repositories intended to assist researchers in identifying online data repositories from around the world.  From: German Research Foundation

• UK Data Service A collection of social and economic data owned by bodies such as the ONS, UK government, intergovernmental organisations and research institutes. Much of the data is held at the UK Data Archive. From: ESRC with contributions from the University of Essex and the University of Manchester

• US Government Data Described as “The home of the U.S. Government’s open data” this website provides access to Federal, state and local data, tools and resources for it to be used in research, create web software and mobile apps and visualisations. From: U.S. General Services Administration

Patents and standards

Web pages and databases that provide free patent information that shows inventions that have already been protected; information on how to use other peoples’ patented inventions, or information on how to protect your own invention.

• Espacenet provides access to over 80 million patents documents (dating back to 1836) from across the world, information on patent families and legal status information. From: European Patent Office

• USPTO The Patent and Trademark Office patent database provides detailed information on issued patents and published applications from the USA. Full text download is available for many documents.  From: United States Patent and Trademark Office

Statistics

• data.gov.uk  A searchable website that provides access to data sets that informs government policy and decision making. From: UK Government

• Eurostat The official statistics office for the European Union. The links page provides a list of national statistics pages for EU and EFTA countries, Japan, Australia and the USA. From: Eurostat

• Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA)   Official statistics and social research on Northern Ireland.  From: NISRA

• Office for National Statistics (ONS)   ONS is the UK’s is recognised as the United Kingdom’s official body for economic, social, health and education statistics.   From: ONS

• Statistics in Scotland   Links to official statistics in Scotland from the Scottish Government web pages. From: The Scottish Government

• United Nations resources   UNSD Statistical Databases provide mostly free social and economic data. From: United Nations Statistics Division

Reference Management Tools

Researchers, staff and students often make use of paid for reference management tools, like EndNote, during their University career. Other free online tools exist that offer similar functionality.

  - Mendeley is a research management tool for desktop & web. You can also explore research trends and connect to other academics in your discipline.  From: Mendeley