Skip to main content

Online resources for University Alumni

The University Library has listed free resources on the internet which will be useful for alumni, local members of the library and members of the public

Open access articles and books

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

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

  • Access to Research This service offers access to over 30 million academic papers from across the disciplines at participating public libraries.

  • 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.

  • CORE: The mission of CORE is to aggregate all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public.

  • National Academies Press (NAP) Provides access to thousands of reports and ebooks written by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. From: National Academy of Sciences.

  • 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

  • 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).

  • Social Science Open Access Repository: SSOAR provides access to freely available journal articles and working papers.

  • Social Science Research Network: SSRN is one of the largest repositories of freely accessible research papers in the social sciences.

Literature and information search tools

  • AGRICOLA  : The catalogue of the National Agricultural Library (NAL), one of the world’s largest research libraries for agricultural and allied subjects, includes records to resources from around the world dating as far back as the 15th century. Many of the journal articles it indexes can be found online. From: US National Agricultural Library   

  • Cancer.gov Free and comprehensive information about cancer prevention and treatment, research, clinical trials and news, as well as information about National Cancer Institute (NCI) grants and training programmes. From: US 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: US Department of Education    

  • Google Scholar Search engine that indexes many different types of scholarly content including journal articles, books conference papers, theses and patents. Includes tools such as ‘cited by’ which links to resources that have referenced a record, and ready-made citations for importing into reference management tool. 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 Includes over 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE (the US National Library of Medicine’s database), life science journals and online books. From: National Centre 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  

  • Web of Science My Research Assistant App Free app Allows users to search Web of Science’s index of scholarly articles and resources from their smart phone and view the full text of articles when available as open access. PLEASE NOTE: Support for this App will discontinue on in late July 2024.

Websites with research publications and data

  • Alcohol Research: Current Reviews An open access, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the US National Institutes of Health.

  • Earth 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

  • AMEDEO: The Medical Literature guide Created for healthcare professionals and compiled by specialists for the rapid distribution of medical knowledge, AMEDEO provides weekly overviews of the latest medical literature as well as access to the last 12 to 24 months of journal citations grouped by specialism. It also allows users to sign up to receive free weekly emails listing abstracts of new articles in their selected fields. From: AMEDEO

  • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) The United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. Includes the repository of IPCC Assessment Report.  From: IPCC

  • International Energy Agency (IEA) : The IEA 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 division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Provides biomedical and genomic information including datasets, software and bibliographic information relating to science research.  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 United States of America.  From: US Department of Commerce

  • Office of Scientific and TechOSTI.GOV (Office of Scientific and Technical Information)  Provides searchable access to over 70 years of the US Department of Energy’s science, technology, and engineering research and development results including journal articles, datasets, scientific software and patents.  From: US Department of Energy (DOE)

  • Science.gov A US 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

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

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.

  • 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 US 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: US 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 130 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

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

How to get an Alumni Library card

Enquiries

If you have any questions, please contact us.

On this page