Your Digital Repository Librarian
Finding open access content
There are an increasing number of scholarly materials (for example books, journal articles and conference papers) made freely available online as open access materials. These are peer reviewed, quality checked and full text access is provided where possible. This guide provides links to a range of open access content but is not exhaustive.
Some general search engines include:
- BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine - provides access to a wide range of open access content
- CORE - aggregates open access research and repository content worldwide
- Google Scholar - contains free articles and reports from universities, organisations, government, patents. You can set up a "Is it @CityLibrary" link directly from a Google Scholar search, see our guidance for using Google Scholar to find full-text content.
See also our guidance on using browser extensions to find open access resources.
How do I recognise if an article is open access (OA)?
The open padlock symbol is a universal icon indicating whether an article is open access. Whenever you see this symbol online, you will have free access to the content in which it is embedded.
As well as being visible on open access platforms, this icon commonly appears in paid for subscription journals where authors have made their article openly accessible.
Examples of open access content
Institutional repositories
An institutional repository is a research database or archive containing the intellectual output of an organisation. Many universities have institutional repositories that can be searched individually. The institutional repository of City St George's, University of London is City Research Online (CRO) which includes: articles, conference papers and theses written by City staff and researchers.
You can use these resources to search across multiple repositories:
- CORE searches across a range of international repository content.
- OpenDOAR lists national and international repositories.
Disciplinary repositories
A disciplinary repository is a research database containing materials related to a particular subject area. Examples of content include: articles, conference papers and working papers.
- ArXiv
Provides open access to millions of e-prints in the subjects of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative finance, statistics, and more.
Accessibility statement for ArXiv - PubMed
The free version of the Medline database covering allied health, clinical care, midwifery, nursing, public health and more.
Accessibility statement for PubMed
- RePEcRePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 75 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics.
- SSRNThe Social Science Research Network consists of an Abstract Database containing abstracts on over 148,100 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and a full-text Collection currently containing over 117,200 downloadable full text documents. Networks covered in our subscription are Accounting Research, Economics Research, Financial Economics and Legal Scholarship. Registration is required.
Some websites allow you to filter to open access content:
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)Allows you to search for open access journals and articles.
- Cambridge Core (Articles)Open access articles from Cambridge University Press
- CORECORE allows you to search for open access papers.
- Google ScholarFreely accessible search engine that lets users look for both physical and digital copies of articles. It searches a wide variety of sources, including academic publishers, universities, and preprint repositories.
- Springer (Open Access Articles)Includes articles from science, technology, medicine, the humanities and social sciences
Some subscription databases allow you to filter search results by open access:
- SCOPUS
The largest abstract and citation database of international peer-reviewed literature: journals, books and conference proceedings. It also has smart tools to track, analyse and visualise research.
Accessibility statement for SCOPUS - Web of Science
Multidisciplinary resource which enables simultaneous cross-searching of a range of citation indexes and databases. It provides access to research tools like cited reference searching and the Journal Citation Reports.
Accessibility statement for Web of Science
Some publishers and university presses offer a selection of open access titles:
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)Provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books
- JSTOR Open Access BooksOpen access ebook content from 90 publishers
- OAPENContains freely accessible books for research, mostly in the humanities and social sciences
- Springer (Open Access Books)Covers all areas of science, technology, medicine, the humanities and social sciences
- Taylor & Francis open booksOpen access books from Taylor & Francis
- UCL Press Open Access BooksGives free access to peer-reviewed scholarly works and innovative research outputs, including open access books