Finding open access

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.

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.