Answer

You will need to log in using your University user ID and password to see the content we have paid for. However, there is also a lot of academic information and research publications online that have been made freely available, without the need to log in. These are known as open-access publications.

What is open access?

"Open access (OA) means making research publications freely available so anyone can benefit from reading and using research. ... Open access is part of a wider ‘open’ movement to encourage the free exchange of knowledge and resources to widen access and encourage creativity." Read more on the Jisc website.

What kind of content is available?

Below are a few examples of open-access publications and research.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) doaj.org - Lists over 7000 OA titles.

Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) opendoar.org - A worldwide index of research repositories.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) doabooks.org/doab - Service of OAPEN Foundation based at the National Library in The Hague. This database contains more than 5,000 academic, peer-reviewed books from 163 publishers.

HathiTrust Digital Library hathitrust.org - Partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitised from libraries around the world.

J-STAGE jstage.jst.go.jp/browse - An electronic journal platform for science and technology information in Japan.

JSTOR and Artstor about.jstor.org/oa-and-free and about.jstor.org/l/jstor-beyond-journals - Partnerships with libraries and publishers help JSTOR and Artstor make content discoverable and freely accessible.

National Academies Press Free eBooks nap.edu/books - Created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish the reports of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine with more than 8,500 titles in PDF format.

NCBI Bookshelf ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books - Provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare.

OAPEN Library oapen.org/home - Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences.

OASIS oasis.geneseo.edu - A large, user-friendly OER search engine that allows users to search by subject or course material type e.g. textbooks, simulations, audio.

Open Book Publishers openbookpublishers.com - Founded in 2008 by a small group of academics at the University of Cambridge, Open Book Publishers publishes monographs and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. All books are available to read for free online.

Paperity Open Science Aggregated paperity.org - A multidisciplinary aggregator, of open access journals and papers, from Sciences, Technology, Medicine, to Social Sciences, to Humanities and Arts.

Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page - Offers over 53,000 free ebooks, most of which are primary source texts: choose among free epub books, free Kindle books, download them or read them online.

Project Muse about.muse.jhu.edu/muse/open-access-overview - Offers open-access books, journals, and digital humanities works from several university presses and not-for-profit academic publishers.

Scientific Research Journals (SCIRP) scirp.org - One of the largest open-access journal publishers, currently publishing more than 200 open-access, online, peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines.

SpringerLink tinyurl.com/springer-oa - Providing access to open-access scientific books and journals.

What other research is available?

Access to Research accesstoresearch.org.uk - A service that provides free, walk-in access to over 30 million academic articles in participating public libraries across the UK.

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