Interlibrary Loan Services
Open Access Resources
What are open access resources?
Open access resources are publications that are made freely available to read, download, copy, distribute, and print without any legal or technical barriers to access.
How do I find out if an article is open access?
Our Open Access Checker uses an article title or DOI to search open access resources for an open version of an article.
Alternatively, you can install an open access browser extension. Browser extensions check for open access versions of articles when searching publisher or journal websites. Below are a few popular browser extensions:
Is there anywhere I can search only for open access publications?
Yes, there are several databases that only contain open access resources. Some are general and search a wide variety of academic areas, and others are based on either the academic area or document type.
- Directory of Open Access Books
The Directory of Open Access Books provides access to over 89,000 peer-reviewed open access books that are available free of charge.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
DOAJ provides an index of open access journals from a diverse array of subject areas with all content openly available.
GovInfo is a service from the U.S. Government Publication Office (GPO) which provides free access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.
Hathi Trust hosts millions of digitized books and journals. Free and open access is only provided to historical materials published before 1929.
The Internet Archive contains millions of free texts, movies, software, and websites. Books published prior to 1929 can be downloaded and other books may be eligible to be borrowed free of charge to read online.
PubMed Central provides access to full text biomedical and life sciences journal articles held by the U.S. National Institute of Health's National Library of Medicine.
Some open access articles don't look like they have been published in a journal, why?
When searching for open access articles you may come across three different types of articles: author manuscripts, pre-prints, and published articles.
Pre-Prints
Pre-prints are articles that are not peer-reviewed and have not been accepted by a journal to be published. They are released publicly so that authors can receive early feedback. Below is an example of what a pre-print article may look like.
Author Manuscripts
Author manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and accepted by a journal to be published but aren't in the publisher's formatting. Below is an example of what an author manuscript may look like.
Published Articles
Published articles have been peer-reviewed, accepted by a journal and are published using the journal's formatting.