Open Access : Open Access resources
Introduction to open access publishing and how to find open access resources
Internal Links
Further information on Library web pages
External links
- Open Access Scholarly Information SourcebookAn authoritative source with practical steps for implementing OA
- Open Access DirectoryWiki with simple factual lists about OA
Search BASE for open access documents
BASE (Bielefeld University Search Engine) for academic open access web resources, indexing over 340 million documents. Try this search to explore some OA material now!
Search CORE
Search the CORE database, currently with over 275 million indexed articles with over 11 million full texts
Open Access journals
Just a small sample of open access publishers and journals.
- BioMed Central (part of Springer Nature)Several hundred open access, online, peer-reviewed journals.
- Public Library of Science (PLOS)A non-profit publisher of peer-reviewed journals including PLOS ONE and PLOS Biology.
- Wiley Open Access journalsMany OA journals across biological, chemical and health sciences, including Ecology and Evolution.
- Open Humanities PressPeer-reviewed OA books and journals in the humanities.
- Co-Action Publishing (now part of Taylor & Francis)Around 30 OA titles including Polar Research.
- Nucleic Acids ResearchPublished by Oxford University Press, OA since 2005.
- SAGE OpenOA articles in social sciences.
- Open BiologyPublished by the Royal Society.
- eLIFEMajor new OA journal launched end 2012.
- PeerJOA journal for Biology and Medicine using a new model of author membership
- Open Library of HumanitiesA vision for a new 'OA future' for the humanities, aiming to launch a 'PLOS-style' journal.
Find e-theses
Many institutions now provide archives of electronic theses, and a large number are open access.
- Searching for theses from other institutionsLibrary web page for help with finding UK and international theses.
- British Library EThOSContains over 600,000 e-theses from UK institutions.
- DART-Europe E-theses portalContains over 1, 376, 477 open access research theses from European countries.
- PQDT OpenOpen access dissertations and theses, primarily from universities in the US.
Find open access publications
You can find open access publications direct from publishers in open access journals, through directories of open access content, and in archives and repositories.
Use the links below to find open access scholarly publications from a wide range of sources.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)DOAJ is a service that provides access to quality controlled Open Access Journals. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use an appropriate quality control system, and it will not be limited to particular languages or subject areas. The aim of the Directory is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. Indexes over 8,800 journals and contains over 1 million searchable articles .
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) This link opens in a new windowThe primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Contains over 1,300 peer reviewed books from 46 publishers.
- OAIsterOAIster is a union catalog of millions of records, representing free digital resources from over 1,000 open access collections worldwide. Most records are 'harvested' from archives and repositories via the 'Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting' (OAI-PMH)
- OpenDOAR searchThe Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each repository has been visited by project staff to give a quality-controlled list of repositories. The OpenDOAR search lets you search the contents of over 2,000 repositories listed in OpenDOAR for freely available academic research information.
- Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)The aim of ROAR is to promote the development of open access by providing timely information about the growth and status of repositories throughout the world. Like OpenDOAR, ROAR has an option to search for a particular repository, or for open access content (http://roar.eprints.org/content.html)
- Digital Commons NetworkThe Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. This portal provides access to to content produced and stored using bepress’s widely used Digital Commons publishing and institutional repository platform. the interface allows you to explore by subject area.
Subject and institutional repositories
Individual repositories provide open access content for specific subject areas or from institutions and research organisations.
- St Andrews Research RepositorySt Andrews Research Repository is an open access digital repository for the University's research outputs and scholarly content. The repository contains over 27,000 items including e-theses, research publications, ebooks, reports and digitised material from the Libraries & Museums' University Collections.
- Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC)Europe PMC offers free access to biomedical literature resources including over 2.6 million open access articles. It also indexes millions of abstracts and allows users to discover related content.
- arXiv.org This link opens in a new windowOpen access to over 800,000 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics. ArXiv is operated by Cornell University. Submissions are reviewed by expert moderators to verify that they follow accepted standards of scholarly communication.
- Research Papers in Economics (RePEc)RePEc is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 75 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in Economics and related sciences. It contains over 1.2 million research items including working papers and journal articles. Search for all RePEc contents at IDEAS (http://ideas.repec.org/)
- Social Science Research Network (SSRN)SSRN is devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences and humanities. SSRN is made up of specialised research networks including Classics, Philosophy and Political Science Networks. It provides access to over 380,000 full text documents through the SSRN eLibrary (http://papers.ssrn.com/)
Open access for authors
Got a question?
Email: Open Access support
Here are some useful resources for authors who wish to make their work open access:
- Adding accepted author manuscripts to PureInformation about adding full text to our repository via Pure, the University's Research Information System
- Open access agreements and partnershipsThe University of St Andrews has arranged various agreements to support open access publishing. These have been implemented based on national negotiations, recommendations and consultation with academic staff, or where they represent good value and efficient use of funds.
- Research outputs and open accessAdvice and support (Library web pages)
- SHERPA/RoMEOA searchable database of publisher's policies regarding the self-archiving of journal articles in OA repositories.
- Wellcome Trust open access policy guidanceHow to meet Wellcome Trust's Open Access requirements
- UKRI open access policy and FAQsThe new UKRI policy was announced in August 2021 and replaces the previous 2013 policy. The policy relates to:
articles submitted after 1 April 2022
long-form works published after 1 January 2024.