Open Access
EBOOKS
Google Books gives access to millions of scanned books, usually only their fragments, not full text. It searches inside books; therefore, it is good for researching topics normally covered on only few pages in large volumes. Some books are better and more appropriate for academic study than others, therefore always check:
Who are the authors: are they researchers or university tutors or experienced professionals/practitioners? Does the book have endorsements from other researchers and university tutors?
For whom it is written: various books are written for different audiences, e.g. general public, undergraduate or postgraduate students, specialists in a particular subject. Choose those that you can understand and leave aside those that don’t make sense or seem too basic.
Who is the publisher: have they published other academic titles? If the publisher is obscure or unknown to you, check again that the author is a reputable researcher and that the book has endorsements from other researchers and academic institutions.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
Search for books on your subject
Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)
Includes academic journal articles and books; click on Advanced Search; filter your search by content type, subject, country and region.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH
Search engines
BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): a search engine operated by Bielefeld University Library. More than half of the academic resources provided are open access.
Plug-ins
Unpaywall integrates with a Chrome browser and compares the browsed pages with its database of scholarly publications on open access.
Interdisciplinary repositories and collections
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Search for journals and articles on your subject
Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)
Includes academic journal articles and books; click on Advanced Search; filter your search by content type, subject, country and region
Service providing full-text ejournals; choose your subject
Connecting Repositories (CORE)
Aggregation of content from open access repositories and journals
A databases of doctoral theses maintained by the British Library
Collection of open access research papers
Search engine by the USA federal government
Economics, business and finance
Service of the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) Leibniz Information Centre for Economics containing journals, working papers and conferences in Business and Economics. Select Open Access only.
Journals on economics, financial economics, resource economics, organisational behaviour and statistics.
Computer science
Archive of journal articles
A free scientific literature digital library of over 300,000 computer science articles on the web. Users can search for citations or documents that are web based.
OSTI - Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) makes discoverable over 70 years of research results from DOE and its predecessor agencies. Research results include journal articles/accepted manuscripts and related metadata; technical reports; scientific research datasets and collections; scientific software; patents; conference and workshop papers; books and theses; and multimedia.
DATA AND STATISTICS
Accounting and finance open access data sources (University of Bristol)
Accounting and finance open access academic sources (University of Bristol)
See the CBL recommended websites
Free access to global development data
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Economic and financial data and statistics; includes World Economic Outlook (WEO) databases
Business, economic and financial information
Search engines, UK, EU and international data, datasets and databases (company, country and market data, statistics, business case studies, business and consumer surveys, academic journal articles on business)
Food and Agriculture Organization corporate statistical database (FAOSTAT)
Free access to food and agriculture data
British Chambers of Commerce (BCC)
Economic data (surveys, reviews and forecasts)
Open data published by EU institutions and bodies; click on the Data tab; search datasets by subject, group and publisher
Data published by central government, local authorities and public bodies; select your topic; filter by publisher and format
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
The World Factbook provides country profiles and comparisons
Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
Economic data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (publications, working papers, time series); contains the RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) IDEAS database of economic research
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
Freely available European standards
Office National Statistics (ONS)
This nationally-recognised body specialises in collecting, analysing and disseminating statistics about the UK's economy, society and population.
PARTNER UNIVERSITIES' OPEN ACCESS LISTS
Ulster University: Finding OA sources | Business Statistics