Macdonald-Kelce Library: Databases: Trials, Access Issues, New Acquisitions: Open Access Databases

What are open access databases?

A large number of research institutions, academic institutions, and government agencies around the world create databases that contain articles, documents and datasets on nearly every conceivable academic field. Many of these databases are available free on the World Wide Web through individual portals or websites, or can become part of a library-provided discovery service such as ours, Spartan Search. Some of these databases are discoverable in Spartan Search, but others are not, or they provide more robust search features outside of Spartan Search.

If you are interested in seeing a classified and categorized collection of linked Open Access Databases which you can access from a single portal, go to Listing of Open Access DataBases (LOADB).

Open Access Databases in Spartan Search

When you conduct a search in Spartan Search, you will be able to discover content that is available from these databases. Do not assume that all of the content contained in these databases is 100% discoverable in Spartan Search, and that sometimes by searching the open access database independently of Spartan Search is the best way to assure that you have made a comprehensive, exhaustive search of the content available in that database (see list of Open Access Databases with robust search parameters to the right of this list).

Biodiversity Heritage Library
Makes available biodiversity literature and a great deal of primary resources contained in digital repositories.
BioMed Central (BMC) Open Access
Contains peer-reviewed journals in the fields of science, technology, engineering and medicine.
BioOne Open Access Titles
Contains peer-reviewed literature in the areas of biology, ecology, and the environmental sciences.
Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library
The Caribbean Newspaper Digital Collection is within the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), a cooperative digital library for newspapers resources from the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean.
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It provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean newspapers, gazettes, and other research materials on newsprint currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections. dLOC continues to add historical and current newspapers through ongoing digitization and born-digital curation, expanding the geographic, temporal, political and linguistic variety of the newspapers.
Catalog of Digital Historical Newspapers
Provides access to online digitized historical newspaper content from newspapers published in the United States and the Caribbean.
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It currently (2020) links to over 1,500 full-text newspaper titles, with a goal to include links to as many US and Caribbean newspapers with archival digital content as possible.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, this database provides access to America's historic newspapers from 1789-1963 ...
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as well as to the U.S. Newspaper Directory in order to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Cornell University Library
Cornell University Library contains over digitized 75,000 books on virtually every topic. All books are public domain (published before 1923).
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
The directory is open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access, provided that these publications are in Open Access and meet academic standards.
Directory of Open Access Journals
A community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Early English Books (EEBO)
The corpus of books in this database trace the history of English thought from the first book printed in English in 1475 through to 1700. The books include works of literature, philosophy, politics, religion, geography, history, politics, mathematics, music, the practical arts, natural science, and all other areas of human endeavor.
EBSCO Essentials
Thousands of OA articles from EBSCO
Free Medical Journals
A large body of important medical journals available online, free and in full-text.
Google Books - Getty Publication Virtual Library
Covers a wide variety of books in the fields of art, photography, archaeology, architecture, conservation, and the humanities for both the general public and specialists.
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Publications include illustrated works on artists and art history, exhibition catalogs, works on cultural history, research on the conservation of materials and archaeological sites, scholarly monographs, critical editions of translated works, comprehensive studies of the Getty's collections, and educational books on art to interest children of all ages.
Google Magazines
Provides full text magazines from Google, including titles like Life, which are no longer published and Popular Science, which have been around for over 100 years and continue to be published.
Google News Archive
Provides free access to scanned archives of newspapers and links to other newspaper archives on the web, both free and paid.
Hindawi Publishing Open Access
Provides a list of open access journals in the fields of biology, medicine, case reports, physical science ...
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social science, education, math, engineering and computer science. Should not be searched for content, but for opportunities to publish in an open access, peered reviewed journal.
Home Economics Journals
A complete bibliography of books and journals in home economics archive: research, tradition, and history, supported by Cornell University.
IOP Publishing Free Content
Designed to make it easy for researchers to discover and access scientific, technical and medical content and manage their research information.
Jan Szczepanski's Lists of OA-Journals. Historic Titles
Scribd is a platform designed to publish any kind of written content on the web. It offers a list of historical open access journals.
Making of America Books (Univ. of Michigan)
A digital library of primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
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The collection, affiliated with the University of Michigan, is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The book collection currently contains books with 19th century imprints.
Making of America Journals (Univ. of Michigan)
A digital library of primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction.
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The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology.
NCBI Bookshelf (National Library of Medicine)
Provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare.
Open Library of Humanities
This publishing platform supports academic journals from across the humanities disciplines, as well as hosting its own multidisciplinary journal.
PLoS (Public Library of Science)
PLOS is a nonprofit, Open Access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.
Project Gutenberg Online Catalog
The oldest digital library, it creates and disseminates public domain electronic text ...
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(i.e., The copyright on any book published before 1923 expired no more than 75 years later, at which point it enters the public domain).

PubMed This link opens in a new window
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Learn more about PubMed. Access to the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) premier bibliographic database, Medline, containing citations and abstracts to worldwide medical literature dating back to the 1950s.
PubMed does not include full text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources such as PubMed Central (PMC), a component of PubMed.

ScienceDirect Open Access titles
Peer-reviewed, full-text scholarly articles, books and book chapters on scientific, technical, and medical literature.
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Topics include chemical engineering, chemistry, computer science, earth and planetary sciences, energy, engineering, materials sciences, mathematics, physics, and astronomy.
Sciendo
De Gruyter publishes journals, books, conference proceedings and a variety of other publications – for academics and professionals, many of which are open access.
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Publications
Springerlink Fully Open Access Journals
Taylor & Francis eBooks Open Access
Wiley Free Content
Women Working, 1800-1930 - Harvard University
The collection is an exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression.
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Working conditions, workplace regulations, home life, costs of living, commerce, recreation, health and hygiene, and social issues are among the issues documented. It is comprised of books and trade catalogs, archives and manuscript items, and photographs.

ERIC
ERIC provides access to bibliographic records of journal and non-journal literature on education from 1966 to the present.
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It is an internet-based digital library of education research and information sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education.
National Criminal Justice Reference Service Offers justice and drug-related information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide.