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21 Legit Research Databases for Free Journal Articles in 2024

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Written by  Scribendi

Has this ever happened to you? While looking for websites for research, you come across a research paper site that claims to connect academics to a peer-reviewed article database for free.

Intrigued, you search for keywords related to your topic, only to discover that you must pay a hefty subscription fee to access the service. After the umpteenth time being duped, you begin to wonder if there's even such a thing as free journal articles.

Subscription fees and paywalls are often the bane of students and academics, especially those at small institutions who don't provide access to many free article directories and repositories.

Whether you're working on an undergraduate paper, a PhD dissertation, or a medical research study, we want to help you find tools to locate and access the information you need to produce well-researched, compelling, and innovative work.

Below, we discuss why peer-reviewed articles are superior and list out the best free article databases to use in 2024.

Download Our Free Research Database Roundup PDF

Why peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles are more authoritative.

Determining what sources are reliable can be challenging. Peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles are the gold standard in academic research. Reputable academic journals have a rigorous peer-review process.

The peer review process provides accountability to the academic community, as well as to the content of the article. The peer review process involves qualified experts in a specific (often very specific) field performing a review of an article's methods and findings to determine things like quality and credibility.

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in peer-reviewed article databases and research databases, and if you know that a database of journals is reliable, that can offer reassurances about the reliability of a free article. Peer review is often double blind, meaning that the author removes all identifying information and, likewise, does not know the identity of the reviewers. This helps reviewers maintain objectivity and impartiality so as to judge an article based on its merit.

Where to Find Peer-Reviewed Articles

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in a variety of research databases. Below is a list of some of the major databases you can use to find peer-reviewed articles and other sources in disciplines spanning the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

What Are Open Access Journals?

An open access (OA) journal is a journal whose content can be accessed without payment. This provides scholars, students, and researchers with free journal articles. OA journals use alternate methods of funding to cover publication costs so that articles can be published without having to pass those publication costs on to the reader.

Some of these funding models include standard funding methods like advertising, public funding, and author payment models, where the author pays a fee in order to publish in the journal. There are OA journals that have non-peer-reviewed academic content, as well as journals that focus on dissertations, theses, and papers from conferences, but the main focus of OA is peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles.

The internet has certainly made it easier to access research articles and other scholarly publications without needing access to a university library, and OA takes another step in that direction by removing financial barriers to academic content.

Choosing Wisely

Features of legitimate oa journals.

 There are things to look out for when trying to decide if a free publication journal is legitimate:

Mission statement —The mission statement for an OA journal should be available on their website.

Publication history —Is the journal well established? How long has it been available?

Editorial board —Who are the members of the editorial board, and what are their credentials?

Indexing —Can the journal be found in a reliable database?

Peer review —What is the peer review process? Does the journal allow enough time in the process for a reliable assessment of quality?

Impact factor —What is the average number of times the journal is cited over a two-year period?

Features of Illegitimate OA Journals

There are predatory publications that take advantage of the OA format, and they are something to be wary of. Here are some things to look out for:

Contact information —Is contact information provided? Can it be verified?

Turnaround —If the journal makes dubious claims about the amount of time from submission to publication, it is likely unreliable.

Editorial board —Much like determining legitimacy, looking at the editorial board and their credentials can help determine illegitimacy.

Indexing —Can the journal be found in any scholarly databases?

Peer review —Is there a statement about the peer review process? Does it fit what you know about peer review?

How to Find Scholarly Articles

Identify keywords.

Keywords are included in an article by the author. Keywords are an excellent way to find content relevant to your research topic or area of interest. In academic searches, much like you would on a search engine, you can use keywords to navigate through what is available to find exactly what you're looking for.

Authors provide keywords that will help you easily find their article when researching a related topic, often including general terms to accommodate broader searches, as well as some more specific terms for those with a narrower scope. Keywords can be used individually or in combination to refine your scholarly article search.

Narrow Down Results

Sometimes, search results can be overwhelming, and searching for free articles on a journal database is no exception, but there are multiple ways to narrow down your results. A good place to start is discipline.

What category does your topic fall into (psychology, architecture, machine learning, etc.)? You can also narrow down your search with a year range if you're looking for articles that are more recent.

A Boolean search can be incredibly helpful. This entails including terms like AND between two keywords in your search if you need both keywords to be in your results (or, if you are looking to exclude certain keywords, to exclude these words from the results).

Consider Different Avenues

If you're not having luck using keywords in your search for free articles, you may still be able to find what you're looking for by changing your tactics. Casting a wider net sometimes yields positive results, so it may be helpful to try searching by subject if keywords aren't getting you anywhere.

You can search for a specific publisher to see if they have OA publications in the academic journal database. And, if you know more precisely what you're looking for, you can search for the title of the article or the author's name.

Determining the Credibility of Scholarly Sources

Ensuring that sources are both credible and reliable is crucial to academic research. Use these strategies to help evaluate the usefulness of scholarly sources:

• Peer Review : Look for articles that have undergone a rigorous peer-review process. Peer-reviewed articles are typically vetted by experts in the field, ensuring the accuracy of the research findings.

Tip: To determine whether an article has undergone rigorous peer review, review the journal's editorial policies, which are often available on the journal's website. Look for information about the peer-review process, including the criteria for selecting reviewers, the process for handling conflicts of interest, and any transparency measures in place.

• Publisher Reputation : Consider the reputation of the publisher. Established publishers, such as well-known academic journals, are more likely to adhere to high editorial standards and publishing ethics.
• Author Credentials : Evaluate the credentials and expertise of the authors. Check their affiliations, academic credentials, and past publications to assess their authority in the field.
• Citations and References : Examine the citations and references provided in the article. A well-researched article will cite credible sources to support its arguments and findings. Verify the accuracy of the cited sources and ensure they are from reputable sources.
• Publication Date : Consider the publication date of the article. While older articles may still be relevant, particularly in certain fields, it is best to prioritize recent publications for up-to-date research and findings.
• Journal Impact Factor : Assess the journal's impact factor or other metrics that indicate its influence and reputation within the academic community. Higher impact factor journals are generally considered more prestigious and reliable. 

Tip: Journal Citation Reports (JCR), produced by Clarivate Analytics, is a widely used source for impact factor data. You can access JCR through academic libraries or directly from the Clarivate Analytics website if you have a subscription.

• Peer Recommendations : Seek recommendations from peers, mentors, or professors in your field. They can provide valuable insights and guidance on reputable sources and journals within your area of study.
• Cross-Verification : Cross-verify the information presented in the article with other credible sources. Compare findings, methodologies, and conclusions with similar studies to ensure consistency and reliability.

By employing these strategies, researchers can confidently evaluate the credibility and reliability of scholarly sources, ensuring the integrity of their research contributions in an ever-evolving landscape.

The Top 21 Free Online Journal and Research Databases

Navigating OA journals, research article databases, and academic websites trying to find high-quality sources for your research can really make your head spin. What constitutes a reliable database? What is a useful resource for your discipline and research topic? How can you find and access full-text, peer-reviewed articles?

Fortunately, we're here to help. Having covered some of the ins and outs of peer review, OA journals, and how to search for articles, we have compiled a list of the top 21 free online journals and the best research databases. This list of databases is a great resource to help you navigate the wide world of academic research.

These databases provide a variety of free sources, from abstracts and citations to full-text, peer-reviewed OA journals. With databases covering specific areas of research and interdisciplinary databases that provide a variety of material, these are some of our favorite free databases, and they're totally legit!

CORE is a multidisciplinary aggregator of OA research. CORE has the largest collection of OA articles available. It allows users to search more than 219 million OA articles. While most of these link to the full-text article on the original publisher's site, or to a PDF available for download, five million records are hosted directly on CORE.

CORE's mission statement is a simple and straightforward commitment to offering OA articles to anyone, anywhere in the world. They also host communities that are available for researchers to join and an ambassador community to enhance their services globally. In addition to a straightforward keyword search, CORE offers advanced search options to filter results by publication type, year, language, journal, repository, and author.

CORE's user interface is easy to use and navigate. Search results can be sorted based on relevance or recency, and you can search for relevant content directly from the results screen.

Collection : 219,537,133 OA articles

Other Services : Additional services are available from CORE, with extras that are geared toward researchers, repositories, and businesses. There are tools for accessing raw data, including an API that provides direct access to data, datasets that are available for download, and FastSync for syncing data content from the CORE database.

CORE has a recommender plug-in that suggests relevant OA content in the database while conducting a search and a discovery feature that helps you discover OA versions of paywalled articles. Other features include tools for managing content, such as a dashboard for managing repository output and the Repository Edition service to enhance discoverability.

Good Source of Peer-Reviewed Articles : Yes

Advanced Search Options : Language, author, journal, publisher, repository, DOI, year

2. ScienceOpen

Functioning as a research and publishing network, ScienceOpen offers OA to more than 74 million articles in all areas of science. Although you do need to register to view the full text of articles, registration is free. The advanced search function is highly detailed, allowing you to find exactly the research you're looking for.

The Berlin- and Boston-based company was founded in 2013 to "facilitate open and public communications between academics and to allow ideas to be judged on their merit, regardless of where they come from." Search results can be exported for easy integration with reference management systems.

You can also bookmark articles for later research. There are extensive networking options, including your Science Open profile, a forum for interacting with other researchers, the ability to track your usage and citations, and an interactive bibliography. Users have the ability to review articles and provide their knowledge and insight within the community.

Collection : 74,560,631

Other Services : None

Advanced Search Options :   Content type, source, author, journal, discipline

3. Directory of Open Access Journals

A multidisciplinary, community-curated directory, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) gives researchers access to high-quality peer-reviewed journals. It has archived more than two million articles from 17,193 journals, allowing you to either browse by subject or search by keyword.

The site was launched in 2003 with the aim of increasing the visibility of OA scholarly journals online. Content on the site covers subjects from science, to law, to fine arts, and everything in between. DOAJ has a commitment to "increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, OA scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language."

Information about the journal is available with each search result. Abstracts are also available in a collapsible format directly from the search screen. The scholarly article website is somewhat simple, but it is easy to navigate. There are 16 principles of transparency and best practices in scholarly publishing that clearly outline DOAJ policies and standards.

Collection : 6,817,242

Advanced Search Options :   Subject, journal, year

4. Education Resources Information Center

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) of the Institution of Education Sciences allows you to search by topic for material related to the field of education. Links lead to other sites, where you may have to purchase the information, but you can search for full-text articles only. You can also search only peer-reviewed sources.

The service primarily indexes journals, gray literature (such as technical reports, white papers, and government documents), and books. All sources of material on ERIC go through a formal review process prior to being indexed. ERIC's selection policy is available as a PDF on their website.

The ERIC website has an extensive FAQ section to address user questions. This includes categories like general questions, peer review, and ERIC content. There are also tips for advanced searches, as well as general guidance on the best way to search the database. ERIC is an excellent database for content specific to education.

Collection : 1,292,897

Advanced Search Options : Boolean

5. arXiv e-Print Archive

The arXiv e-Print Archive is run by Cornell University Library and curated by volunteer moderators, and it now offers OA to more than one million e-prints.

There are advisory committees for all eight subjects available on the database. With a stated commitment to an "emphasis on openness, collaboration, and scholarship," the arXiv e-Print Archive is an excellent STEM resource.

The interface is not as user-friendly as some of the other databases available, and the website hosts a blog to provide news and updates, but it is otherwise a straightforward math and science resource. There are simple and advanced search options, and, in addition to conducting searches for specific topics and articles, users can browse content by subject. The arXiv e-Print Archive clearly states that they do not peer review the e-prints in the database.

Collection : 1,983,891

Good Source of Peer-Reviewed Articles : No

Advanced Search Options :   Subject, date, title, author, abstract, DOI

6. Social Science Research Network

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a collection of papers from the social sciences community. It is a highly interdisciplinary platform used to search for scholarly articles related to 67 social science topics. SSRN has a variety of research networks for the various topics available through the free scholarly database.

The site offers more than 700,000 abstracts and more than 600,000 full-text papers. There is not yet a specific option to search for only full-text articles, but, because most of the papers on the site are free access, it's not often that you encounter a paywall. There is currently no option to search for only peer-reviewed articles.

You must become a member to use the services, but registration is free and enables you to interact with other scholars around the world. SSRN is "passionately committed to increasing inclusion, diversity and equity in scholarly research," and they encourage and discuss the use of inclusive language in scholarship whenever possible.

Collection : 1,058,739 abstracts; 915,452 articles

Advanced Search Options : Term, author, date, network

7. Public Library of Science

Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a big player in the world of OA science. Publishing 12 OA journals, the nonprofit organization is committed to facilitating openness in academic research. According to the site, "all PLOS content is at the highest possible level of OA, meaning that scientific articles are immediately and freely available to anyone, anywhere."

PLOS outlines four fundamental goals that guide the organization: break boundaries, empower researchers, redefine quality, and open science. All PLOS journals are peer-reviewed, and all 12 journals uphold rigorous ethical standards for research, publication, and scientific reporting.

PLOS does not offer advanced search options. Content is organized by topic into research communities that users can browse through, in addition to options to search for both articles and journals. The PLOS website also has resources for peer reviewers, including guidance on becoming a reviewer and on how to best participate in the peer review process.

Collection : 12 journals

Advanced Search Options : None

8. OpenDOAR

OpenDOAR, or the Directory of Open Access Repositories, is a comprehensive resource for finding free OA journals and articles. Using Google Custom Search, OpenDOAR combs through OA repositories around the world and returns relevant research in all disciplines.

The repositories it searches through are assessed and categorized by OpenDOAR staff to ensure they meet quality standards. Inclusion criteria for the database include requirements for OA content, global access, and categorically appropriate content, in addition to various other quality assurance measures. OpenDOAR has metadata, data, content, preservation, and submission policies for repositories, in addition to two OA policy statements regarding minimum and optimum recommendations.

This database allows users to browse and search repositories, which can then be selected, and articles and data can be accessed from the repository directly. As a repository database, much of the content on the site is geared toward the support of repositories and OA standards.

Collection : 5,768 repositories

Other Services : OpenDOAR offers a variety of additional services. Given the nature of the platform, services are primarily aimed at repositories and institutions, and there is a marked focus on OA in general. Sherpa services are OA archiving tools for authors and institutions.

They also offer various resources for OA support and compliance regarding standards and policies. The publication router matches publications and publishers with appropriate repositories.

There are also services and resources from JISC for repositories for cost management, discoverability, research impact, and interoperability, including ORCID consortium membership information. Additionally, a repository self-assessment tool is available for members.

Advanced Search Options :   Name, organization name, repository type, software name, content type, subject, country, region

9. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) is operated by the Bielefeld University Library in Germany, and it offers more than 240 million documents from more than 8,000 sources. Sixty percent of its content is OA, and you can filter your search accordingly.

BASE has rigorous inclusion requirements for content providers regarding quality and relevance, and they maintain a list of content providers for the sake of transparency, which can be easily found on their website. BASE has a fairly elegant interface. Search results can be organized by author, title, or date.

From the search results, items can be selected and exported, added to favorites, emailed, and searched in Google Scholar. There are basic and advanced search features, with the advanced search offering numerous options for refining search criteria. There is also a feature on the website that saves recent searches without additional steps from the user.

Collection : 276,019,066 documents; 9,286 content providers

Advanced Search Options :   Author, subject, year, content provider, language, document type, access, terms of reuse

10. Digital Library of the Commons Repository

Run by Indiana University, the Digital Library of the Commons (DLC) Repository is a multidisciplinary journal repository that allows users to access thousands of free and OA articles from around the world. You can browse by document type, date, author, title, and more or search for keywords relevant to your topic.

DCL also offers the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons, an image database, and a keyword thesaurus for enhanced search parameters. The repository includes books, book chapters, conference papers, journal articles, surveys, theses and dissertations, and working papers. DCL advanced search features drop-down menus of search types with built-in Boolean search options.

Searches can be sorted by relevance, title, date, or submission date in ascending or descending order. Abstracts are included in selected search results, with access to full texts available, and citations can be exported from the same page. Additionally, the image database search includes tips for better search results.

Collection : 10,784

Advanced Search Options :   Author, date, title, subject, sector, region, conference

11. CIA World Factbook

The CIA World Factbook is a little different from the other resources on this list in that it is not an online journal directory or repository. It is, however, a useful free online research database for academics in a variety of disciplines.

All the information is free to access, and it provides facts about every country in the world, which are organized by category and include information about history, geography, transportation, and much more. The World Factbook can be searched by country or region, and there is also information about the world's oceans.

This site contains resources related to the CIA as an organization rather than being a scientific journal database specifically. The site has a user interface that is easy to navigate. The site also provides a section for updates regarding changes to what information is available and how it is organized, making it easier to interact with the information you are searching for.

Collection : 266 countries

12. Paperity

Paperity boasts its status as the "first multidisciplinary aggregator of OA journals and papers." Their focus is on helping you avoid paywalls while connecting you to authoritative research. In addition to providing readers with easy access to thousands of journals, Paperity seeks to help authors reach their audiences and help journals increase their exposure to boost readership.

Paperity has journal articles for every discipline, and the database offers more than a dozen advanced search options, including the length of the paper and the number of authors. There is even an option to include, exclude, or exclusively search gray papers.

Paperity is available for mobile, with both a mobile site and the Paperity Reader, an app that is available for both Android and Apple users. The database is also available on social media. You can interact with Paperity via Twitter and Facebook, and links to their social media are available on their homepage, including their Twitter feed.

Collection : 8,837,396

Advanced Search Options : Title, abstract, journal title, journal ISSN, publisher, year of publication, number of characters, number of authors, DOI, author, affiliation, language, country, region, continent, gray papers

13. dblp Computer Science Bibliography

The dblp Computer Science Bibliography is an online index of major computer science publications. dblp was founded in 1993, though until 2010 it was a university-specific database at the University of Trier in Germany. It is currently maintained by the Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics.

Although it provides access to both OA articles and those behind a paywall, you can limit your search to only OA articles. The site indexes more than three million publications, making it an invaluable resource in the world of computer science. dblp entries are color-coded based on the type of item.

dblp has an extensive FAQ section, so questions that might arise about topics like the database itself, navigating the website, or the data on dblp, in addition to several other topics, are likely to be answered. The website also hosts a blog and has a section devoted to website statistics.

Collection : 5,884,702

14. EconBiz

EconBiz is a great resource for economic and business studies. A service of the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, it offers access to full texts online, with the option of searching for OA material only. Their literature search is performed across multiple international databases.

EconBiz has an incredibly useful research skills section, with resources such as Guided Walk, a service to help students and researchers navigate searches, evaluate sources, and correctly cite references; the Research Guide EconDesk, a help desk to answer specific questions and provide advice to aid in literature searches; and the Academic Career Kit for what they refer to as Early Career Researchers.

Other helpful resources include personal literature lists, a calendar of events for relevant calls for papers, conferences, and workshops, and an economics terminology thesaurus to help in finding keywords for searches. To stay up-to-date with EconBiz, you can sign up for their newsletter.

Collection : 1,075,219

Advanced Search Options :   Title, subject, author, institution, ISBN/ISSN, journal, publisher, language, OA only

15. BioMed Central

BioMed Central provides OA research from more than 300 peer-reviewed journals. While originally focused on resources related to the physical sciences, math, and engineering, BioMed Central has branched out to include journals that cover a broader range of disciplines, with the aim of providing a single platform that provides OA articles for a variety of research needs. You can browse these journals by subject or title, or you can search all articles for your required keyword.

BioMed Central has a commitment to peer-reviewed sources and to the peer review process itself, continually seeking to help and improve the peer review process. They're "committed to maintaining high standards through full and stringent peer review."

Additionally, the website includes resources to assist and support editors as part of their commitment to providing high-quality, peer-reviewed OA articles.

Collection : 507,212

Other Services : BMC administers the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) registry. While initially designed for registering clinical trials, since its creation in 2000, the registry has broadened its scope to include other health studies as well.

The registry is recognized by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO), and it meets the requirements established by the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

The study records included in the registry are all searchable and free to access. The ISRCTN registry "supports transparency in clinical research, helps reduce selective reporting of results and ensures an unbiased and complete evidence base."

Advanced Search Options :   Author, title, journal, list

A multidisciplinary search engine, JURN provides links to various scholarly websites, articles, and journals that are free to access or OA. Covering the fields of the arts, humanities, business, law, nature, science, and medicine, JURN has indexed almost 5,000 repositories to help you find exactly what you're looking for.

Search features are enhanced by Google, but searches are filtered through their index of repositories. JURN seeks to reach a wide audience, with their search engine tailored to researchers from "university lecturers and students seeking a strong search tool for OA content" and "advanced and ambitious students, age 14-18" to "amateur historians and biographers" and "unemployed and retired lecturers."

That being said, JURN is very upfront about its limitations. They admit to not being a good resource for educational studies, social studies, or psychology, and conference archives are generally not included due to frequently unstable URLs.

Collection : 5,064 indexed journals

Other Services : JURN has a browser add-on called UserScript. This add-on allows users to integrate the JURN database directly into Google Search. When performing a search through Google, the add-on creates a link that sends the search directly to JURN CSE. JURN CSE is a search service that is hosted by Google.

Clicking the link from the Google Search bar will run your search through the JURN database from the Google homepage. There is also an interface for a DuckDuckGo search box; while this search engine has an emphasis on user privacy, for smaller sites that may be indexed by JURN, DuckDuckGo may not provide the same depth of results.

Advanced Search Options :   Google search modifiers

Dryad is a digital repository of curated, OA scientific research data. Launched in 2009, it is run by a not-for-profit membership organization, with a community of institutional and publisher members for whom their services have been designed. Members include institutions such as Stanford, UCLA, and Yale, as well as publishers like Oxford University Press and Wiley.

Dryad aims to "promote a world where research data is openly available, integrated with the scholarly literature, and routinely reused to create knowledge." It is free to access for the search and discovery of data. Their user experience is geared toward easy self-depositing, supports Creative Commons licensing, and provides DOIs for all their content.

Note that there is a publishing charge associated if you wish to publish your data in Dryad.  When searching datasets, they are accompanied by author information and abstracts for the associated studies, and citation information is provided for easy attribution.

Collection : 44,458

Advanced Search Options : No

Run by the British Library, the E-Theses Online Service (EThOS) allows you to search over 500,000 doctoral theses in a variety of disciplines. All of the doctoral theses available on EThOS have been awarded by higher education institutions in the United Kingdom.

Although some full texts are behind paywalls, you can limit your search to items available for immediate download, either directly through EThOS or through an institution's website. More than half of the records in the database provide access to full-text theses.

EThOS notes that they do not hold all records for all institutions, but they strive to index as many doctoral theses as possible, and the database is constantly expanding, with approximately 3,000 new records added and 2,000 new full-text theses available every month. The availability of full-text theses is dependent on multiple factors, including their availability in the institutional repository and the level of repository development.

Collection : 500,000+

Advanced Search Options : Abstract, author's first name, author's last name, awarding body, current institution, EThOS ID, year, language, qualifications, research supervisor, sponsor/funder, keyword, title

PubMed is a research platform well-known in the fields of science and medicine. It was created and developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It has been available since 1996 and offers access to "more than 33 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books."

While PubMed does not provide full-text articles directly, and many full-text articles may be behind paywalls or require subscriptions to access them, when articles are available from free sources, such as through PubMed Central (PMC), those links are provided with the citations and abstracts that PubMed does provide.

PMC, which was established in 2000 by the NLM, is a free full-text archive that includes more than 6,000,000 records. PubMed records link directly to corresponding PMC results. PMC content is provided by publishers and other content owners, digitization projects, and authors directly.

Collection : 33,000,000+

Advanced Search Options : Author's first name, author's last name, identifier, corporation, date completed, date created, date entered, date modified, date published, MeSH, book, conflict of interest statement, EC/RN number, editor, filter, grant number, page number, pharmacological action, volume, publication type, publisher, secondary source ID, text, title, abstract, transliterated title

20. Semantic Scholar

A unique and easy-to-use resource, Semantic Scholar defines itself not just as a research database but also as a "search and discovery tool." Semantic Scholar harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to efficiently sort through millions of science-related papers based on your search terms.

Through this singular application of machine learning, Semantic Scholar expands search results to include topic overviews based on your search terms, with the option to create an alert for or further explore the topic. It also provides links to related topics.

In addition, search results produce "TLDR" summaries in order to provide concise overviews of articles and enhance your research by helping you to navigate quickly and easily through the available literature to find the most relevant information. According to the site, although some articles are behind paywalls, "the data [they] have for those articles is limited," so you can expect to receive mostly full-text results.

Collection : 203,379,033

Other Services : Semantic Scholar supports multiple popular browsers. Content can be accessed through both mobile and desktop versions of Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera.

Additionally, Semantic Scholar provides browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox, so AI-powered scholarly search results are never more than a click away. The mobile interface includes an option for Semantic Swipe, a new way of interacting with your research results.

There are also beta features that can be accessed as part of the Beta Program, which will provide you with features that are being actively developed and require user feedback for further improvement.

Advanced Search Options : Field of study, date range, publication type, author, journal, conference, PDF

Zenodo, powered by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), was launched in 2013. Taking its name from Zenodotus, the first librarian of the ancient library of Alexandria, Zenodo is a tool "built and developed by researchers, to ensure that everyone can join in open science." Zenodo accepts all research from every discipline in any file format.

However, Zenodo also curates uploads and promotes peer-reviewed material that is available through OA. A DOI is assigned to everything that is uploaded to Zenodo, making research easily findable and citable. You can sort by keyword, title, journal, and more and download OA documents directly from the site.

While there are closed access and restricted access items in the database, the vast majority of research is OA material. Search results can be filtered by access type, making it easy to view the free articles available in the database.

Collection : 2,220,000+

Advanced Search Options : Access, file type, keywords

Check out our roundup of free research databases as a handy one-page PDF.

How to find peer-reviewed articles.

There are a lot of free scholarly articles available from various sources. The internet is a big place. So how do you go about finding peer-reviewed articles when conducting your research? It's important to make sure you are using reputable sources.

The first source of the article is the person or people who wrote it. Checking out the author can give you some initial insight into how much you can trust what you’re reading. Looking into the publication information of your sources can also indicate whether the article is reliable.

Aspects of the article, such as subject and audience, tone, and format, are other things you can look at when evaluating whether the article you're using is valid, reputable, peer-reviewed material. So, let's break that down into various components so you can assess your research to ensure that you're using quality articles and conducting solid research.

Check the Author

Peer-reviewed articles are written by experts or scholars with experience in the field or discipline they're writing about. The research in a peer-reviewed article has to pass a rigorous evaluation process, so it's a foregone conclusion that the author(s) of a peer-reviewed article should have experience or training related to that research.

When evaluating an article, take a look at the author's information. What credentials does the author have to indicate that their research has scholarly weight behind it? Finding out what type of degree the author has—and what that degree is in—can provide insight into what kind of authority the author is on the subject.

Something else that might lend credence to the author's scholarly role is their professional affiliation. A look at what organization or institution they are affiliated with can tell you a lot about their experience or expertise. Where were they trained, and who is verifying their research?

Identify Subject and Audience

The ultimate goal of a study is to answer a question. Scholarly articles are also written for scholarly audiences, especially articles that have gone through the peer review process. This means that the author is trying to reach experts, researchers, academics, and students in the field or topic the research is based on.

Think about the question the author is trying to answer by conducting this research, why, and for whom. What is the subject of the article? What question has it set out to answer? What is the purpose of finding the information? Is the purpose of the article of importance to other scholars? Is it original content?

Research should also be approached analytically. Is the methodology sound? Is the author using an analytical approach to evaluate the data that they have obtained? Are the conclusions they've reached substantiated by their data and analysis? Answering these questions can reveal a lot about the article's validity.

Format Matters

Reliable articles from peer-reviewed sources have certain format elements to be aware of. The first is an abstract. An abstract is a short summary or overview of the article. Does the article have an abstract? It's unlikely that you're reading a peer-reviewed article if it doesn't. Peer-reviewed journals will also have a word count range. If an article seems far too short or incredibly long, that may be reason to doubt it.

Another feature of reliable articles is the sections the information is divided into. Peer-reviewed research articles will have clear, concise sections that appropriately organize the information. This might include a literature review, methodology, results (in the case of research articles), and a conclusion.

One of the most important sections is the references or bibliography. This is where the researcher lists all the sources of their information. A peer-reviewed source will have a comprehensive reference section.

An article that has been written to reach an academic community will have an academic tone. The language that is used, and the way this language is used, is important to consider. If the article is riddled with grammatical errors, confusing syntax, and casual language, it almost definitely didn't make it through the peer review process.

Also consider the use of terminology. Every discipline is going to have standard terminology or jargon that can be used and understood by other academics in the discipline. The language in a peer-reviewed article is going to reflect that.

If the author is going out of their way to explain simple terms, or terms that are standard to the field or discipline, it's unlikely that the article has been peer reviewed, as this is something that the author would be asked to address during the review process.

Publication

The source of the article will be a very good indicator of the likelihood that it was peer reviewed. Where was the article published? Was it published alongside other academic articles in the same discipline? Is it a legitimate and reputable scholarly publication?

A trade publication or newspaper might be legitimate or reputable, but it is not a scholarly source, and it will not have been subject to the peer review process. Scholarly journals are the best resource for peer-reviewed articles, but it's important to remember that not all scholarly journals are peer reviewed.

It's helpful to look at a scholarly source's website, as peer-reviewed journals will have a clear indication of the peer review process. University libraries, institutional repositories, and reliable databases (and now you have a list of legit ones) can also help provide insight into whether an article comes from a peer-reviewed journal.

Common Research Mistakes to Avoid

Research is a lot of work. Even with high standards and good intentions, it's easy to make mistakes. Perhaps you searched for access to scientific journals for free and found the perfect peer-reviewed sources, but you forgot to document everything, and your references are a mess. Or, you only searched for free online articles and missed out on a ground-breaking study that was behind a paywall.

Whether your research is for a degree or to get published or to satisfy your own inquisitive nature, or all of the above, you want all that work to produce quality results. You want your research to be thorough and accurate.

To have any hope of contributing to the literature on your research topic, your results need to be high quality. You might not be able to avoid every potential mistake, but here are some that are both common and easy to avoid.

Sticking to One Source

One of the hallmarks of good research is a healthy reference section. Using a variety of sources gives you a better answer to your question. Even if all of the literature is in agreement, looking at various aspects of the topic may provide you with an entirely different picture than you would have if you looked at your research question from only one angle.

Not Documenting Every Fact

As you conduct your research, do yourself a favor and write everything down. Everything you include in your paper or article that you got from another source is going to need to be added to your references and cited.

It's important, especially if your aim is to conduct ethical, high-quality research, that all of your research has proper attribution. If you don't document as you go, you could end up making a lot of work for yourself if the information you don't write down is something that later, as you write your paper, you really need.

Using Outdated Materials

Academia is an ever-changing landscape. What was true in your academic discipline or area of research ten years ago may have since been disproven. If fifteen studies have come out since the article that you're using was published, it's more than a little likely that you're going to be basing your research on flawed or dated information.

If the information you're basing your research on isn't as up-to-date as possible, your research won't be of quality or able to stand up to any amount of scrutiny. You don't want all of your hard work to be for naught.

Relying Solely on Open Access Journals

OA is a great resource for conducting academic research. There are high-quality journal articles available through OA, and that can be very helpful for your research. But, just because you have access to free articles, that doesn't mean that there's nothing to be found behind a paywall.

Just as dismissing high-quality peer-reviewed articles because they are OA would be limiting, not exploring any paid content at all is equally short-sighted. If you're seeking to conduct thorough and comprehensive research, exploring all of your options for quality sources is going to be to your benefit.

Digging Too Deep or Not Deep Enough

Research is an art form, and it involves a delicate balance of information. If you conduct your research using only broad search terms, you won't be able to answer your research question well, or you'll find that your research provides information that is closely related to your topic but, ultimately, your findings are vague and unsubstantiated.

On the other hand, if you delve deeply into your research topic with specific searches and turn up too many sources, you might have a lot of information that is adjacent to your topic but without focus and perhaps not entirely relevant. It's important to answer your research question concisely but thoroughly.

Different Types of Scholarly Articles

Different types of scholarly articles have different purposes. An original research article, also called an empirical article, is the product of a study or an experiment. This type of article seeks to answer a question or fill a gap in the existing literature.

Research articles will have a methodology, results, and a discussion of the findings of the experiment or research and typically a conclusion.

Review articles overview the current literature and research and provide a summary of what the existing research indicates or has concluded. This type of study will have a section for the literature review, as well as a discussion of the findings of that review. Review articles will have a particularly extensive reference or bibliography section.

Theoretical articles draw on existing literature to create new theories or conclusions, or look at current theories from a different perspective, to contribute to the foundational knowledge of the field of study.

10 Tips for Navigating Journal Databases

Use the right academic journal database for your search, be that interdisciplinary or specific to your field. Or both!

If it's an option, set the search results to return only peer-reviewed sources.

Start by using search terms that are relevant to your topic without being overly specific.

Try synonyms, especially if your keywords aren't returning the desired results.

Even if you've found some good articles, try searching using different terms.

Explore the advanced search features of the database(s).

Learn to use Booleans (AND, OR, NOT) to expand or narrow your results.

Once you've gotten some good results from a more general search, try narrowing your search.

Read through abstracts when trying to find articles relevant to your research.

Keep track of your research and use citation tools. It'll make life easier when it comes time to compile your references.

7 Frequently Asked Questions

1. how do i get articles for free.

Free articles can be found through free online academic journals, OA databases, or other databases that include OA journals and articles. These resources allow you to access free papers online so you can conduct your research without getting stuck behind a paywall.

Academics don't receive payment for the articles they contribute to journals. There are often, in fact, publication fees that scholars pay in order to publish. This is one of the funding structures that allows OA journals to provide free content so that you don't have to pay fees or subscription costs to access journal articles.

2. How Do I Find Journal Articles?

Journal articles can be found in databases and institutional repositories that can be accessed at university libraries. However, online research databases that contain OA articles are the best resource for getting free access to journal articles that are available online.

Peer-reviewed journal articles are the best to use for academic research, and there are a number of databases where you can find peer-reviewed OA journal articles. Once you've found a useful article, you can look through the references for the articles the author used to conduct their research, and you can then search online databases for those articles, too.

3. How Do I Find Peer-Reviewed Articles?

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in reputable scholarly peer-reviewed journals. High-quality journals and journal articles can be found online using academic search engines and free research databases. These resources are excellent for finding OA articles, including peer-reviewed articles.

OA articles are articles that can be accessed for free. While some scholarly search engines and databases include articles that aren't peer reviewed, there are also some that provide only peer-reviewed articles, and databases that include non-peer-reviewed articles often have advanced search features that enable you to select "peer review only." The database will return results that are exclusively peer-reviewed content.

4. What Are Research Databases?

A research database is a list of journals, articles, datasets, and/or abstracts that allows you to easily search for scholarly and academic resources and conduct research online. There are databases that are interdisciplinary and cover a variety of topics.

For example, Paperity might be a great resource for a chemist as well as a linguist, and there are databases that are more specific to a certain field. So, while ERIC might be one of the best educational databases available for OA content, it's not going to be one of the best databases for finding research in the field of microbiology.

5. How Do I Find Scholarly Articles for Specific Fields?

There are interdisciplinary research databases that provide articles in a variety of fields, as well as research databases that provide articles that cater to specific disciplines. Additionally, a journal repository or index can be a helpful resource for finding articles in a specific field.

When searching an interdisciplinary database, there are frequently advanced search features that allow you to narrow the search results down so that they are specific to your field. Selecting "psychology" in the advanced search features will return psychology journal articles in your search results. You can also try databases that are specific to your field.

If you're searching for law journal articles, many law reviews are OA. If you don't know of any databases specific to history, visiting a journal repository or index and searching "history academic journals" can return a list of journals specific to history and provide you with a place to begin your research.

6. Are Peer-Reviewed Articles Really More Legitimate?

The short answer is yes, peer-reviewed articles are more legitimate resources for academic research. The peer review process provides legitimacy, as it is a rigorous review of the content of an article that is performed by scholars and academics who are experts in their field of study. The review provides an evaluation of the quality and credibility of the article.

Non-peer-reviewed articles are not subject to a review process and do not undergo the same level of scrutiny. This means that non-peer-reviewed articles are unlikely, or at least not as likely, to meet the same standards that peer-reviewed articles do.

7. Are Free Article Directories Legitimate?

Yes! As with anything, some databases are going to be better for certain requirements than others. But, a scholarly article database being free is not a reason in itself to question its legitimacy.

Free scholarly article databases can provide access to abstracts, scholarly article websites, journal repositories, and high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles. The internet has a lot of information, and it's often challenging to figure out what information is reliable. 

Research databases and article directories are great resources to help you conduct your research. Our list of the best research paper websites is sure to provide you with sources that are totally legit.

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Finding Open Access - Free Journals: Free Journal Article Databases

Free journal article databases.

• Citations and Bibliographies

Finding open access (free) journals

This LibGuide provides a list with active links to assist in finding open access (free) journals.

Options for finding reliable full text journal articles.

Other good sources for journals, newspapers, and more available for free on the Internet:

Google Scholar - A search engine for scholarly publications from peer-reviewed journals, professional societies, books, theses, and other sources.

Highwire Press - Offers free articles in biological, physical and social sciences and medicine. The site includes a search engine. Highwire has also put together a list of links to other large archives of scientific resources (highwire.stanford.edu/lists/largest.dtl)

Public Library of Science - A nonprofit scientific/medical organization making articles available for free.

BioMed Central - Publishes a number of journals that are available as open access, including Environmental Health and Journal of Biology. Others are available free to registered users.

OAIster - Indexes over three million digitized resources worldwide and can be limited to text, images, audio, or video files.

The Directory of Open Access Journals - Includes articles from more that 700 titles from around the world. Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, Fishery Bulletin, Journal of Construction Education, and Biopolicy are just a few of the titles included.

Scitopia - A federated (“one-stop-shopping”) search portal for publications of a number of professional societies in the areas of science and technology. Over three million documents, including patents and government publications, can be found here.

Scientific Journals International - A Publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, health, education, and social sciences. Links to online issues are included.

Encyclopedia of Life - A collaborative initiative to collect information on every species on earth. Contributing organizations include Smithsonian Institution, Royal Botanic Garden, and American Museum of Natural History.

Internet Public Library - “Information you can trust” with subject indexes, newspapers, magazines, special collections, and more.

WorldCat - Sometimes called the catalog of catalogs, WorldCat lets you search through library holdings from thousands of libraries around the world. Search for everything from books, articles, CDs, DVDs, audio files, and more. This is a great resource for locating material that can be obtained through Interlibrary Loan if it is not available on the Internet.

WolframAlpha - A Wolfram Research resource, this "computational knowledge engine" can answer a wide variety of questions and provide information on various topics. Subjects covered include mathematics, statistics and data analysis, chemistry, engineering, and earth sciences among many more.

• Next: Citations and Bibliographies >>
• Last Updated: Jul 19, 2021 10:20 AM
• URL: https://libguides.esf.edu/freejournals

Libraries | Research Guides

Open access and free scholarly resources.

• Social Sciences
• Primary Sources
• Dissertations
• Cambridge University Press Open Access Open access journals from Cambridge University Press.
• Digital Commons Network The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.
• Directory of Open Access Journals DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.
• JSTOR: Open Access Journals Growing collection of Open Access journals cover topical areas in sustainability and security studies, and offer broad coverage in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
• LOADB: Listing of Open Access Databases The objective of Listing of Open Access DataBases (LOADB) is to create a web-enabled, linked, classified and categorized collection of Open Access Databases which one can access from a single portal. Although initial focus is on science and technology subjects, the ultimate aim is to include all subject areas.
• Open Library of Humanities Open Library of Humanities journal publishes internationally-leading, rigorous and peer-reviewed scholarship across the humanities disciplines: from classics, theology and philosophy, to modern languages and literatures, film and media studies, anthropology, political theory and sociology.
• Project Muse Open Access Journals Open Access journal content from Project Muse.
• Sage Open Access Open access journals published by SAGE. All articles published in the journals provide worldwide, barrier-free access to the full-text of articles online, immediately on publication under a creative commons license.
• SciELO Scholarly literature in sciences, social sciences, arts & humanities published in open access journals from Latin American, Portugal, Spain and South Africa
• SpringerOpen: Journals Includes Springer’s portfolio of 160+ peer-reviewed fully open access journals across all areas of science.
• Directory of Open Access Books A directory of academic, peer reviewed open access books.
• Hathi Trust Digital Library This link opens in a new window A partnership of more than sixty major research institutions with Google, the Hathi Trust Digital Library includes all the book images from these libraries that have been digitized by Google. Only out-of-copyright images (generally pre-1923) can be displayed, or others where the permission of the copyright holder has been obtained, though both in-copyright and out-of-copyright materials can be searched. Out-of-copyright books can be downloaded by Northwestern users who register with the site.
• Internet Archive: eBooks and Texts The Internet Archive and Open Library offers over 8,000,000 fully accessible public domain eBooks. This includes a special modern collection of over 500,000 eBooks for users with print disabilities, and a very interesting curated, modern collection for the world at large.
• JSTOR: Open Access Books 7,000+ Open Access ebooks from 90 publishers, including Brill, Cornell University Press, De Gruyter, and University of California Press, are now available at no cost to libraries or users.
• Luminos Luminos is University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. With the same high standards for selection, peer review, production and marketing as our traditional program, Luminos is a transformative model, built as a partnership where costs and benefits are shared.
• Open Book Publishers Open books in humanities and social sciences.
• Open Textbook Library Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization.
• OAPEN: Open Access Publishing in European Networks The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences. OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality controlled collection of open access books, and provides services for publishers, libraries and research funders in the areas of deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation.
• Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg offers over 50,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.
• Project Muse Open Access Books Open Access books from Project Muse
• TOME The Association of American Universities, Association of Research Libraries, and Association of University Presses have launched an initiative to increase access to humanities and social sciences scholarship.
• University of Michigan Press Open Access Open access books available through the University of Michigan Press.
• WorldCat.org WorldCat.org lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands more around the world. more... less... You can search for popular books, music CDs and videos—all of the physical items you're used to getting from libraries. You can also discover many new kinds of digital content, such as downloadable audiobooks. You may also find article citations with links to their full text; authoritative research materials, such as documents and photos of local or historic significance; and digital versions of rare items that aren't available to the public. Because WorldCat libraries serve diverse communities in dozens of countries, resources are available in many languages.
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• Last Updated: Oct 9, 2023 1:21 PM
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Free Publicly-Accessible Databases

You are here.

The following databases were selected not only for their availablity to the general public but also because of their broad appeal and scope, and access to full-text resources.

• African Journals Online A service to provide access to African published research, and increase worldwide knowledge of indigenous scholarship. It's published in Africa and cover the full range of academic disciplines.  
• AGRICOLA This catalog of the U.S. National Agriculatural Library (NAL) provides citations to agricultural literature. The NAL houses one of the world's largest and most accessible agricultural information collections and advances access to global information for agriculture.  
• AIDSinfo Access to wide-ranging Federal resources on HIV/AIDS clinical research, HIV treatment and prevention, and medical practice guidelines for health care providers and consumers.  
• American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed., 2000) [UCSB call #: PE 1628 .A623 2000]
• Anatomy of the Human Body by Henry Gray (20th ed., 1918) [UCSB has later editions at: QM 23.2 .G73]
• The Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer (1918)
• Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-1921) [various call numbers at UCSB]
• The Columbia Encyclopedia (6th ed., 2001) [UCSB call #: Ref AG 5 .C725 2000]
• Columbia Gazetteer of North America (2000) [UCSB call #: Ref E 35 .C65 2000]
• Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett (10th ed., 1919) [UCSB call #: Spec. Coll. PN 6081 .B29 1902; later editions at: PN 6081 .B29 and in Reference at: PN 6081 .B27]
• Robert's Rules of Order Revised (1915) [UCSB call #: Ref JF515 .W42 for latest edition]
• Roget's II: The New Thesaurus (3rd ed., 1995) [UCSB call #: Ref PE1591 .B35]
• Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) "The Most Notable Quotes, 1950-1988" [UCSB call #: Ref PN 6083 .S53 1988]
• The World Factbook (2008)
• BioMed Central Publisher of 187 peer-reviewed open access journals.  
• bizjournals Features local business news from around the nation, top business stories from American City's print editions and industry-specific news from more than 40 industries with access to each of the 42 local business sites; contains 1.25 million business news articles published since 1996.  
• BPubs.com The Business Publications Search Engine Organized by various business categories, this site provides links to full text business articles on the web.  
• Chaucer Bibliography Online The Online Chaucer Bibliography includes materials from the Annotated Chaucer Bibliography published annually in Studies in the Age of Chaucer (call number: PR 1901 .S78) and is sponsored by the NCS and the library of the University of Texas at San Antonio. (Note: "Title" searching is searching for the beginning of the title, not for keywords in the title.  
• Chemistry Central Publishing peer-reviewed open access research in chemistry, from BioMed Central - the leading biomedical open access publisher. This site features chemistry-related articles published in Chemistry Central Journal, BioMed Central journals and independent journals utilizing BioMed Central's open access publishing services. All original research articles published by, or in cooperation with, Chemistry Central are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication.  
• ClinicalTrials.gov A registry of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world. ClinicalTrials.gov gives you information about a trial's purpose, who may participate, locations, and phone numbers for more details. This information should be used in conjunction with advice from health care professionals.  
• Core Documents of U. S. Democracy To provide American citizens direct online access to the basic Federal Government documents that define our democratic society, a core group of current and historical Government publications is being made available for free, permanent, public access. In addition to full ASCII text, some documents, such as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are available as scanned images of the original manuscripts. Document texts range from the Articles of Confederation to the current United States Government Manual, Statistical Abstracts and Code of Federal Regulations.  
• Dictionary.com Dictionary.com provides searchable access to several dictionaries, most notably, the American Heritage Dictionary , 3rd ed. (1996,1992) (in print at PE 1628 .A623 1992), plus Roget's Thesaurus, and links to a number of other dictionary sites on the web.  
• Directory of Open Access Journals This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. Covers nearly 150,000 articles in 834 searchable journals.  
• Energy Citations Database Free access to over 2.3 million science research citations with access to over 179,000 electronic documents, primarily from 1943 forward, made publicly available by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). ECD includes scientific and technical research results in disciplines of interest to DOE such as chemistry, physics, materials, environmental science, geology, engineering, mathematics, climatology, oceanography, computer science and related disciplines. It includes bibliographic citations to report literature, conference papers, journal articles, books, dissertations, and patents.  
• English Broadside Ballad Archive Created by the Early Modern Center in the English Department at UCSB, the English Broadside Ballad Archive (formerly, Pepys Ballad Archive) offers a fully-searchable database of over 1,800 broadside ballads, mostly of the seventeenth century and mostly in black-letter print. The ballads were collected by Samuel Pepys into five albums, which are held at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The ballads in the database are accessible as facsimiles, as facsimile transcriptions, and as recorded songs. Also provided are full citations for the ballads as well as background essays about ballad culture of the period and Pepys’s categories for organizing his collection.  
• Espacenet (European Patent Office) The European Patent Office's Esp@acenet provides detailed searching of EPO and PCT patent applications for the last 24 months, and worldwide patent documents searchable by patent number as early as 1920 for some issuing nations.  
• FWS National Image Library U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's online collection of public domain still photographs, containing still photo images of wildlife, plants, National Wildlife Refuges and other scenics, as well as wildlife management work.  
• Google Scholar Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.  
• Govinfo From the U.S. Government Printing Office: provides free electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the Federal Government. The information provided on this site is the official, published version.  
• Hearth Hearth is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Titles published between 1850 and 1950 were selected and ranked by teams of scholars for their great historical importance. The first phase of this project focused on books published between 1850 and 1925 and a small number of journals. Future phases of the project will include books published between 1926 and 1950, as well as additional journals. The full text of these materials, as well as bibliographies and essays on the wide array of subjects relating to Home Economics, are all freely accessible on this site.  
• Encyclopedia.com Contains nearly 200,000 brief entries from the Britannica , Oxford University Press , and Columbia Encyclopedia .  
• HighWire Press Free full-text articles in science disciplines, from HighWire Press at Stanford University.  
• ibiblio One of the largest "collections of collections" on the Internet, ibiblio.org is a conservancy of freely available information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies. ibiblio.org is a collaboration of the School of Information and Library Science and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.  
• InfoPlease Search the Information Please almanac and timeline, their atlas, the Columbia Encyclopedia, a dictionary, and a thesaurus. Information Please has been providing authoritative answers to all kinds of factual questions since 1938.  
• Audio Archive The Archive contains over a hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.
• Live Music Archive The Internet Archive has teamed up with etree wiki to preserve and archive as many live concerts as possible for current and future generations to enjoy. All music in this Collection is from trade-friendly artists and is strictly noncommercial, both for access here and for any further distribution. Artists' commercial releases are off-limits. This collection is maintained by the etree.org community.
• Moving Images Collections This collection of thousands of digital movies is free and open for everyone to use. It includes the Prelinger Archive, a collection of nearly 2,000 advertising and educational films from 1927 to the present.
• Text Archive This collection is open to the community for the contribution of any type of text.  
• Library of Congress Digital Collections This Library of Congress project provides access to a large number of LoC collections, searchable and browsable by subject and title, including a large quantity of digitized primary source material.
• MagPortal "Find individual articles from many free magazines by browsing the categories or using the search engine."  
• Making of America: at Cornell University and University of Michigan Hosted at Cornell University and the University of Michigan, Making of America (MOA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The Cornell collection currently contains 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints while the Michigan collection contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints, estimated at over 3% of all American monographs published in the 19th century. All are in the form of searchable scanned images.  
• MedKnow Publications The largest publisher in India for academic and scientific biomedical journals, publishing high quality peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Medknow, with over 40 print + online journals, is probably the largest open access publisher of print journals in the world and provides immediate free access to the electronic editions of the journals.  
• MedlinePlus "Extensive information from the National Institutes of Health and other trusted sources on over 740 topics on conditions, diseases and wellness. There are also lists of hospitals and physicians, a medical encyclopedia and a medical dictionary, health information in Spanish, extensive information on prescription and nonprescription drugs, health information from the media, and links to thousands of clinical trials."  
• Online Exhibits Features high resolution images of a variety of manuscripts, artworks and photographs from the U.S. National Archives.
• Featured Documents
• America's Historical Documents The National Archives preserves and provides access to the records of the Federal Government. Here is a sample of these records, from our most celebrated milestones to little-known surprises.
• Educators & Students: Primary Sources and Activities A large number of collections of primary documents and images arranged for use by teachers of history, civics or use of government documents.  
• National Forest Service Library Catalog of records to Forest Service Research publications dating back to 1904. Includes almost 6,000 full-text publications.  
• National Service Center for Environmental Publications A database of over 24,000 full-text U.S. EPA documents  
• NCJRS Virtual Library (National Criminal Justice Reference Service) Access to more than 3,500 full text publications and more than 190,000 abstracts, or summaries, of publications on this site and from NCJRS partner agency websites.  
• O*NET OnLine From the U.S. Department of Labor, the Occupational Information Network is a comprehensive database of worker attributes and job characteristics. The O*NET database includes information on skills, abilities, knowledges, work activities, and interests associated with occupations. Information in O*NET is available for over 800 occupations. Each occupational title and code is based on the most current version of the Standard Occupational Classification system.O*NET replaces the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT).  
• Online Archive of California The Online Archive of California is a collaborative project to create a searchable online union database of finding aids to archival collections. This database includes the finding aids to repositories from more than 90 institutions statewide including all nine UC campuses, and is continuing to expand. Finding aids provide detailed descriptions of collections, their intellectual organization and, at varying levels of analysis, of individual items in the collections. A small but increasing number of the finding aids contain links to online digital versions of the source material.  
• The Online Books Page "Listing over 25,000 free books on the Web," by author, title, subject, and other features, such as: "A Celebration of Women Writers," "Banned Books Online," "Prize Winners Online," "Foreign Language," and "Specialty" by subject. This site also links to extensive directories which list thousands more online books.
• OSTI.gov Search the U.S. Dept. of Energy's scientific and technical research reports in the sciences including biology, environmental sciences, physics, energy, and other topics.
• Paper of Record Building the world's largest searchable archive of historical newspapers. Over 21 million images in the collection so far. Searchable newspaper image documents presented in their original published form.  
• Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is one of the earliest attempts to provide widespread access to public domain books via the Internet. As of 2002, it offers about 6,200 works, adding about 150 per month. Files are in plain ASCII text or in zipped ASCII text, available from a number of mirror sites around the world. The Project Gutenberg catalog is searchable by author and title. Author and title lists may be downloaded by FTP.  
• PLoS: Public Library of Science A nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.  
• PubMed Central (PMC) The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.  
• Science.gov Science.gov is a gateway to over 50 million pages of authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. government agencies, including research and development results.  
• USPTO Patent Database The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)'s Patent Databases allows searching of the bibliographic data (titles, inventors, assignees, class codes, references, etc.) or full text in US patents issued since 1976.  
• USPTO Trademark Database The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)'s Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) allows searching of the key data (titles, owners, relevant dates) in current Federal trademarks and inactive ones back to 1984. Results display the trademark text data and, in many cases, the images for graphic trademarks. It does not include state or foreign trademarks.

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Harvard Library Is Launching Harvard Open Journals Program

Harvard Library is launching a new initiative called the Harvard Open Journals Program (HOJP), which will help researchers advance scholarly publishing that is open access, sustainable, and equitable. HOJP will provide publishing services, resources, and seed funding to participating Harvard researchers for new academic journals. All journal articles will be entirely free for authors and readers, with no barriers to publish or to access.

Martha Whitehead, Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian, sees the initiative as an important step in championing open access. Whitehead said, “We want to model the original ethos of open access by reducing barriers and enabling the free flow of ideas and knowledge across the research ecosystem and beyond to the public at large.”

The Harvard Open Journals Program will offer publishing and hosting services to help the Harvard community launch new open access journals, or to convert existing journals to open access. The program will offer two support models: an overlay model which takes advantage of open access repositories, such as Harvard’s  DASH , and a brand-new academic press model. 

Yuan Li, University Scholarly Communication Officer and Director of Open Scholarship and Research Data Services at Harvard Library, pointed out the innovative nature of the program, “It is new for an institution to support faculty in seeking out an academic press to publish a no-fee open access journal and to provide assistance in securing its long-term funding. And offering a repository overlay journal model provides an alternative that appeals to some editorial boards and is gaining traction through initiatives such as Episciences. As we implement and refine this program on our campus, we hope it will inspire other universities to adopt such approaches to supporting barrier-free scholarly publishing.”

The program is a direct response to faculty interest in alternatives to the article-processing-charge model, in which journals charge author-side fees to publish papers open access. It also supports federal requirements that publications resulting from publicly-funded research be open access.

The open access movement in scholarly publishing seeks to grant free and public online access to publications and data. In recent decades, many researchers have become increasingly concerned that commercial rather than scholarly interests are driving the publishing ecosystem. With some publishers charging article processing fees of over $10,000 per article, skyrocketing costs inhibit many researchers and institutions from publishing in these journals. At the same time, research institutions continue to pay high subscription costs, even as their faculty provide editorial and peer review services mainly for free to the publishers. These practices have led to widespread outcry in the scholarly community, and tensions between publishers and editorial boards have led to the latter’s  mass resignations .

Scott Edwards, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and a member of the Harvard Library Faculty Advisory Council, applauds the library’s exploration of new models for supporting open access publishing. Edwards said, “In this increasingly challenging publishing ecosystem, the Harvard Open Journals Program is a welcome new approach.” 

“These are sustainable and equitable open access publishing models that allow scholars to take control of scholarly communication,” added Li. “I hope that many research-heavy institutions adopt our approach. The first  Harvard Open Access policy launched in 2008 has been adopted nationally and internationally, and it would be great to see similar reach.”

Under Harvard’s Open Access policies, Harvard faculty and researchers give the University a nonexclusive, irrevocable right to distribute their scholarly articles for any non-commercial purpose. Stored and preserved in  DASH , Harvard Library’s open access repository, these articles are made available to the scholarly community and the public—anyone with an internet connection can read them for free.

Harvard Library is working closely with the Office of the Vice Provost for Research on launching the HOJP program. John Shaw, Vice Provost for Research and Harry C. Dudley Professor of Structural and Economic Geology, is eager to promote the initiative in the suite of programs that support faculty research. Shaw said, “The launch of HOJP provides very encouraging options for removing barriers to making research results open and expanding their reach.”

The Harvard Open Journals Program will be open to all journals with a current Harvard affiliate on the editorial team or editorial board. Student-run journals are also eligible, as long as they are sponsored by a Harvard faculty member or administrator.

In preparing to launch HOJP this summer, Harvard Library is currently seeking input on program details from interested faculty. HOJP will begin accepting applications in the fall from journals and editorial boards. Colleen Cressman, Librarian for Open Publishing, will manage the program and can be reached by email for more information.

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Generative A.I. Arrives in the Gene Editing World of CRISPR

Much as ChatGPT generates poetry, a new A.I. system devises blueprints for microscopic mechanisms that can edit your DNA.

The physical structure of OpenCRISPR-1, a gene editor created by A.I. technology from Profluent. Credit... Video by Profluent Bio

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By Cade Metz

Has reported on the intersection of A.I. and health care for a decade.

• April 22, 2024

Generative A.I. technologies can write poetry and computer programs or create images of teddy bears and videos of cartoon characters that look like something from a Hollywood movie.

Now, new A.I. technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can today.

Described in a research paper published on Monday by a Berkeley, Calif., startup called Profluent, the technology is based on the same methods that drive ChatGPT, the online chatbot that launched the A.I. boom after its release in 2022 . The company is expected to present the paper next month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.

Much as ChatGPT learns to generate language by analyzing Wikipedia articles, books and chat logs, Profluent’s technology creates new gene editors after analyzing enormous amounts of biological data, including microscopic mechanisms that scientists already use to edit human DNA.

These gene editors are based on Nobel Prize-winning methods involving biological mechanisms called CRISPR. Technology based on CRISPR is already changing how scientists study and fight illness and disease , providing a way of altering genes that cause hereditary conditions, such as sickle cell anemia and blindness.

Previously, CRISPR methods used mechanisms found in nature — biological material gleaned from bacteria that allows these microscopic organisms to fight off germs.

“They have never existed on Earth,” said James Fraser, a professor and chair of the department of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, who has read Profluent’s research paper. “The system has learned from nature to create them, but they are new.”

The hope is that the technology will eventually produce gene editors that are more nimble and more powerful than those that have been honed over billions of years of evolution.

On Monday, Profluent also said that it had used one of these A.I.-generated gene editors to edit human DNA and that it was “open sourcing” this editor, called OpenCRISPR-1. That means it is allowing individuals, academic labs and companies to experiment with the technology for free.

A.I. researchers often open source the underlying software that drives their A.I. systems , because it allows others to build on their work and accelerate the development of new technologies. But it is less common for biological labs and pharmaceutical companies to open source inventions like OpenCRISPR-1.

Though Profluent is open sourcing the gene editors generated by its A.I. technology, it is not open sourcing the A.I. technology itself.

The project is part of a wider effort to build A.I. technologies that can improve medical care. Scientists at the University of Washington, for instance, are using the methods behind chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney to create entirely new proteins — the microscopic molecules that drive all human life — as they work to accelerate the development of new vaccines and medicines.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, on claims of copyright infringement involving artificial intelligence systems that generate text.)

Generative A.I. technologies are driven by what scientists call a neural network , a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing vast amounts of data. The image creator Midjourney, for example, is underpinned by a neural network that has analyzed millions of digital images and the captions that describe each of those images. The system learned to recognize the links between the images and the words. So when you ask it for an image of a rhinoceros leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge, it knows what to do.

Profluent’s technology is driven by a similar A.I. model that learns from sequences of amino acids and nucleic acids — the chemical compounds that define the microscopic biological mechanisms that scientists use to edit genes. Essentially, it analyzes the behavior of CRISPR gene editors pulled from nature and learns how to generate entirely new gene editors.

“These A.I. models learn from sequences — whether those are sequences of characters or words or computer code or amino acids,” said Profluent’s chief executive, Ali Madani, a researcher who previously worked in the A.I. lab at the software giant Salesforce.

Profluent has not yet put these synthetic gene editors through clinical trials, so it is not clear if they can match or exceed the performance of CRISPR. But this proof of concept shows that A.I. models can produce something capable of editing the human genome.

Still, it is unlikely to affect health care in the short term. Fyodor Urnov, a gene editing pioneer and scientific director at the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, said scientists had no shortage of naturally occurring gene editors that they could use to fight illness and disease. The bottleneck, he said, is the cost of pushing these editors through preclinical studies, such as safety, manufacturing and regulatory reviews, before they can be used on patients.

But generative A.I. systems often hold enormous potential because they tend to improve quickly as they learn from increasingly large amounts of data. If technology like Profluent’s continues to improve, it could eventually allow scientists to edit genes in far more precise ways. The hope, Dr. Urnov said, is that this could, in the long term, lead to a world where medicines and treatments are quickly tailored to individual people even faster than we can do today.

“I dream of a world where we have CRISPR on demand within weeks,” he said.

Scientists have long cautioned against using CRISPR for human enhancement because it is a relatively new technology that could potentially have undesired side effects, such as triggering cancer, and have warned against unethical uses, such as genetically modifying human embryos.

This is also a concern with synthetic gene editors. But scientists already have access to everything they need to edit embryos.

“A bad actor, someone who is unethical, is not worried about whether they use an A.I.-created editor or not,” Dr. Fraser said. “They are just going to go ahead and use what’s available.”

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

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News  and Analysis

Eight daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital sued OpenAI and Microsoft , accusing the tech companies of illegally using news articles to power their A.I. chatbots.

The spending that the tech industry’s giants expect A.I. to require, for the chips and data centers , is starting to come into focus — and it is jarringly large.

The table stakes for A.I. start-ups to compete with the likes of Microsoft and Google are in the billions of dollars. And even that may not be enough .

The Age of A.I.

A new category of apps promises to relieve parents of drudgery, with an assist from A.I . But a family’s grunt work is more human, and valuable, than it seems.

Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s hope for Meta’s A.I. assistant to be the smartest , it struggles with facts, numbers and web search.

Much as ChatGPT generates poetry, a new A.I. system devises blueprints for microscopic mechanisms  that can edit your DNA.

Could A.I. change India’s elections? Avatars are addressing voters by name, in whichever of India’s many languages they speak. Experts see potential for misuse  in a country already rife with disinformation.

Which A.I. system writes the best computer code or generates the most realistic image? Right now, there’s no easy way to answer those questions, our technology columnist writes .

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