LibGuides: Open Access: Finding and Accessing Open Access Resources: Open Access Journals and Articles

Overview

There are a variety of different resources you can use to find Open Access journals and articles. Some journals are completely Open Access, while other journals include a mix of Open Access and ‘closed’ access, subscription-only content (these are known as ‘hybrid’ journals). Listed below are some useful resources you can use to find fully Open Access journals and articles.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- This link opens in a new window
“DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.” (DOAJ). The DOAJ currently includes over 16,000 journals from 125 different countries. You can use DOAJ to search for and find Open Access journals and articles which you can then download directly from the publisher’s website.
Open access/publicly accessible content. No login required.
CORE
- This link opens in a new window
CORE hosts the world’s largest collection of open access full texts, which are used and referenced by people globally, including researchers, libraries, software developers, funders and many more. CORE's aggregated content covers all research disciplines and comes from thousands of institutional and subject repositories and journals.
Open access/publicly accessible content. Most areas of this resource can be accessed without logging in. To access certain features, users must register an account.
Digital Commons Network
- This link opens in a new window
The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. The interface allows you to search by subject area and provides access to articles, book chapters, dissertations, conference proceedings and other types of scholarly output.
Open access/publicly accessible content. No login required.

Open Access Tools: Browser Plug-ins

Unpaywall
This is a tool to find Open Access versions of paywalled research papers: it is currently available as an extension for Chrome and Firefox. It helps you to source free, legal full-text of research papers as you browse.

When you view a paywalled research article, Unpaywall automatically looks for a copy in their index of over 10 million free, legal full-text PDFs.
Open Access Button (OA Works)
The Open Access Button has recently been re-branded as 'OA.Works'. Open Access Button works when you want to find a specific article. Upload the browser and it will try to instantly, legally, find you access to the articles and data you need.
CORE Discovery
Similar to Open Access Button, CORE Discovery is a free browser plug-in that enables you to find access to full-text articles. CORE Discovery claims to have “the best grip on open content from open repositories as opposed to other services that disproportionately focus on content only indexed in major commercial databases”. A useful feature of CORE Discovery is that if the paper you're looking for isn't available Open Access, then CORE will suggest other papers on the same topic that are Open Access.
Open Access Helper for iOS
If you are an iOS user, you can use OA Helper to search for Open Access articles across a range of devices (including iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone) without hitting a paywall. You can download the OA Helper from the Apple Store.

Find Open Access Articles via Library Search

You can search for Open Access material via the University of Strathclyde library search (SUPrimo). You can use the filters located on the menu on the left-hand-side of side of the page to filter your search results to show Open Access articles. Under the heading ‘Availability’ select ‘Open Access’ and under the heading ‘Resource Type’ select ‘Articles’ (Step 1). Your results will then be displayed (Step 2). You can further refine your results using the filters on the left-hand-side of the results page. For example, you can refine by 'Availability' to show only those articles published in peer-reviewed journals.

Open Access: Finding and Accessing Open Access Resources: Open Access Journals and Articles

Overview

Open Access Tools: Browser Plug-ins

Find Open Access Articles via Library Search

Step 1: Apply Filters

Step 2: Retrieve Results