Open and Free Access Materials for Research
The staff of the Institute have compiled a page to direct researchers towards freely accessible online research resources. We have included primary and secondary materials, including online text and media archives, and Open Access journals and books. While we have focused primarily on research resources, many of these may also be valuable for incorporating into research-led teaching and self-directed learning activities.
As indicated below, some of these have been made freely available or developed specifically in response to Covid-19, but the majority are permanent Open Access resources that will continue to be available in the future. While the list is not exhaustive and partly reflects the areas of expertise of current staff, it will be regularly updated and we welcome suggestions for further additions to the list, including those in or about other languages or geographic regions. Please write to ies@sas.ac.uk if you would like to recommend any other resources for inclusion.
About this Guide
How to use this guide
This webpage contains a selection of curated links to online research resources that can be used for research of all kinds. From digitised archives to oral histories, newspapers, maps and printed collections, we hope that there will some material that can help with your work or with supporting your students.
This is of course simply a small selection of the vast amount of material that is out there. You will know more about what is available in your own area of specialism, and Google, DuckDuckGo, or Ecosia will uncover more. There are also numerous online guides and bibliographies, both general and specialised, that will give further suggestions. Your library will also be able to advise on what is available for you behind paywalls.
Other School of Advanced Study and Senate House Library Guides
General Secondary Works
Books, Journals, and Institutional Repositories
- Access to Research (Open Access directory in partnership with publishers).
- Directory of Open Access Journals.
- JStor and ArtStor. JStor now offers individuals access to read 100 articles every 30 days.
- Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog Book search interface for more than hundreds of million books and serials in library and book trade catalogs worldwide.
- ProjectMuse is hosting a range of free materials, including UVA and University of Pennsylvania Press books and journals during the crisis.
- Details of university presses providing temporary access to their collections from PublicBooks.org.
- Open Library of the Humanities.
- Rian: Pathways to Irish Research Comprehensive libray of Irish Open Access Irish research publications.
- Unpaywall, OA Button and CORE Discovery plugins offer help in discovering open access versions of articles. See also the British Library guide to open access tools for research.
- Many publishers also provide access to some open access materials, such as Bloomsbury Academic and Cambridge Core.
Preprints and other open access collections can be also found in institutional repositories. A list of UK repositories can be found at Sherpa.