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Free & Open Access Resources

This guide compiles free and open access resources available to researchers. With a focus on Linda Hall Library patrons, this guide prioritizes free resources geared towards science, technology, and engineering research.

Databases for Finding Articles

More Free Databases for Searching the STEM Literature, with Tips on Limiting Results to OA Articles

  Searches Limit to Free/OA Articles?
Dimensions Dimensions is an index of millions ob publications publications, including articles, books and chapters, conference proceedings and preprints. Records are linked to cited/citing articles, funding, and patents. Some richer advanced searching options than you'll find in Google Scholar. Free to search, but registration required. When you view the results page, the last limit on the left allows you to filter results by OA materials. 
Lens.org Lens.org is a database indexing millions of articles, conference proceedings, and patents. You can limit results by OA.
Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is an AI-powered database of more than 200 million papers. You can create a free account to set up email alerts, generate feeds for new paper recommendations, and save papers to your "library." No, but OA articles are identified in the search results.
PubMed link Pubmed includes 38+ million citations and abstracts of articles from the biomedical literature (and related disciplines). You can limit results to "Free Full Text," which includes the PubMed Central database of final accepted manuscripts for NIH-funded research.
ERIC link ERIC indexes education research and information resources, including journals, books, conferences, reports, dissertations, etc. You can limit results to free, full-text materials in ERIC, though this may not skew heavily toward journal articles.
computer science bibliography dblp is an index of more than 7 million computer science journal articles, conference and working papers, and books. You can limit your results to open content.
Zb Math Open zbMATH is an open database indexing the mathematical literature, more than 4.4 million bibliographic entries with abstracts or reviews from journal articles and books. The PDFs within the database are the abstracts/reviews, not the articles. In the search results, you can filter by open access.
Agricola link SEARCH is the USDA Library's search tool, indexing more than 8 million records covering all aspects of agriculture and related disciplines. Includes AGRICOLA. In the search results, under Availability, you can limit your results to open access materials.
Astrophysics Data system link The Astrophysics Data System, indexes more than 15 million records covering publications in astronomy and astrophysics, physics, and general science, including all arXiv e-prints. Under All Search Terms, select Property and enter openaccess between the quotation marks.