Open Content
This guide brings together information about Open Access Resources and Open Educational Resources. It aims to make Open Access resources easier to find and use for study, teaching and research.
Journals
Finding Open Access Journals in DiscoverED
There are lots of books, journals and other academic resources that are open access. This means they are free to access and don't require the Library to have a subscription for you to be able to access them. DiscoverEd has a range of open access material and when you do a search you can use the filters on the left hand side of screen to show only Open Access results. You can also limit the Resource Type to Journals, if that is solely what you are interested in.
Read and Publish Journals
The Library on behalf of the University has signed up to a number of "Read and Publish" deals with publishers. All corresponding authors from the University of Edinburgh can publish open access in the following journals for no extra cost. You can browse the list of over 5,500 journals by title, e-ISSN, or by publisher.
Learn More About Open Access
- Edinburgh ReproducibiliTeaReproducibiliTea is a world-wide network of open research (journal) clubs that discuss ideas about improving transparency and reproducibility in research work, and the open research movement at a larger scale.
- Edinburgh Open Research Initiative (EORI)Edinburgh Open Research Initiative (EORI) is a grassroots collective of students and staff based primarily at the University of Edinburgh, promoting awareness of and training in Open Research practices and policies, and lobbying for these to be implemented and formally recognised by the University of Edinburgh.
- Creative Commons LicensesCreative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?”
- Open Access DirectoryThe Open Access Directory (OAD) is a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship, maintained by the OA community at large.
- GOAP - Global Open Access PortalThe Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) presents a current snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information in 158 countries worldwide.
Edinburgh Diamond: Library-supported Open Access Books & Journals
Edinburgh University Library uses Open Journals Systems (OJS) to provide a hosting platform for Open Access journals and Open Monograph Press (OMP) to provide a hosting platform for Open Access books. The service includes training, guidance and technical support and it is provided free of charge to staff and students of the University of Edinburgh.
Finding Open Access Journals
- DOAJ - Directory of Open Access JournalsThe Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an independent database containing over 15 000 peer-reviewed open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities.
- JSTOR OpenContains millions of articles from nearly 2,000 journals.
- Open Access Journals Published by LibrariesPart of the Open Access Directory, this is a list of active (currently published), full (non-hybrid) open-access journals published or hosted by libraries.
- BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search EngineASE is one of the world's most voluminous search engines especially for academic web resources. BASE provides more than 240 million documents from more than 8,000 content providers. You can access the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free (Open Access).
- ROAD - Directory of Open Access Scholarly ResourcesROAD provides a free access to a subset of ISSN bibliographic records. These records describe the scholarly resources in open access that have been identified by the ISSN Network.
- SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library OnlineSciELO Network provides Open Access (OA) to journals’ contents. Journals are organized in national and thematic collections. Each collection is managed by a nationally recognized research organization.
OA/OER publishing
This guide is designed to help researchers, students and staff at the University of Edinburgh to find Open Resources.
If you would like more information on how to publish your work as Open Access or an Open Educational Resource, you will find more information on the Research Support page.
Google Scholar
You can also use Google Scholar to search for Open Access articles and content.
Open Access Journals Availble to University of Edinburgh Staff and Students
If you are a student or member of staff at University of Edinburgh you also have access to content that has been purchased or subscribed to by the University Library. You can search for and access these, as well as the wide range of other online and physical resources available at the Library, via DiscoverEd.