Freely available research resources
The resources below give free access to online scholarly publications. Many of the publications have been peer-reviewed, editorially controlled, and are available without the need of a subscription to access the articles. We hope this list will be helpful for alumni, external visitors to the library and members of the public.
Alumni access to JSTOR
Graduates of the University of Bristol have access to JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.
To access JSTOR, you will need to create a Bristol Connects account.
Once you have registered you will be able to access JSTOR directly via this link.
For more information or assistance, please contact the Alumni office.
Subject Guides
Many of our Library Subject Guides contain subject-specific free and open access resources. Find them at bristol.ac.uk/library/subjectsupport.
Access to Research – accesstoresearch.org.uk
Over 10 million academic articles from across the disciplines are available, free of charge, in participating public libraries across the UK. Members of the public, small business and independent researchers can now access many of the world’s best academic papers through their local libraries. From: Access to Research
British Library DART Europe – bl.uk
Enables search and discovery of the British Library's main catalogue of nearly 57 million records, and the contents of the Library's website. Free online texts and images. Print resources can be borrowed via your public library.
DART Europe – dart-europe.org
DART-Europe is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia who are working together to improve global access to European research theses. It aims to provide researchers with a single European portal for the discovery of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs).
DOAB – doabooks.org
DOAB is the Directory of Open Access Books and is a service of OAPEN Foundation. Its primary aim is to make open access books more discoverable. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB to increase the visibility and circulation of their publications, helping scholars and students to discover the books. They now have over 3,500 books mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences. From: DOAB/OAPEN
DOAJ – doaj.org
DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals. Its aim is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals that have a quality control system (e.g. peer review) in place, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. Today it contains more than 10,000 open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social science and humanities. From: DOAJ
EThOS – ethos.bl.uk/home.do
EThOS is the UK’s national thesis service which aims to maximise the availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses. There are approximately 440,000 records relating to theses awarded by over 120 institutions. Around 160,000 of these also provide access to the full text thesis, either via download from the EThOS database or via links to the institution’s own repository. Of the remaining 240,000 records dating back to at least 1800, three quarters are available to be ordered for scanning through the EThOS digitisation-on-demand facility.
Europe PubMed Central Gov.uk – europepmc.org
Europe PubMed Central offers free access to a large and growing collection of biomedical research literature. The database also contains Patents, NHS (National Health Service) guidelines, and Agricola records.
Gov.uk – gov.uk
Reliable source of government data and statistics.
JSTOR – jstor.org
[Available to Alumni of the University of Bristol, please see information in the box at the top of this list.] JSTOR is a highly selective digital library of academic content in many formats and disciplines. The collections include top peer-reviewed scholarly journals as well as respected literary journals, academic monographs, research reports from trusted institutes, and primary sources.
National Academies Press (NAP) – nap.edu
NAP offer more than 5,000 titles, almost all can be downloaded for free, from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, National Research Council and other U.S. public bodies. From: The National Academies Press
OAPEN library – oapen.org
A library of open access quality assured (e.g. peer reviewed) books available for download. The library is focused mainly on the humanities and social sciences. The books are published in a number of European languages. From: OAPEN
Open Access – bristol.ac.uk/staff/researchers/open-access/findingopen-access-materials
Visit our Research Support webpage which lists tools designed to find ’Open Access’ papers more easily.
OpenDOAR – v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar
OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents.
PloS – plos.org
PloS or the Public Library of Science is a nonprofit open access publisher of peer reviewed journals and other resources in science and medicine. From: PloS
Publishers’ websites – CUP, OUP, Springer, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Wiley etc. offer a wealth of Open Access content