Open access research
Search tools
OA Features in Library Search
Library Search displays the open-padlock icon on open access resources in your search results.
There is an option in the Availability section to limit your results to open access. Choose "Open Access".
- Library Search
Search for all types of information resources. Most of the library subscriptions are indexed and searchable.
Become an expert user with the Search and find library resources guide.
- Unpaywall
A browser extension for that searches for free copies of articles you find on the internet - Zotero
Zotero is a free open-source reference manager, similar to EndNote or Refworks. - Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. You can access items held by Bond Library by using the Library Links feature.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
The Library has collated an Open Textbooks collection for educators looking for available open textbooks for their classes.
Free Resources
- Directory of Open Access Books
DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books. It helps users find trusted, open access book publishers. - Fordham University Source Books
Links to full texts books available. This listing aids compilers of web guides. Most are entire books that are often assigned to students in college classes. There are also excerpted texts. - Hathi Trust Digital Library
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions offering millions of digitised titles from libraries around the world. - MIT Press Direct
Offers a growing collection of eBooks including architecture, business, humanities, social science, bio-medical, education, data science, environment and game studies. - NCBI Bookshelp
Provides free, online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare. - OAPEN - Open Access Publishing in European Networks
Contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences. OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality-controlled collection of open access books. It provides services for publishers, libraries and research funders in the areas of deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation. - Open Book Publishers
A leading independent OA publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences : a not-for-profit Social Enterprise run by scholars. All books are available to read online and download for free with no Book Processing Charges (BPCs). OpenBooks publish monographs and textbooks in all disciplines. - Open Stax
OpenStax provides free, high-quality, openly licensed textbooks, integrated with personalised learning technology. - Open Textbook Library
These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. - Page by Page Books
Hundreds of classic books you can read right now, all absolutely free! It is an ideal way to expand your horizons, catch up on your reading list, or read books that it seems like everyone else has already read. Fix yourself a drink, get comfortable and Start Reading! - Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg offers over 53,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. We carry high quality ebooks: Most Project Gutenberg ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers. We digitized and diligently proofread them with the help of thousands of volunteers. - Project Gutenberg Australia
Over 53,000 free ebooks. Choose from epub books, free kindle books, download or read online formats. Most Project Gutenberg ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers. They have been digitised and proofread with the help of volunteers. - Project Muse
Selected books on Project Muse are available open access. - Standard ebooks
Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven, not-for-profit project producing new editions of public domain works.
- CORE Discovery
Harvests millions of research papers from data providers globally, including institutional and subject repositories, open access and hybrid journal publishers. - Open Access button
From the OA Button’s website, enter an article’s URL, DOI (a unique identifier), title, or other information to check for free and legal, open access versions. The OA Button also offers browser extensions. Once installed, they will automatically search for an open access copy. - Unpaywall
Unpaywall is a database of millions of freely available, scholarly articles. Most researchers access it using a browser extension. It searches for a paper’s DOI, or digital object identifier.
- DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.
- Open Access Journals from WileyWiley Open Access journals cover a range of disciplines.
- The Public DomainThe Public Domain Review is an online journal dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.
- University OA JournalsThis list of Australian & New Zealand journals is provided by Open Access Australasia.
- AustLii This link opens in a new window
Australian primary and secondary sources of law such as federal and state acts and cases, journals, scholarship, treaties and law reform resources.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics This link opens in a new window
Australian statistics and census data.
- Biodiversity Heritage Library
Improves research methodology by collaboratively making the literature openly available as part of a global biodiversity community.
- BioMed Central This link opens in a new window
A collection of open access peer-reviewed biomedical research journals providing access to current original research
- DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.
- Legislation.gov.uk This link opens in a new window
Legislation from across the United Kingdom in one place. Online database of UK Statute Law. Contains primary and secondary UK legislation.
- Medscape This link opens in a new window
Freely available medical and health database with links to full text information.
- National Construction Code of Australia This link opens in a new window
Incorporates the BCA Volume One, BCA Volume Two and the Guide to the Building Code of Australia (BCA) plus the Plumbing Code of Australia (PCA, Volume Three).
- NATLEX This link opens in a new window
NATLEX is a database of national labour, social security and related human rights legislation.
- OA University RepositoriesThis Australian & New Zealand list is provided by Open Access Australasia.
- OECD iLibrary This link opens in a new window
The online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) featuring its books, papers and statistics and the gateway to OECD’s analysis and data.
- REHABDATA This link opens in a new window
Database of disability and rehabilitation research. Contains references to documents covering technology, law, employment and other issues as they relate to people with disabilities.
- arXiv
Scholarly, open access articles in the fields of: physics; mathematics; computer science; quantitative biology; quantitative finance; statistics; electrical engineering and systems science; and economics. - Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
A repository for preprints devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences, and health sciences, among others.
- Codecademy
Learn to code for free - edXFree online courses from Harvard, MIT and more.
- Future Learn
Free courses with options to pay for certificates, or extended access. - Khan Academy
Free education for anyone, anywhere - The New BostonProgramming, web technology free tutorials from the New Boston Youtube channel.
- Udemy
Selected courses at Udemy are available for free. - Youtube LearningA YouTube channel including how to's, DIY, tutorial and educational videos.
- EOL Encyclopedia of Life
The Encyclopedia of Life Learning + Education website (EOL L+E) is part of the larger EOL collaborative. EOL L+E works with educators, citizen scientists and partners to make this information accessible through free tools, services and resources.
- Atlas of Living Australia This link opens in a new window
Contains Australian biodiversity data on the distribution of Australia's fauna and flora.
- ccMixter
ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want. - digccMixter
Find out why one out of six uploads to digccMixter are used in a YouTube(tm) video, flickr moving image, podcast, compilation album and thousands of other places all over the web.
Use of the music requires attribution. - Free Music ArchiveThis site offers free downloads under Creative Commons and other licences. See the track page to discover what you can and cannot do with each track.
- Moving Image Archive
This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download. - NASANASA has a large collection of current and historical astronomy related images to browse through. The images are generally not copyrighted and are available for educational and informational use. The images are all high resolution and file sizes can be quite large so images may need to be resized for use.
- New York Public Library
This public domain collection includes the New York City collection, historic maps, botanical illustrations, unique manuscripts, photographs, ancient religious texts, and more. - Open Images
Open Images is an open media platform that offers online access to audiovisual archive material to stimulate creative reuse. An initiative of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. - Paris Musees
Paris Musées offers Open Content (free and unrestricted availability) to more than 150,000 digital reproductions of works from the collections of the museums of the City of Paris in high definition. - RiJKS StudioSign up for an account to download images of artworks where copyright holders have given permission, or where copyright has expired.
- Smithsonian Open Access
Share and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centres, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. - Unsplash
Unsplash photos are licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash. Be aware that photos from other sources may be visible on the page which are licensed differently. - Google Images
How to find Creative Commons images on Google: 1. Enter your topic search. 2. Use Tools > Usage Rights > Creative Commons. - Public Domain Image ArchiveHistoric images and photographs in the public domain
Open access resources