Finding open access research

This page contains a list of links and directories to help you find open access resources across UCL and further afield.

UCL Discovery

UCL Discovery is UCL’s open access repository, showcasing and providing access to the full texts of UCL research publications, such as journal articles, conference papers, books, chapters and theses. Publications hosted in UCL Discovery are made open access under conditions specified by the author or publisher. If you have any questions about access to publications in UCL Discovery, please contact UCL's Open Access Team.

UCL

• UCL Research Data Repository – UCL’s open access repository for research data.
• OpenEd@UCL – UCL’s open access repository for open educational resources.
• UCL Press – UCL’s open access university press.
• UCL Digital Collections – a collection of UCL’s digitised materials.

Browser extensions

These online tools/browser extensions search for legal open access copies of research articles when you encounter a paywall:

• Open Access Button.
• Unpaywall.

Directories

• ASAPBio Preprint Server directory.
• Creative Commons Content Directories – lists of organisations who use Creative Commons licences to facilitate open access.
• Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB).
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
• Directory of Open Access Repsitories (OpenDOAR).
• Open Access Directory (OAD).
• Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR).

External collections

• British Library e-theses online service (EThOS) – database of UK doctoral theses.
• CORE – aggregator of open access research outputs.
• Hathi Trust Digital Library – digitised items from an international collaboration of academic and research libraries.
• IMSLP Petrucci Library – collection of open access musical scores.
• Project Gutenberg – collection of open access e-books.
• Open Access Theses and Dissertations – international database of open access graduate theses and dissertations.
• Perseus Digital Library – collection of open access Classical and other texts.
• Shared Research Repository – shared repository platform for research held by the British Library and other UK institutions.