Directories & Databases for OA Journals and Repositories

The following list is of a few selected directories and databases that can be used to search for OA journals, and also to search the text of archived OA material.

CARL/ABRC OAI Harvester
The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) Open Archives Metadata Harvester is the search service for the CARL Institutional Repositories Pilot Project and aggregates material from each of the participating Canadian institutions, allowing users to seamlessly search all of the repositories at once, using one common point of access. The purpose of the Pilot Project is to increase the accessibility of Canadian scholarly material. Currently, Canadian research output is published and distributed in extremely diverse platforms and formats. As well, the majority of Canadian research output is published outside of Canada, with its institutional and national origins concealed. The CARL Institutional Repository Pilot Project aims to increase the visibility of Canadian researchers and universities through the implementation of repositories at a number of Canadian institutions.  Like the OpenDOAR, a search of CARL can yield not only journal articles, but also grey literature.

Directory of Open Access Journals – DOAJ
This service provides categorized, searchable links to free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 3437 journals in the directory. Journals can be browsed by title or by subject area. The Public Health subject listing currently includes 103 journals. There are currently 1167 journals are searchable at the article level.

The Directory of Open Access Repositories – OpenDOAR
OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded. OpenDOAR staff harvest and assign metadata to allow categorisation and analysis to assist the wider use and exploitation of repositories. This in-depth approach does not rely on automated analysis and gives a quality-controlled list of repositories. As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR allows users to search for repositories or search repository contents.  Beyond open access journal articles, a search of repository contents may yield OpenCourse materials, theses, conference proceedings and presentations, OA e-books, etc.

The Free Medical Journals Site
Provides lists of and links to over 430 free medical journals, which can be browsed by title, language, and subject area. A list is also provided of new journals. Details of any Delayed OA restrictions on these are provided (e.g. free access after one year).

Open J-Gate
Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain. Launched in 2006, Open J-Gate is the contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd to promote the Open Access Initiative (OAI). Open J-Gate provides seamless access to millions of journal articles available online. Open J-Gate is also a database of journal literature, indexed from 4393 open access journals (2373 of which are peer-reviewed scholarly journals), with links to full text at Publisher sites.  

PubMedCentral (PMC)
PubMed Central is a free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), developed and managed by NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the National Library of Medicine (NLM). With PubMed Central, NLM is taking the lead in preserving and maintaining unrestricted access to the electronic literature, just as it has done for decades with the printed biomedical literature. PubMed Central aims to fill the role of a world class library in the digital age. NLM believes that giving all users free and unrestricted access to the material in PubMed Central is the best way to ensure the durability and utility of the archive as technology changes over time. This archive can be searched by entering one or more search terms (such as topic, author or journal title) or by browsing journal titles, holdings, and embargo information in the PMC Journal List.

Return to TOP