This is a version of the LibGuide I started while employed at Temple University Health Sciences Library from July 2015-September 12, 2022. I plan to maintain it here going forward.
*All of the material available through these websites is free to read. However, not all of the material can be reused. Please check individual licenses for exact reuse guidelines.
OA Catalogs
- OAIster This link opens in a new windowOAIster serves as a search portal for digital collections of electronic books, online journals, audio and image files, and movies provided by the research library community. Users can search by keyword, title, creator, subject or resource type. OAIster is a union catalog of digital records built by harvesting records using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).
OA Search Engines
- Science.gov Gateway to government science information and research results.
- Evidence Aid EvidenceAid provides free access to published systematic reviews of relevance to natural disasters, humanitarian crises or major healthcare emergencies, that include health outcomes.
- CORE Search across hundreds of open repositories from around the world.
- Google Scholar Google Scholar provides search for scholarly literature. It covers disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
Open Data Sharing
- NIH Data Sharing Repositories
- Healthdata.gov Inventory of publicly available health data resources.
- HSRIC Directory of Data, Tools & Statistics Health Services Research- Information Central is an index of selective links representing a sample of available health information for research.
- re3data Research data repository registry
- Dryad General open data repository
- Figshare General open data repository
- Zenodo General open data repository
- Data Portals Global open government data
- Data Hub 11,000 datasets
- DataCite DataCite is a registry of datasets, software, images, and other research material. They also provide DOIs to act as persistent identifiers for research data and outputs.
- ICPSR ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
- Scientific Data – Recommended Repositories The scholarly journal Scientific Data maintains a list of recommended public data repositories. The list includes repositories for scientific data in most scientific disciplines, including health sciences and medicine.
- Open Access Directory – Data Repositories The Open Access Directory maintains a list of repositories and databases that have open access data.
- Project Data Sphere Project Data Sphere offers historical, patient-level data from academic and industry phase III cancer clinical trials.
Preprints /OA Self-Archived Directories
- search.bioPreprint This link opens in a new windowsearch.bioPreprint searches across several preprint databases to discover yet-to-be published or reviewed biomedical research articles. This is a free resource provided by the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System.
- PsyArXiv
- SSRN Medical Preprints
- OSF (Open Science Framework)
- Cogprints An electronic archive for self-archived papers in any area of psychology, neuroscience, and Linguistics. (See Medicine category.)
OA Repositories/Repository Directories
- SHARE 2.0 ARL/COS open access initiative to search all institutional repositories. Launched September 2016
- OSF Preprints The open preprint repository network. Including search results from arXiv, PeerJ, Research Papers in Economics, and others, in addition to the branded preprint services hosted by COS (PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, and engrXiv). Launched September 2016
- OpenDOAR 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.
- BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) An online search tool for open access resources and documents. Hosted at the Bielefeld University Library in Germany, BASE harvests its data from open access scholarly repositories.
- NIH Data Sharing Repositories List of NIH NIH-supported data repositories that make data accessible for reuse.
- ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories) International directory of open access institutional and national repositories maintained by ePrints.
- ROARMAP Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies is a companion directory of ROAR that lists mandates of institutions and governments about open access publishing
- SRDR (Systematic Review Data Repository)
- Open-Access Medical Image Repositories List of repositories for locating OA medical images. Note*:Please check individual licenses for exact reuse guidelines.
- NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePort) The Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT) Website provides a central point of access to reports, data, and analyses of NIH research.
- NIH-RePORTER (RePORT Expenditures and Results) module RePORTER is an electronic tool that allows users to search a repository of NIH-funded research projects and access publications and patents resulting from NIH funding.
Publishing in an OA journal? Quick Tips
- Trust your instincts
- Look at the quality of the articles published in the journal
- Check to see if the journal is indexed in PubMed and included in DOAJ
- Think. Check. Submit.
- Spam emails or calls may = scam alert (Dear esteemed scholar…)
- Google the journal to find out what others are saying.
- Don’t be too trusting! Don’t be afraid to validate affiliations, editorial board, and impact factors.
- When in doubt contact a librarian to check for you.
Oops, if you find any broken links, please contact me!
Systematic Review (Evidence Synthesis) Librarian 