1. How do I find open access articles and books outside of the library? 

Using a Browser extension

You can download the browser extension, Open Access Button, Unpaywall, or CORE. These extensions check to see if there is a free, open access version available of articles locked behind paywalls. If the article isn’t available, they will send a message to the author(s) requesting them to make it open access. 

To use these browser extensions, simply download them to your computer browser, and click on the open access button to see if the article is available free somewhere else. 

Searching the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is an online digital library that provides free access to its collection of websites, software, books, videos, and other resources available to search. 

Finding alternative versions on Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a search engine for scholarly literature that searches by relevance. You can use the options on the left sidebar to further filter results by date and type. Beneath an article’s title there may be an option to click “All Versions” to find open access versions of the article. 

Us Open Access Search Engines and Digital Collections

There are specific repositories and search engines dedicated to Open Access resources. Check out:

• Mount Royal University’s Repository digital showcase of the research, scholarship, effective teaching materials, and other intellectual contributions of the MRU community.
• arXiv open-access archive of scholarly articles from fields such as but not limited to: physics, mathematics, and computer science.
• OSF Preprints scholarly commons used to connect and capture the research cycle of a variety of subjects including but not limited to: Arts and Humanities, Business, and Law.
• PubMed Central is a free full-text archive from the US National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine.
• BASE search engine
• OAIster search engine
• Open Science directory search
• Open Access Theses and Dissertations open access graduate theses and dissertations published from around the world.
• The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a searchable database of peer-reviewed open access journal articles
• The Directory of Open Access books (DOAB) is a searchable index of free scholarly, peer-reviewed books, with links to the full text. 
• Héritage access to primary-source documents. Chronicling the country and its people from the 1600s to the mid 1900s.
• Open Textbook Library peer-reviewed open access textbooks made freely accessible for students and educators.
• Smithsonian Open Access free access to 2D and 3D digital items from the Smithsonian collection.

Explore more Open Access Databases through the MRU Library Database Search.

2. How do I find open access books beyond the library? 

The Directory of Open Access books (DOAB) is a searchable index of free scholarly, peer-reviewed books, with links to the full text. It can also be used to find a trustworthy publisher to publish an open access book and provide guidelines on the process.

Users can use the search bar to search all fields, or use the advanced search filters for more specific queries.

Users can use the browse feature to look through several books that are related in some way: subject, publisher, language, or collections.