What is Open Access?
Open Access refers to an alternative academic publishing model in which research outputs (including peer-reviewed academic journal articles, theses, book chapters, and monographs) are made freely available to the general public for viewing, and often for reuse.
For more about Open resources and practices at UBC visit open.ubc.ca.
Search for Open Access Materials
Use the box below to search for Open Access materials through UBC Library
New OpenVersion link
When you see OpenVersion in a result, that is a link to download a version of the article from Unpaywall, a database of almost 26 million free scholarly articles. Note that this open access version may not be the same as the final published version. Read more about Unpaywall here.
Finding Open Access Materials at UBC Library
You can also search through UBC Library's homepage. The Library's general search tool Summon currently indexes more than 200 million open access items, including articles, books, thesis, technical reports, images, and more. These items are made accessible in a variety of ways, including as full text resources (e.g. pdf, image, etc.) or through the descriptive metadata allowing you to find the full resource in open access repositories.
On the Library homepage search using Summon (General), and limit your results to openly accessible content using the “Refine Your Search” filter for “Open Access”.
Open Access Collections
Below is a list of Open Access collections you can also use to search for materials:
- Academic Indexes & Databases available through UBC Library that are open access.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): An extensive directory of scholarly open access journals from around the world.
- Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR): A directory of repositories worldwide that house open access research materials.