Finding information when you have left university
When you have left university, you may still want to find academic research and scholarly information. Perhaps you are considering further study and want to read more about a subject, or this will be beneficial in the field of employment that you are entering, or for your own personal interests.
Many academic sources require paid subscriptions, but there is an increasing amount of free (open access) research that you can find and read. Here are good starting points to explore:
This is the “academic part” of Google, which provides a comprehensive search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles. Try using the Advanced Search option for more specific searches. However, be aware that not all content found in Google Scholar is free and you may be asked to pay for individual articles.
JSTOR and Artstore
https://about.jstor.org/oa-and-free/
A digital library that provides free access to journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines. If you register for a free personal account, then you can access even more content.
OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories
https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/
A directory of institutional (or scholarly) open access repositories worldwide. These repositories are archives for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, (e.g. all the research produced at a university). You can browse the Directory by country and region, or search by repository name. There is also an Advanced Search option.
You can also search CCCU Research Space Repository to find research produced at CCCU. You might want to look at content on here if you are considering doing postgraduate study.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) - https://www.doabooks.org/
Contains over 50,000 free, full text, peer reviewed books on a range of subjects from over 600 publishers, all published for free under an Open Access licence. Books can be searched (using a simple or advanced search) or browsed by title, subject, or publisher.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) - https://doaj.org/
Covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. They cover all subjects and languages. There are over 6000 available journals in the directory.
Access to Research – A service that provides free walk-in access to over 30 million academic articles from UK public libraries. View which articles and journals are available from home, then find a participating local library where you can read the full text.
You can find a wealth of Open Access scholarly sources, including journals, books and book chapters, on publisher websites, e.g. Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Wiley
EThOS - https://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do
The British Library’s “Electronic Theses Online Service”. Search the records of over 400,000 doctoral theses, read abstracts and follow links to other repositories. You will need to register if you want to download or order a scanned copy of a thesis (if available). Many are free to access, some may have a fee.
*An ethical note of caution: you may be able to find research freely available online, but be wary of websites which claim to give free access to research papers without any regard to copyright. They may have obtained and posted them illegally.
Sites that you can sign up to such as Academia.edu and Researchgate could be used to find research papers that authors have uploaded, or where they can be contacted, but be aware of any potential copyright infringement.