Research Guides: Environmental Science: Open Access Resources

Open Access Resources

Agricola
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The USDA National Agricultural Library’s main search tool. It provides simple, one-stop access to more than 7 million records covering all aspects of agriculture and related disciplines.
arXiv
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Open access repository of pre-print articles in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, Statistics, Electrical Engineering and Systems Science, and Economics.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is an online library providing free and open access to the legacy literature of taxonomy and biodiversity. Materials in BHL are provided by a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries who have come together to digitize the literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make it available as part of a global 'biodiversity commons.' The bulk of material in the BHL is in the public domain in the United States, meaning that the publication date is prior to 1923. Many of the collections contain rare published literature previously available only to those who could visit the institutions.
BioMed Central Open Access
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Contains journals that are available as open access including Environmental Health and BMC Biology.

BioOne Open Access
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In addition to twelve fully-OA titles available through the BioOne Open Access Collection, many BioOne titles in the subscribed collections periodically designate select articles as open access, making them freely available to all users.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
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DOAB provides open access to hundreds of Academic peer-reviewed books from over 25 publishers.
Directory of Open Access Journals
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This includes articles from more than 700 titles from around the world. Syracuse University is adding these to the e-journal list linked from the SUMMIT database home page, so you can search for specific titles or browse topics. Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, Fishery Bulletin, Journal of Construction Education, and Biopolicy Journal are just a few of the titles included.
Encyclopedia of Life
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This is a collaborative initiative to collect information on every species on earth and share that knowledge in an open, freely accessible digital resource.
Google Scholar
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This is a search engine for scholarly publications from peer-reviewed journals, professional societies, books, theses, and other sources. Very useful for counting times items are cited.
HighWire Press Open Access Journals
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Offers some free articles in biological, physical and social sciences and medicine. Click here for a list of included titles.

JournalTOCs
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This includes the latest tables of contents from over 14,000 scholarly journals. Browsable by subject area, searchable by journal name, free registration for RSS notification of new content.
Online Books Page
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This offers over one million titles available free online, including books and serials.

Public Library of Science (PLoS) Open Access Journals
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A collection of open access peer-reviewed research journals in science and medicine that include original research as well as timely feature articles. Journals cover the fields of medicine, biology, computational biology, genetics, pathogens, neglected tropical diseases and clinical trials.
PubMed Central
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Open access full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Library of Medicine (NLM).

Science.gov
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This searches over 40 databases and over 2000 selected websites, providing s of U.S., government science information , including research and development reports.

Scientific Journals International
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This is a new publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, health, education, and social sciences. Links to online issues are included.
Worldcat
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This is a combined catalog of over 10,000 libraries worldwide, reflecting a wide variety of formats. Locations of owning libraries are shown, to facilitate interlibrary loan.

Wolfram|Alpha
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Contains a wealth of chemistry data, and provides you with chemical computations in the context of a given search. An effective learning tool for students looking for ways to learn and test their knowledge of chemistry basics.
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Example: number of moles in 5 grams of glucose.

Evaluating Sources

Evaluate web resources carefully! Anyone can publish anything on the web. Consider the following:
1. Accuracy—purpose of site, author and institutional contact information.
2. Authority—authors’ credentials, check domain of site (.edu, .gov, .com).
3. Objectivity—accurate information, limited advertising.
4. Currency—page current and updated regularly, links working (especially important for medical info), date of last update visible.
5. Readability—technology requirements appropriate, loads without errors, links work.
Add up all these requirements. If all or most are met, this page may be appropriate for your research.