Review of 10 Free academic journal websites

Scholarly journals are a valuable source of information for school papers and projects. But not all of them are free—some require expensive subscriptions, while others are exclusive to society members. If you’re a student, here are ten sites that give you free access to academic journals.

Penn Library Electronic Journals

Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania , this service combines free electronic scholarly journals with subscription-based ones. Some of the journals are exclusive to Penn students, but it’s a good way to see which titles you can freely access elsewhere. The listings can be a bit erratic, though—some subscription-based materials have been listed as free and vice versa.

Florida Atlantic University Libraries

The FAU library lists over 80 journal titles across several fields of study. The journals are free for all, including non-students, and classified according to subject. The list can be accessed on and off campus. Students and faculty can access additional subscription-based titles, but the free titles offer a broad enough scope for students.

University of Iowa Library

The main advantage of this source is its search function, which lets you look up journals or individual articles. The titles are classified several ways, so you can search by article title, journal name, subject matter, or even date of publication. Searching by subject also draws up a list of subcategories, which can come in handy when you’re not looking for a specific title.

University of California, Santa Barbara Library

Here you’ll find a list of websites and universities that offer free access to scholarly journals, as well as the school’s own collection. It’s actually part of an academic project rather than an official directory, so resources are limited; topics covered include engineering, biological sciences, mathematics, medicine, and physical science.

Stanford University HighWire Press

Stanford hosts the world’s largest database of free science articles. HighWire Press offers free full-text versions of journal articles, which can be searched in any number of ways: by author, date, subject, page number, volume, and even in-text quotes. There’s also a comprehensive list of journal titles and links to free sites.

University of Nevada, Reno Libraries

This one offers a long, detailed list of free electronic journals on just about any subject, with literally hundreds of titles. It’s not searchable, but you can jump to subject lists so it’s not that tedious. The titles come with publication dates and publisher names, and are linked to the journal’s official site or volume archive.

Fetch Database of Free E-journals

This is a search-based listing of electronic titles hosted by the Manhattan College Libraries . Over 11,000 journals are on the database, although some only offer some parts free. They don’t include journals that offer exclusive full-text content to subscribers, and most of the non-English journals have been translated with the AltaVista Babelfish service.

Seton Hall University Libraries

The Seton Hall Libraries boast a massive collection of academic journals across several fields of study. You can search full-text electronic materials from the database, or if you have access to the library itself, look up titles in paper, microform, and other formats. The list is fully searchable and includes links to the journal site when applicable.

Education Resources Information Center

A project of the U.S. Department of Education , ERIC provides free full-text materials and citations of education literature. It is by far the largest collection, with over records exceeding 1.2 million. They are currently in the process of digitizing around 340,000 microfiche documents, so expect the database to grow in the coming years.

AERA SIG Communication of Research

This project is provided by the Arizona State University in support of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. The list is not very extensive, but it’s very selective: they’ve excluded all sites that charge even a minimum for any content, and include only peer-reviewed, refereed and full-text titles. American journals make up majority of the list, but there are also titles from Australia, Europe and Asia.

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