Open access publications can be read online free of charge by anyone.
Open access material includes studies that were originally published openly and publications that were originally paywalled, but later made openly available via a publication archive, for example.
Go to:
- Search engines
- Open educational resources
- Finnish sources
- Publication archives
- Theses
- Materials on UEF Primo
- Browser add-ons and extensions
- Reliability of publications
Open access publications include:
- OA journals (scientific and trade journals, journals published by scientific societies)
- individual articles in scientific journals subject to a charge that are published as open access articles
- articles, theses (some) and other publications stored in publication archives
- publications by public research institutions and the authorities
- OA books (old books, open textbooks, open non-fiction)
Articles, in particular, are published openly
According to a European Commission report, open research publications have accounted for 35 to 40% of all publications in recent years. Read more from Trends for open access to publications. However, open access publication did not become prevalent until the 21st century, due to which the majority of scientific knowledge is still paywalled.
Terms
OA = Open Access
Embargo means a delay in open access publication, during which the publication is only available to subscribers/members. Embargoes can be imposed on articles saved in publication archives, among others.
Please refer to the Open publishing terminology list for more terminology related to open publishing.
While working on the university’s campuses, you have access not only to open access material, but paywalled material as well (which is paid for by the university library). As a campus user, it may be difficult to identify which articles are genuinely open access and which are paywalled, as access rights in the university network are verified based on the computer’s IP address. This should be taken into account when linking publications to learning materials or other material, for example. Creating a hyperlink is a convenient way to use open access publications. Other utilisation of open publications is subject to the same copyright regulations as all other publications. Read more: The ABC of Copyright.
You should not limit your information retrieval to open access material only if you have access to other publications as well. Instead, you can utilise open access material and open access search engines alongside other information retrieval methods.
Outside of the campus network, paywalled publications can only be accessed by logging in to UEF Primo. Doing so requires a UEF user account, which means that remote access is only given to university staff and students. However, campus libraries are open to the public, which means that anyone can come to the libraries and access their material, including almost all paywalled content.
OA Information retrieval tools
You can approach open access publications in one of two ways: by tracking down open access versions of publications that you have already found or by using search engines/databases specifically designed for retrieving open access publications. It is important to evaluate OA-publications, all of them don´t meet the criteria of scholarly and peer reviewed.
Comprehensive search engines
Wide range of different publication types (articles, learning materials, images, master and bachelor theses etc.) Multidisciplinary. Data from repositories and platforms like OpenDOAR and Crossref.
Versatile search capabilities and search result filters.
Entire text available for approximately 60% of search results.
Scientific articles from OA and hybrid journals and preprint servers, as well as institutional repositories; contains also bachelor and master theses. Multidisciplinary.
Google’s search engine specialising in scientific content.
Research papers, theses, presentations, books, abstracts, conference publications and articles produced by academic publishers, communities, universities and other research organisations.
Also includes materials other than actual scientific information.
Some of the material is not open access.
A wide variety of publication and article types as well as research datasets and standards.
Interdisciplinary and broad. The search result can be filtered for instance by open access, year and topic.
The most important data sources are Crossref and Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG), among others.
Uses AI to help scholars locate and understand the right research, make important connections, and overcome information overload. Covers all disciplines with its almost 200 million papers.
More than 50 direct partnerships with publishers, data providers, and aggregators provide Semantic Scholar with content from 500+ academic journals, university presses, and scholarly societies around the globe.
Visual search engines
Uses BASE and PubMed as source of data.
Forms visualizations (clusters ~ "bubbles") based on 100 publications that are considered to be the most relevant. The algorithm is based on shared words in publications.
The idea is primarily to get started quickly in information retrieval, but it can also be used for tracking recent publications.
Read more about visual information retrieval tools on the library blog, also sections Advantages, Things to note and New tools alongside the traditional ones.
Both search engines use Semantic Scholar data as their source.
Research Rabbit
Based on artificial intelligence, a new way to search for publications and authors, keep up to date with new publications, visualize relationships between publications, and collaborate.
Based on PubMed data along with Semantic Scholar.
A search is started by creating a collection, at least one publication is needed. The program creates recommendations based on your collection.
Research Rabbit works in conjunction with the reference management program Zotero. Zotero integration: You can import the Zotero folder into Research Rabbit. Changes can be seen in both.
Guides:
- Video tutorial (Vimeo)
- FAQ
Zotero extension: Synchronize the Zotero folder with the Research Rabbit collection. The next time you come across a good publication online, add it to Zotero through the extension. Finally, synchronize the ResearchRabbit collection.
Connected Papers
Search with an already known article. Generates a chart based on article similarity, overlapping references, and bibliographic connections (“similarity graph”).
Read more about visual information retrieval tools on the library blog, also sections Advantages, Things to note and New tools alongside the traditional ones.
Search engines for special formats
Theses and dissertations from hundreds of European universities.
The search result can be filtered by country, language etc.
Research articles, thesis, proceedings, posters and patents. The search is limited to PDF files only. Multidisciplinary.
Searches across several preprint archives simultaneously.
For more discipline-specific search engines and material, please refer to the Discipline-specific services page.
No search engine – not even Google – can find all the content on the Internet. Some content is located in the so-called deep web, the content of which search engines cannot utilise. Deep web content includes services that require licensing and/or registration, such as paywalled scientific databases.
Search engines and services specialising in OA material are effective at accessing deep web material as well.
Open access material on UEF Primo
Free books and journals included in DOAB, DOAJ and other services can be found individually on UEF Primo. It is possible to search for journals alone via the Journal search.
You can also search for individual articles on UEF Primo by title or author. Select International articles as a target.
When searching publications by topic keywords, you can refine the results using the filter: Availability - Open access to limit to OA material only.
OA databases on UEF Primo
Scientific peer-reviewed books in different fields from various publishers, such as Bloomsbury Academic, Brill, Cambridge UP, CRC Press, the Finnish Literature Society, Frontiers Media, MDPI, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge and Springer.
The directory contains approximately 20,000 books from over 300 publishers.
Thousands of open access scientific journals. The most extensive international directory of open access scientific journals.
Also includes a search functionality.
OBP is an academic book publisher whose electronic books are open to all public.
Because UEF is a support member of OBP, accessing the service through UEF Primo results in getting no donation requests by the service.
Contain articles and/or books.
Including BioMed Central, BMJ, Brill, Wiley, JSTOR, Oxford UP, Public Library of Science, Sage, Taylor & Francis and U.S. National Library of Medicine.
There is some overlap in content with DOAJ and DOAB, for example.
Open educational resources
Links to search engines or collections containing open textbooks or other learning materials are listed below.
Searches materials from over 100 different sources.
Search can be targeted at textbooks or other learning materials. Includes subject browsing, but this functionality does not cover all native sources.
A wide variety of different types of learning materials: books, videos, slide sets, websites, etc. You can perform keyword searches and limit and browse results with filters.
The most of materials are in English or in German, but also materials with other languages are available.
Hundreds of English-language textbooks mostly from US universities. You can make a search or browse books by topic.
The site is maintained by the University of Minnesota.
Around one thousand textbooks for universities from various disciplines.
Maintained by ISKME-organisation.
In the OER, you can search for Finnish open educational resources from all levels of education. Most of the materials are in Finnish, but other languages are available as well.
- Document type D5 : textbook, professional manual or guide (a ready-made search from Research.fi. You can limit the result by language and other criteria)
Research.fi is a service offered by the Ministry of Education and Culture that collects and shares information on research conducted in Finland.
Finnish sources
Finnish sources
All publications of Finnish universities and research organisations from 2011 onwards.
Contains:
- Universities’ own publication archives
- VALTO: publications of ministries
- DORIA: some research institutes, among others
- HELDA: University of Helsinki, also includes publications of cooperation partners (agencies and research institutes)
Open access scholarly journals and annals. New articles may be embargoed.
Simple search and browsing by journal.
Open access monographs and edited books from several Finnish scientific societies. Language of the books is Finnish, Swedish or English.
The search feature requires registration, but opening the homepage of a publisher it is possible to browse and read publications freely.
Publication archives
Publication archives can be searched by subject matter and author, for example, or browsed by collection.
Publication archives
International publication archive search.
You can search/browse publication archives by country or organisation, for example, but not the actual publications contained within the archives.
Contains self-archived versions of articles and metadata of research data made available by UEF researchers.
Theses
Theses are stored in the publication archives of organizations (see links above). However, not all theses in archives are open access.
Google can reach out to content from publication archives. Add the term ‘thesis’ to your Google search.
Theses from European universities can be searched from DART-Europe E-theses Portal. This does not cover all universities.
Browser add-ons and extensions
There are also browser add-ons and extensions available that track down open access articles.
Add-ons and extensions are available for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. They are installed via the browser’s settings.
You can also search for individual articles by title on regular search engines, such as Google. Please note, however, that regular search engines do not directly show you whether the article is open access.
| Name | Use | Other functions |
|---|---|---|
| Unpaywall | Searches for article information in databases (such as Scopus, PubMed, ScienceDirect and SpringerLink), search engines and journal publishers’ websites. Automatically displays a green Unpaywall icon in the right corner of the browser window if the article is available in an open access archive. | Does not find articles that do not have a DOI. This applies to articles in the fields of the arts and the humanities, in particular. |
| Open Access button | Look for an article’s information via a search engine, journal publisher website or database and click on the extension icon in the upper right-hand corner of the browser. This will open a new window displaying the article if it is available as open access material. | By logging in to the service, you can send the author of an article a request to have the article saved in a publication archive, for example, if an open access version of the article is not yet available. |
| Google Scholar button | When you notice the title of an interesting article in a text, select it and press the extension icon in the upper right-hand corner of the browser. The extension does not open the article directly, but displays a reference for it in a Google Scholar window. From there you can search for an open access version of the article. | Clicking the ” icon provides you with a reference in your preferred citation style. You can also transfer the reference to reference management software. |
Evaluating the reliability of publications
Open publications are evaluated like any other publications: by publication type, content, author, publisher, and timeliness. On the Internet, it is worth paying special attention to different study levels of theses and to what is known about the publisher, publication channel and author. What is the web address of the publication? Who is the author? Do they have the qualifications to write on the subject? Can I find the contact information?
- article is peer reviewed or the journal in which the article is published is peer reviewed
- author’s affiliation (background organisation) is stated
- author's contact information is provided
- article follows a generally accepted way of presenting the study and its results
Predatory journals
Even dishonest operators have appeared in the field of open access publications. Since, in general, the openness of OA journals to the reader is based on the article processing charges paid by the researchers themselves, some publishers have turned it into a business.
These so-called predators do not use proper peer review nor are other general quality criteria met. You can get an article published simply by paying the required amount.
Read more about predators from UEF library blog.
- quick publication: many predators claim to use peer review, but it only takes a few weeks to publish an article – in practice there is either no peer review at all or it is very superficial
- journal accepts articles from a wide range of disciplines
- journal is not included in the DOAJ directory
- journal articles cannot be found from established article databases (such as Scopus)
- articles are poor in content; there may be shortcomings both in the study itself and in its reporting
- many of the articles are classified as reviews, in which case they are mainly brief literature reviews without new information or insight
- there may also be direct plagiarism, for example, only the title and author information have been changed in the article
- journal’s website is crudely designed – however, this is not always the case
- journal states that the editorial staff includes persons who have nothing to do with the journal
- journal has an incorrect street address
- name and contact information of the journal are in conflict, for example, the title has ‘European’ in it, but the publisher is far from Europe
Cabells Predatory Reports lists suspicious journals and provides information about their offences. You can search by journal name, ISSN number or topic.
- Cabells Predatory Reports (UEF username and password is needed)
Think - Check - Submit is a tool for checking in general, if a journal or a book seems to be reliable. It does not give information by journal title.