This is a list of no-cost sources that list or index electronic texts, including journal articles or reports. At these sites you'll find electronic books, journal articles, scientific and technical reports, conference papers, fact sheets, news transcripts, preprints, theses and dissertations. Many provide the full texts online, or abstracts, while others merely list bibliographic citations.
Employees of the U.S. Department of the Interior are reminded they may also search for journal articles by using EBSCO Online, Gale In Context: Environmental Studies, JSTOR, or Science Direct. Most employees may search these databases at their desks, while others must come to the Library or contact a Reference Librarian for assistance.
And don't forget that the library staff has added many open access reports, books, and journals to the A-to-Z List.
AGRICOLA
Database of citations to the agricultural literature created by the National Agricultural Library and its cooperators.
BioMed Central
Publisher of more than 170 peer-reviewed open access journals.
Congressional Research Service Reports
Congressional Research Service reports can be the best way to quickly get up to speed on major political issues. CRS is Congress’ think tank, and its reports are relied upon by policymakers and others for accurate, timely and nonpartisan analysis of important policy issues.
Congressional Research Service Reports
Collected and made available by the University of North Texas Libraries.
CRSReports.com
The site claims to have more than 33,000 current and historical CRS reports.
EveryCRSReport.com
In partnership with a Republican and Democratic member of Congress, EveryCRSReport.com includes reports available on Congress's internal website, more than 8,000 in all.
Library of Congress
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 directs the Library of Congress to make CRS reports publicly available online.
The result is a new public website for CRS reports based on the same search functionality that Congress uses – designed to be as user friendly as possible – that allows reports to be found by common keywords.
Moving forward, all new or updated reports will be added as they are made available to Congress. The Library is also working to make available the back catalog of previously published reports as expeditiously as possible.
Selected Congressional Research Service Reports on Congress and Its Procedures
Maintained by the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C.
Digital Book Index
Digital Book Index provides links to more than 141,000 full-text digital books from more than 1,800 commercial and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites. More than 100,000 of these books, texts, and documents are available free.
Directory of Open Access Journals
The most complete directory of open access journals, DOAJ (produced by the University of Lund Libraries) currently offers access to more than 5,000 journal titles and over 400,000 articles. It attempts to cover all subjects and includes journals that practice peer review; that do not charge readers or their institutions for access; do not use embargoes to restrict access for a period of time post-release; and, offer a majority of articles that report active research or are full-text reviews.
DOE Data Explorer
Scientific research data resulting from U.S. Department of Energy-funded research
DOE Pages
Access journal articles and accepted manuscripts resulting from U.S. Department of Energy research funding
EPA Scientific Inventory
The Science Inventory is a searchable database of research products primarily from EPA's Office of Research and Development.
ERIC Database
Educational research reports funded by the U.S. Department of Education
Find ETD's (Electronic Theses and Dissertations)
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)
GEOSCAN database
GEOSCAN is the bibliographic database for scientific publications of the Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) of Natural Resources Canada
Google Scholar
From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
HathiTrust Digital Library
A joint venture of more than 25 large American university libraries. More than six million volumes have been digitized and posted; about half of them are in English. About 20% of the volumes are in the public domain with full text available. Each month thousands of additional titles are added. The interface is designed much like a library's online catalog, and provides for greater precision in searching than does the Google Scholar interface. One can search by author, title, subject, and more. Filtering options include date and language, and retrieved individual titles feature a faceted sidebar suggesting similar types of works.
Health & Environmental Research Online (HERO)
Health and Environmental Information Online (HERO), a continuously updated database of sources considered for and/or used in human and ecosystem risk assessments, is prepared by the Environmental Protection Agency's National Center for Environmental Assessment.
National Sea Grant Library
The NSGL is pleased to offer digital libraries on coastal and marine topics. The documents in these digital libraries resulted from Sea Grant research, and the responsible Sea Grant program can be identified by the institution code in the document number.
National Service Center for Environmental Publications
Search for publications of the Environmental Protection Agency
North Slope Science Initiative
The North Slope Science Catalog facilitates the discovery, distribution and preservation of scientific data and information products. The NSSI was formally authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 with its stated purpose “to implement efforts to coordinate collection of scientific data that will provide a better understanding of the terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems of the North Slope of Alaska.” It was developed by federal, state, local and Alaska Native entities with trust responsibilities for land and ocean management, to facilitate and improve collection and dissemination of ecosystem information pertaining to the North Slope of Alaska, including coastal and offshore regions.
OAIster - about OAIster
Search OAIster
A union catalog of digital resources, OAIster provides one-stop "shopping" for users interested in useful, academically-oriented digital resources, such as digitized (i.e., scanned) books and articles, born-digital texts, audio files (e.g., wav, mp3), images (e.g., tiff, gif), movies (e.g., mp4, quicktime), and datasets (e.g., downloadable statistics files).
PolicyArchive
PolicyArchive attempts to be a comprehensive, searchable, open access, online archive of public policy research. A project of Indiana University-Purdue University's Indianapolis Library and Center for Governmental Studies, PolicyArchive includes reports, briefs, charts, videos, and white papers produced by think tanks, universities, governments, foundations and public interest organizations.
PubMed Central
Free online access to the full text of life science research articles
Science.gov
Science.gov is a gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies, including research and development results.
SciTech Connect
Science, technology, and engineering research information from the U.S. Department of Energy
SORA: Searchable Ornithological Research Archive
An open access electronic journal archive and is the product of a collaboration between the American Ornithologists Union, the Cooper Ornithological Society, the Association of Field Ornithologists, the Wilson Ornithological Society and the University of New Mexico.
TRAIL: Technical Report Archive and Image Library
TRAIL identifies, acquires, catalogs, digitizes and provides unrestricted access to U.S. government agency technical reports.
TRIS Online
Books, journal articles, and technical reports on transportation research from the 1960's to the present.
WorldWideScience.org
WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals.
Updated October 2021