Specialist resources

Finding Open Access articles and etheses

Academic journal articles and research papers which are freely available on the web are often known as Open Access articles. These can be the final published article.  Or alternatively, preprints, i.e. the draft paper before it is submitted to a journal, or postprints, i.e. the peer reviewed article which has been accepted for submission to a journal. Learn more about pre-prints in this short video. Many Open Access articles are gathered into collections (also known as open access repositories or eprint archives) which can be subject or institutionally based.

How to find Open Access articles

Many Open Access Repositories can be cross searched using Open Access search engines. For example:

OAISTER from WorldCat. OAIster is a union catalogue of millions of records from open archive resources.

OpenDOAR provides a search across their authoritative directory of academic open access repositories

CORE (COnnecting REpositories) - cross search the full text of items held in many open access repositories.

SHARE: cross search of repositories that cover the full research lifecycle: from grant proposals and research datasets to journal articles, etc. 

How to find e-theses/dissertations

Increasingly the full text of theses and dissertations are becoming available online.

The University of Stirling’s research theses are available in STORRE: Stirling Online Research Repository

Global Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Search - from The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) allows you to search for electronic theses from around the world. Includes the UK EThOS service.

OATD - Open Access Theses and Dissertations is a search engine for locating international graduate level theses and dissertations.

PQDT Open is another search engine for locating full text open access theses and dissertations.

Index to Theses - available on and off campus to Stirling University students and staff. A database of theses submitted to Higher Education institutions in the UK and Ireland from 1716.