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21 Legit Research Databases for Free Journal Articles in 2022

#scribendiinc

Written by  Scribendi

Has this ever happened to you? While looking for websites for research, you come across a research paper site that claims to connect academics to a peer-reviewed article database for free.

Intrigued, you search for keywords related to your topic, only to discover that you must pay a hefty subscription fee to access the service. After the umpteenth time being duped, you begin to wonder if there's even such a thing as free journal articles .

Subscription fees and paywalls are often the bane of students and academics, especially those at small institutions who don't provide access to many free article directories and repositories.

Whether you're working on an undergraduate paper, a PhD dissertation, or a medical research study, we want to help you find tools to locate and access the information you need to produce well-researched, compelling, and innovative work.

Below, we discuss why peer-reviewed articles are superior and list out the best free article databases to use in 2022.

Download Our Free Research Database Roundup PDF

Why peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles are more authoritative.

Determining what sources are reliable can be challenging. Peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles are the gold standard in academic research. Reputable academic journals have a rigorous peer-review process.

The peer review process provides accountability to the academic community, as well as to the content of the article. The peer review process involves qualified experts in a specific (often very specific) field performing a review of an article's methods and findings to determine things like quality and credibility.

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in peer-reviewed article databases and research databases, and if you know that a database of journals is reliable, that can offer reassurances about the reliability of a free article. Peer review is often double blind, meaning that the author removes all identifying information and, likewise, does not know the identity of the reviewers. This helps reviewers maintain objectivity and impartiality so as to judge an article based on its merit.

Where to Find Peer-Reviewed Articles

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in a variety of research databases. Below is a list of some of the major databases you can use to find peer-reviewed articles and other sources in disciplines spanning the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

What Are Open Access Journals?

An open access (OA) journal is a journal whose content can be accessed without payment. This provides scholars, students, and researchers with free journal articles . OA journals use alternate methods of funding to cover publication costs so that articles can be published without having to pass those publication costs on to the reader.

Some of these funding models include standard funding methods like advertising, public funding, and author payment models, where the author pays a fee in order to publish in the journal. There are OA journals that have non-peer-reviewed academic content, as well as journals that focus on dissertations, theses, and papers from conferences, but the main focus of OA is peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles.

The internet has certainly made it easier to access research articles and other scholarly publications without needing access to a university library, and OA takes another step in that direction by removing financial barriers to academic content.

Choosing Wisely

Features of legitimate oa journals.

 There are things to look out for when trying to decide if a free publication journal is legitimate:

Mission statement —The mission statement for an OA journal should be available on their website.

Publication history —Is the journal well established? How long has it been available?

Editorial board —Who are the members of the editorial board, and what are their credentials?

Indexing —Can the journal be found in a reliable database?

Peer review —What is the peer review process? Does the journal allow enough time in the process for a reliable assessment of quality?

Impact factor —What is the average number of times the journal is cited over a two-year period?

Features of Illegitimate OA Journals

There are predatory publications that take advantage of the OA format, and they are something to be wary of. Here are some things to look out for:

Contact information —Is contact information provided? Can it be verified?

Turnaround —If the journal makes dubious claims about the amount of time from submission to publication, it is likely unreliable.

Editorial board —Much like determining legitimacy, looking at the editorial board and their credentials can help determine illegitimacy.

Indexing —Can the journal be found in any scholarly databases?

Peer review —Is there a statement about the peer review process? Does it fit what you know about peer review?

How to Find Scholarly Articles

Identify keywords.

Keywords are included in an article by the author. Keywords are an excellent way to find content relevant to your research topic or area of interest. In academic searches, much like you would on a search engine, you can use keywords to navigate through what is available to find exactly what you're looking for.

Authors provide keywords that will help you easily find their article when researching a related topic, often including general terms to accommodate broader searches, as well as some more specific terms for those with a narrower scope. Keywords can be used individually or in combination to refine your scholarly article search.

Narrow Down Results

Sometimes, search results can be overwhelming, and searching for free articles on a journal database is no exception, but there are multiple ways to narrow down your results. A good place to start is discipline.

What category does your topic fall into (psychology, architecture, machine learning, etc.)? You can also narrow down your search with a year range if you're looking for articles that are more recent.

A Boolean search can be incredibly helpful. This entails including terms like AND between two keywords in your search if you need both keywords to be in your results (or, if you are looking to exclude certain keywords, to exclude these words from the results).

Consider Different Avenues

If you're not having luck using keywords in your search for free articles, you may still be able to find what you're looking for by changing your tactics. Casting a wider net sometimes yields positive results, so it may be helpful to try searching by subject if keywords aren't getting you anywhere.

You can search for a specific publisher to see if they have OA publications in the academic journal database. And, if you know more precisely what you're looking for, you can search for the title of the article or the author's name.

The Top 21 Free Online Journal and Research Databases

Navigating OA journals, research article databases, and academic websites trying to find high-quality sources for your research can really make your head spin. What constitutes a reliable database? What is a useful resource for your discipline and research topic? How can you find and access full-text, peer-reviewed articles?

Fortunately, we're here to help. Having covered some of the ins and outs of peer review, OA journals, and how to search for articles, we have compiled a list of the top 21 free online journals and the best research databases. This list of databases is a great resource to help you navigate the wide world of academic research.

These databases provide a variety of free sources, from abstracts and citations to full-text, peer-reviewed OA journals. With databases covering specific areas of research and interdisciplinary databases that provide a variety of material, these are some of our favorite free databases, and they're totally legit!

CORE is a multidisciplinary aggregator of OA research. CORE has the largest collection of OA articles available. It allows users to search more than 219 million OA articles. While most of these link to the full-text article on the original publisher's site, or to a PDF available for download, five million records are hosted directly on CORE.

CORE's mission statement is a simple and straightforward commitment to offering OA articles to anyone, anywhere in the world. They also host communities that are available for researchers to join and an ambassador community to enhance their services globally. In addition to a straightforward keyword search, CORE offers advanced search options to filter results by publication type, year, language, journal, repository, and author.

CORE's user interface is easy to use and navigate. Search results can be sorted based on relevance or recency, and you can search for relevant content directly from the results screen.

Collection: 219,537,133 OA articles

Other Services: Additional services are available from CORE, with extras that are geared toward researchers, repositories, and businesses. There are tools for accessing raw data, including an API that provides direct access to data, datasets that are available for download, and FastSync for syncing data content from the CORE database.

CORE has a recommender plug-in that suggests relevant OA content in the database while conducting a search and a discovery feature that helps you discover OA versions of paywalled articles. Other features include tools for managing content, such as a dashboard for managing repository output and the Repository Edition service to enhance discoverability.

Good Source of Peer-Reviewed Articles: Yes

Advanced Search Options: Language, author, journal, publisher, repository, DOI, year

2. ScienceOpen

Functioning as a research and publishing network, ScienceOpen offers OA to more than 74 million articles in all areas of science. Although you do need to register to view the full text of articles, registration is free. The advanced search function is highly detailed, allowing you to find exactly the research you're looking for.

The Berlin- and Boston-based company was founded in 2013 to "facilitate open and public communications between academics and to allow ideas to be judged on their merit, regardless of where they come from." Search results can be exported for easy integration with reference management systems.

You can also bookmark articles for later research. There are extensive networking options, including your Science Open profile, a forum for interacting with other researchers, the ability to track your usage and citations, and an interactive bibliography. Users have the ability to review articles and provide their knowledge and insight within the community.

Collection: 74,560,631

Other Services: None

Advanced Search Options:  Content type, source, author, journal, discipline

3. Directory of Open Access Journals

A multidisciplinary, community-curated directory, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) gives researchers access to high-quality peer-reviewed journals. It has archived more than two million articles from 17,193 journals, allowing you to either browse by subject or search by keyword.

The site was launched in 2003 with the aim of increasing the visibility of OA scholarly journals online. Content on the site covers subjects from science, to law, to fine arts, and everything in between. DOAJ has a commitment to "increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, OA scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language."

Information about the journal is available with each search result. Abstracts are also available in a collapsible format directly from the search screen. The scholarly article website is somewhat simple, but it is easy to navigate. There are 16 principles of transparency and best practices in scholarly publishing that clearly outline DOAJ policies and standards.

Collection: 6,817,242

Advanced Search Options:  Subject, journal, year

4. Education Resources Information Center

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) of the Institution of Education Sciences allows you to search by topic for material related to the field of education. Links lead to other sites, where you may have to purchase the information, but you can search for full-text articles only. You can also search only peer-reviewed sources.

The service primarily indexes journals, gray literature (such as technical reports, white papers, and government documents), and books. All sources of material on ERIC go through a formal review process prior to being indexed. ERIC's selection policy is available as a PDF on their website.

The ERIC website has an extensive FAQ section to address user questions. This includes categories like general questions, peer review, and ERIC content. There are also tips for advanced searches, as well as general guidance on the best way to search the database. ERIC is an excellent database for content specific to education.

Collection: 1,292,897

Advanced Search Options: Boolean

5. arXiv e-Print Archive

The arXiv e-Print Archive is run by Cornell University Library and curated by volunteer moderators, and it now offers OA to more than one million e-prints.

There are advisory committees for all eight subjects available on the database. With a stated commitment to an "emphasis on openness, collaboration, and scholarship," the arXiv e-Print Archive is an excellent STEM resource.

The interface is not as user-friendly as some of the other databases available, and the website hosts a blog to provide news and updates, but it is otherwise a straightforward math and science resource. There are simple and advanced search options, and, in addition to conducting searches for specific topics and articles, users can browse content by subject. The arXiv e-Print Archive clearly states that they do not peer review the e-prints in the database.

Collection: 1,983,891

Good Source of Peer-Reviewed Articles: No

Advanced Search Options:  Subject, date, title, author, abstract, DOI

6. Social Science Research Network

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a collection of papers from the social sciences community. It is a highly interdisciplinary platform used to search for scholarly articles related to 67 social science topics. SSRN has a variety of research networks for the various topics available through the free scholarly database.

The site offers more than 700,000 abstracts and more than 600,000 full-text papers. There is not yet a specific option to search for only full-text articles, but, because most of the papers on the site are free access, it's not often that you encounter a paywall. There is currently no option to search for only peer-reviewed articles.

You must become a member to use the services, but registration is free and enables you to interact with other scholars around the world. SSRN is "passionately committed to increasing inclusion, diversity and equity in scholarly research," and they encourage and discuss the use of inclusive language in scholarship whenever possible.

Collection: 1,058,739 abstracts; 915,452 articles

Advanced Search Options: Term, author, date, network

7. Public Library of Science

Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a big player in the world of OA science. Publishing 12 OA journals, the nonprofit organization is committed to facilitating openness in academic research. According to the site, "all PLOS content is at the highest possible level of OA, meaning that scientific articles are immediately and freely available to anyone, anywhere."

PLOS outlines four fundamental goals that guide the organization: break boundaries, empower researchers, redefine quality, and open science. All PLOS journals are peer-reviewed, and all 12 journals uphold rigorous ethical standards for research, publication, and scientific reporting.

PLOS does not offer advanced search options. Content is organized by topic into research communities that users can browse through, in addition to options to search for both articles and journals. The PLOS website also has resources for peer reviewers, including guidance on becoming a reviewer and on how to best participate in the peer review process.

Collection: 12 journals

Advanced Search Options: None

8. OpenDOAR

OpenDOAR, or the Directory of Open Access Repositories, is a comprehensive resource for finding free OA journals and articles. Using Google Custom Search, OpenDOAR combs through OA repositories around the world and returns relevant research in all disciplines.

The repositories it searches through are assessed and categorized by OpenDOAR staff to ensure they meet quality standards. Inclusion criteria for the database include requirements for OA content, global access, and categorically appropriate content, in addition to various other quality assurance measures. OpenDOAR has metadata, data, content, preservation, and submission policies for repositories, in addition to two OA policy statements regarding minimum and optimum recommendations.

This database allows users to browse and search repositories, which can then be selected, and articles and data can be accessed from the repository directly. As a repository database, much of the content on the site is geared toward the support of repositories and OA standards.

Collection: 5,768 repositories

Other Services: OpenDOAR offers a variety of additional services. Given the nature of the platform, services are primarily aimed at repositories and institutions, and there is a marked focus on OA in general. Sherpa services are OA archiving tools for authors and institutions.

They also offer various resources for OA support and compliance regarding standards and policies. The publication router matches publications and publishers with appropriate repositories.

There are also services and resources from JISC for repositories for cost management, discoverability, research impact, and interoperability, including ORCID consortium membership information. Additionally, a repository self-assessment tool is available for members.

Advanced Search Options:  Name, organization name, repository type, software name, content type, subject, country, region

9. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) is operated by the Bielefeld University Library in Germany, and it offers more than 240 million documents from more than 8,000 sources. Sixty percent of its content is OA, and you can filter your search accordingly.

BASE has rigorous inclusion requirements for content providers regarding quality and relevance, and they maintain a list of content providers for the sake of transparency, which can be easily found on their website. BASE has a fairly elegant interface. Search results can be organized by author, title, or date.

From the search results, items can be selected and exported, added to favorites, emailed, and searched in Google Scholar. There are basic and advanced search features, with the advanced search offering numerous options for refining search criteria. There is also a feature on the website that saves recent searches without additional steps from the user.

Collection: 276,019,066 documents; 9,286 content providers

Advanced Search Options:  Author, subject, year, content provider, language, document type, access, terms of reuse

10. Digital Library of the Commons Repository

Run by Indiana University, the Digital Library of the Commons (DLC) Repository is a multidisciplinary journal repository that allows users to access thousands of free and OA articles from around the world. You can browse by document type, date, author, title, and more or search for keywords relevant to your topic.

DCL also offers the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons, an image database, and a keyword thesaurus for enhanced search parameters. The repository includes books, book chapters, conference papers, journal articles, surveys, theses and dissertations, and working papers. DCL advanced search features drop-down menus of search types with built-in Boolean search options.

Searches can be sorted by relevance, title, date, or submission date in ascending or descending order. Abstracts are included in selected search results, with access to full texts available, and citations can be exported from the same page. Additionally, the image database search includes tips for better search results.

Collection: 10,784

Advanced Search Options:  Author, date, title, subject, sector, region, conference

11. CIA World Factbook

The CIA World Factbook is a little different from the other resources on this list in that it is not an online journal directory or repository. It is, however, a useful free online research database for academics in a variety of disciplines.

All the information is free to access, and it provides facts about every country in the world, which are organized by category and include information about history, geography, transportation, and much more. The World Factbook can be searched by country or region, and there is also information about the world’s oceans.

This site contains resources related to the CIA as an organization rather than being a scientific journal database specifically. The site has a user interface that is easy to navigate. The site also provides a section for updates regarding changes to what information is available and how it is organized, making it easier to interact with the information you are searching for.

Collection: 266 countries

12. Paperity

Paperity boasts its status as the "first multidisciplinary aggregator of OA journals and papers." Their focus is on helping you avoid paywalls while connecting you to authoritative research. In addition to providing readers with easy access to thousands of journals, Paperity seeks to help authors reach their audiences and help journals increase their exposure to boost readership.

Paperity has journal articles for every discipline, and the database offers more than a dozen advanced search options, including the length of the paper and the number of authors. There is even an option to include, exclude, or exclusively search gray papers.

Paperity is available for mobile, with both a mobile site and the Paperity Reader, an app that is available for both Android and Apple users. The database is also available on social media. You can interact with Paperity via Twitter and Facebook, and links to their social media are available on their homepage, including their Twitter feed.

Collection: 8,837,396

Advanced Search Options: Title, abstract, journal title, journal ISSN, publisher, year of publication, number of characters, number of authors, DOI, author, affiliation, language, country, region, continent, gray papers

13. dblp Computer Science Bibliography

The dblp Computer Science Bibliography is an online index of major computer science publications. dblp was founded in 1993, though until 2010 it was a university-specific database at the University of Trier in Germany. It is currently maintained by the Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics.

Although it provides access to both OA articles and those behind a paywall, you can limit your search to only OA articles. The site indexes more than three million publications, making it an invaluable resource in the world of computer science. dblp entries are color-coded based on the type of item.

dblp has an extensive FAQ section, so questions that might arise about topics like the database itself, navigating the website, or the data on dblp, in addition to several other topics, are likely to be answered. The website also hosts a blog and has a section devoted to website statistics.

Collection: 5,884,702

14. EconBiz

EconBiz is a great resource for economic and business studies. A service of the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, it offers access to full texts online, with the option of searching for OA material only. Their literature search is performed across multiple international databases.

EconBiz has an incredibly useful research skills section, with resources such as Guided Walk, a service to help students and researchers navigate searches, evaluate sources, and correctly cite references; the Research Guide EconDesk, a help desk to answer specific questions and provide advice to aid in literature searches; and the Academic Career Kit for what they refer to as Early Career Researchers.

Other helpful resources include personal literature lists, a calendar of events for relevant calls for papers, conferences, and workshops, and an economics terminology thesaurus to help in finding keywords for searches. To stay up-to-date with EconBiz, you can sign up for their newsletter.

Collection: 1,075,219

Advanced Search Options:  Title, subject, author, institution, ISBN/ISSN, journal, publisher, language, OA only

15. BioMed Central

BioMed Central provides OA research from more than 300 peer-reviewed journals. While originally focused on resources related to the physical sciences, math, and engineering, BioMed Central has branched out to include journals that cover a broader range of disciplines, with the aim of providing a single platform that provides OA articles for a variety of research needs. You can browse these journals by subject or title, or you can search all articles for your required keyword.

BioMed Central has a commitment to peer-reviewed sources and to the peer review process itself, continually seeking to help and improve the peer review process. They're "committed to maintaining high standards through full and stringent peer review." They publish the journal Research Integrity and Peer Review , which publishes research on the subject.

Additionally, the website includes resources to assist and support editors as part of their commitment to providing high-quality, peer-reviewed OA articles.

Collection: 507,212

Other Services: BMC administers the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) registry. While initially designed for registering clinical trials, since its creation in 2000, the registry has broadened its scope to include other health studies as well.

The registry is recognized by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO), and it meets the requirements established by the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

The study records included in the registry are all searchable and free to access. The ISRCTN registry "supports transparency in clinical research, helps reduce selective reporting of results and ensures an unbiased and complete evidence base."

Advanced Search Options:  Author, title, journal, list

A multidisciplinary search engine, JURN provides links to various scholarly websites, articles, and journals that are free to access or OA. Covering the fields of the arts, humanities, business, law, nature, science, and medicine, JURN has indexed almost 5,000 repositories to help you find exactly what you're looking for.

Search features are enhanced by Google, but searches are filtered through their index of repositories. JURN seeks to reach a wide audience, with their search engine tailored to researchers from "university lecturers and students seeking a strong search tool for OA content" and "advanced and ambitious students, age 14-18" to "amateur historians and biographers" and "unemployed and retired lecturers."

That being said, JURN is very upfront about its limitations. They admit to not being a good resource for educational studies, social studies, or psychology, and conference archives are generally not included due to frequently unstable URLs.

Collection: 5,064 indexed journals

Other Services: JURN has a browser add-on called UserScript. This add-on allows users to integrate the JURN database directly into Google Search. When performing a search through Google, the add-on creates a link that sends the search directly to JURN CSE. JURN CSE is a search service that is hosted by Google.

Clicking the link from the Google Search bar will run your search through the JURN database from the Google homepage. There is also an interface for a DuckDuckGo search box; while this search engine has an emphasis on user privacy, for smaller sites that may be indexed by JURN, DuckDuckGo may not provide the same depth of results.

Advanced Search Options:  Google search modifiers

Dryad is a digital repository of curated, OA scientific research data. Launched in 2009, it is run by a not-for-profit membership organization, with a community of institutional and publisher members for whom their services have been designed. Members include institutions such as Stanford, UCLA, and Yale, as well as publishers like Oxford University Press and Wiley.

Dryad aims to "promote a world where research data is openly available, integrated with the scholarly literature, and routinely reused to create knowledge." It is free to access for the search and discovery of data. Their user experience is geared toward easy self-depositing, supports Creative Commons licensing, and provides DOIs for all their content.

Note that there is a publishing charge associated if you wish to publish your data in Dryad. When searching datasets, they are accompanied by author information and abstracts for the associated studies, and citation information is provided for easy attribution.

Collection: 44,458

Advanced Search Options: No

Run by the British Library, the E-Theses Online Service (EThOS) allows you to search over 500,000 doctoral theses in a variety of disciplines. All of the doctoral theses available on EThOS have been awarded by higher education institutions in the United Kingdom.

Although some full texts are behind paywalls, you can limit your search to items available for immediate download, either directly through EThOS or through an institution's website. More than half of the records in the database provide access to full-text theses.

EThOS notes that they do not hold all records for all institutions, but they strive to index as many doctoral theses as possible, and the database is constantly expanding, with approximately 3,000 new records added and 2,000 new full-text theses available every month. The availability of full-text theses is dependent on multiple factors, including their availability in the institutional repository and the level of repository development.

Collection: 500,000+

Advanced Search Options:  Abstract, author's first name, author's last name, awarding body, current institution, EThOS ID, year, language, qualifications, research supervisor, sponsor/funder, keyword, title

PubMed is a research platform well-known in the fields of science and medicine. It was created and developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It has been available since 1996 and offers access to "more than 33 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books."

While PubMed does not provide full-text articles directly, and many full-text articles may be behind paywalls or require subscriptions to access them, when articles are available from free sources, such as through PubMed Central (PMC), those links are provided with the citations and abstracts that PubMed does provide.

PMC, which was established in 2000 by the NLM, is a free full-text archive that includes more than 6,000,000 records. PubMed records link directly to corresponding PMC results. PMC content is provided by publishers and other content owners, digitization projects, and authors directly.

Collection: 33,000,000+

Advanced Search Options: Author's first name, author's last name, identifier, corporation, date completed, date created, date entered, date modified, date published, MeSH, book, conflict of interest statement, EC/RN number, editor, filter, grant number, page number, pharmacological action, volume, publication type, publisher, secondary source ID, text, title, abstract, transliterated title

20. Semantic Scholar

A unique and easy-to-use resource, Semantic Scholar defines itself not just as a research database but also as a "search and discovery tool." Semantic Scholar harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to efficiently sort through millions of science-related papers based on your search terms.

Through this singular application of machine learning, Semantic Scholar expands search results to include topic overviews based on your search terms, with the option to create an alert for or further explore the topic. It also provides links to related topics.

In addition, search results produce "TLDR" summaries in order to provide concise overviews of articles and enhance your research by helping you to navigate quickly and easily through the available literature to find the most relevant information. According to the site, although some articles are behind paywalls, "the data [they] have for those articles is limited," so you can expect to receive mostly full-text results.

Collection: 203,379,033

Other Services: Semantic Scholar supports multiple popular browsers. Content can be accessed through both mobile and desktop versions of Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera.

Additionally, Semantic Scholar provides browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox, so AI-powered scholarly search results are never more than a click away. The mobile interface includes an option for Semantic Swipe, a new way of interacting with your research results.

There are also beta features that can be accessed as part of the Beta Program, which will provide you with features that are being actively developed and require user feedback for further improvement.

Advanced Search Options: Field of study, date range, publication type, author, journal, conference, PDF

Zenodo, powered by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), was launched in 2013. Taking its name from Zenodotus, the first librarian of the ancient library of Alexandria, Zenodo is a tool "built and developed by researchers, to ensure that everyone can join in open science." Zenodo accepts all research from every discipline in any file format.

However, Zenodo also curates uploads and promotes peer-reviewed material that is available through OA. A DOI is assigned to everything that is uploaded to Zenodo, making research easily findable and citable. You can sort by keyword, title, journal, and more and download OA documents directly from the site.

While there are closed access and restricted access items in the database, the vast majority of research is OA material. Search results can be filtered by access type, making it easy to view the free articles available in the database.

Collection: 2,220,000+

Advanced Search Options:  Access, file type, keywords

Check out our roundup of free research databases as a handy one-page PDF.

How to find peer-reviewed articles.

There are a lot of free scholarly articles available from various sources. The internet is a big place. So how do you go about finding peer-reviewed articles when conducting your research? It's important to make sure you are using reputable sources.

The first source of the article is the person or people who wrote it. Checking out the author can give you some initial insight into how much you can trust what you’re reading. Looking into the publication information of your sources can also indicate whether the article is reliable.

Aspects of the article, such as subject and audience, tone, and format, are other things you can look at when evaluating whether the article you're using is valid, reputable, peer-reviewed material. So, let's break that down into various components so you can assess your research to ensure that you're using quality articles and conducting solid research.

Check the Author

Peer-reviewed articles are written by experts or scholars with experience in the field or discipline they're writing about. The research in a peer-reviewed article has to pass a rigorous evaluation process, so it’s a foregone conclusion that the author(s) of a peer-reviewed article should have experience or training related to that research.

When evaluating an article, take a look at the author’s information. What credentials does the author have to indicate that their research has scholarly weight behind it? Finding out what type of degree the author has—and what that degree is in—can provide insight into what kind of authority the author is on the subject.

Something else that might lend credence to the author’s scholarly role is their professional affiliation. A look at what organization or institution they are affiliated with can tell you a lot about their experience or expertise. Where were they trained, and who is verifying their research?

Identify Subject and Audience

The ultimate goal of a study is to answer a question. Scholarly articles are also written for scholarly audiences, especially articles that have gone through the peer review process. This means that the author is trying to reach experts, researchers, academics, and students in the field or topic the research is based on.

Think about the question the author is trying to answer by conducting this research, why, and for whom. What is the subject of the article? What question has it set out to answer? What is the purpose of finding the information? Is the purpose of the article of importance to other scholars? Is it original content?

Research should also be approached analytically. Is the methodology sound? Is the author using an analytical approach to evaluate the data that they have obtained? Are the conclusions they've reached substantiated by their data and analysis? Answering these questions can reveal a lot about the article’s validity.

Format Matters

Reliable articles from peer-reviewed sources have certain format elements to be aware of. The first is an abstract. An abstract is a short summary or overview of the article. Does the article have an abstract? It's unlikely that you're reading a peer-reviewed article if it doesn’t. Peer-reviewed journals will also have a word count range. If an article seems far too short or incredibly long, that may be reason to doubt it.

Another feature of reliable articles is the sections the information is divided into. Peer-reviewed research articles will have clear, concise sections that appropriately organize the information. This might include a literature review, methodology, and results in the case of research articles and a conclusion.

One of the most important sections is the references or bibliography. This is where the researcher lists all the sources of their information. A peer-reviewed source will have a comprehensive reference section.

An article that has been written to reach an academic community will have an academic tone. The language that is used, and the way this language is used, is important to consider. If the article is riddled with grammatical errors, confusing syntax, and casual language, it almost definitely didn't make it through the peer review process.

Also consider the use of terminology. Every discipline is going to have standard terminology or jargon that can be used and understood by other academics in the discipline. The language in a peer-reviewed article is going to reflect that.

If the author is going out of their way to explain simple terms, or terms that are standard to the field or discipline, it's unlikely that the article has been peer reviewed, as this is something that the author would be asked to address during the review process.

Publication

The source of the article will be a very good indicator of the likelihood that it was peer reviewed. Where was the article published? Was it published alongside other academic articles in the same discipline? Is it a legitimate and reputable scholarly publication?

A trade publication or newspaper might be legitimate or reputable, but it is not a scholarly source, and it will not have been subject to the peer review process. Scholarly journals are the best resource for peer-reviewed articles, but it's important to remember that not all scholarly journals are peer reviewed.

It’s helpful to look at a scholarly source’s website, as peer-reviewed journals will have a clear indication of the peer review process. University libraries, institutional repositories, and reliable databases (and you now might have a list of some legit ones) can also help provide insight into whether an article comes from a peer-reviewed journal.

Common Research Mistakes to Avoid

Research is a lot of work. Even with high standards and good intentions, it’s easy to make mistakes. Perhaps you searched for access to scientific journals for free and found the perfect peer-reviewed sources, but you forgot to document everything, and your references are a mess. Or, you only searched for free online articles and missed out on a ground-breaking study that was behind a paywall.

Whether your research is for a degree or to get published or to satisfy your own inquisitive nature, or all of the above, you want all that work to produce quality results. You want your research to be thorough and accurate.

To have any hope of contributing to the literature on your research topic, your results need to be high quality. You might not be able to avoid every potential mistake, but here are some that are both common and easy to avoid.

Sticking to One Source

One of the hallmarks of good research is a healthy reference section. Using a variety of sources gives you a better answer to your question. Even if all of the literature is in agreement, looking at various aspects of the topic may provide you with an entirely different picture than you would have if you looked at your research question from only one angle.

Not Documenting Every Fact

As you conduct your research, do yourself a favor and write everything down. Everything you include in your paper or article that you got from another source is going to need to be added to your references and cited.

It's important, especially if your aim is to conduct ethical, high-quality research, that all of your research has proper attribution. If you don't document as you go, you could end up making a lot of work for yourself if the information you don’t write down is something that later, as you write your paper, you really need.

Using Outdated Materials

Academia is an ever-changing landscape. What was true in your academic discipline or area of research ten years ago may have since been disproven. If fifteen studies have come out since the article that you're using was published, it's more than a little likely that you're going to be basing your research on flawed or dated information.

If the information you're basing your research on isn’t as up-to-date as possible, your research won't be of quality or able to stand up to any amount of scrutiny. You don’t want all of your hard work to be for naught.

Relying Solely on Open Access Journals

OA is a great resource for conducting academic research. There are high-quality journal articles available through OA, and that can be very helpful for your research. But, just because you have access to free articles, that doesn't mean that there's nothing to be found behind a paywall.

Just as dismissing high-quality peer-reviewed articles because they are OA would be limiting, not exploring any paid content at all is equally short-sighted. If you're seeking to conduct thorough and comprehensive research, exploring all of your options for quality sources is going to be to your benefit.

Digging Too Deep or Not Deep Enough

Research is an art form, and it involves a delicate balance of information. If you conduct your research using only broad search terms, you won't be able to answer your research question well, or you'll find that your research provides information that is closely related to your topic but, ultimately, your findings are vague and unsubstantiated.

On the other hand, if you delve deeply into your research topic with specific searches and turn up too many sources, you might have a lot of information that is adjacent to your topic but without focus and perhaps not entirely relevant. It's important to answer your research question concisely but thoroughly.

Different Types of Scholarly Articles

Different types of scholarly articles have different purposes. An original research article, also called an empirical article, is the product of a study or an experiment. This type of article seeks to answer a question or fill a gap in the existing literature.

Research articles will have a methodology, results, and a discussion of the findings of the experiment or research and typically a conclusion.

Review articles overview the current literature and research and provide a summary of what the existing research indicates or has concluded. This type of study will have a section for the literature review, as well as a discussion of the findings of that review. Review articles will have a particularly extensive reference or bibliography section.

Theoretical articles draw on existing literature to create new theories or conclusions, or look at current theories from a different perspective, to contribute to the foundational knowledge of the field of study.

10 Tips for Navigating Journal Databases

Use the right academic journal database for your search, be that interdisciplinary or specific to your field. Or both!

If it’s an option, set the search results to return only peer-reviewed sources.

Start by using search terms that are relevant to your topic without being overly specific.

Try synonyms, especially if your keywords aren’t returning the desired results.

Even if you’ve found some good articles, try searching using different terms.

Explore the advanced search features of the database(s).

Learn to use Booleans (AND, OR, NOT) to expand or narrow your results.

Once you’ve gotten some good results from a more general search, try narrowing your search.

Read through abstracts when trying to find articles relevant to your research.

Keep track of your research and use citation tools. It’ll make life easier when it comes time to compile your references.

7 Frequently Asked Questions

1. how do i get articles for free.

Free articles can be found through free online academic journals, OA databases, or other databases that include OA journals and articles. These resources allow you to access free papers online so you can conduct your research without getting stuck behind a paywall.

Academics don’t receive payment for the articles they contribute to journals. There are often, in fact, publication fees that scholars pay in order to publish. This is one of the funding structures that allows OA journals to provide free content so that you don’t have to pay fees or subscription costs to access journal articles.

2. How Do I Find Journal Articles?

Journal articles can be found in databases and institutional repositories that can be accessed at university libraries. However, online research databases that contain OA articles are the best resource for getting free access to journal articles that are available online.

Peer-reviewed journal articles are the best to use for academic research, and there are a number of databases where you can find peer-reviewed OA journal articles. Once you've found a useful article, you can look through the references for the articles the author used to conduct their research, and you can then search online databases for those articles, too.

3. How Do I Find Peer-Reviewed Articles?

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in reputable scholarly peer-reviewed journals. High-quality journals and journal articles can be found online using academic search engines and free research databases. These resources are excellent for finding OA articles, including peer-reviewed articles.

OA articles are articles that can be accessed for free. While some scholarly search engines and databases include articles that aren't peer reviewed, there are also some that provide only peer-reviewed articles, and databases that include non-peer-reviewed articles often have advanced search features that enable you to select “peer review only.” The database will return results that are exclusively peer-reviewed content.

4. What Are Research Databases?

A research database is a list of journals, articles, datasets, and/or abstracts that allows you to easily search for scholarly and academic resources and conduct research online. There are databases that are interdisciplinary and cover a variety of topics.

For example, Paperity might be a great resource for a chemist as well as a linguist, and there are databases that are more specific to a certain field. So, while ERIC might be one of the best educational databases available for OA content, it's not going to be one of the best databases for finding research in the field of microbiology.

5. How Do I Find Scholarly Articles for Specific Fields?

There are interdisciplinary research databases that provide articles in a variety of fields, as well as research databases that provide articles that cater to specific disciplines. Additionally, a journal repository or index can be a helpful resource for finding articles in a specific field.

When searching an interdisciplinary database, there are frequently advanced search features that allow you to narrow the search results down so that they are specific to your field. Selecting “psychology” in the advanced search features will return psychology journal articles in your search results. You can also try databases that are specific to your field.

If you're searching for law journal articles, many law reviews are OA. If you don’t know of any databases specific to history, visiting a journal repository or index and searching “history academic journals” can return a list of journals specific to history and provide you with a place to begin your research.

6. Are Peer-Reviewed Articles Really More Legitimate?

The short answer is yes, peer-reviewed articles are more legitimate resources for academic research. The peer review process provides legitimacy, as it is a rigorous review of the content of an article that is performed by scholars and academics who are experts in their field of study. The review provides an evaluation of the quality and credibility of the article.

Non-peer-reviewed articles are not subject to a review process and do not undergo the same level of scrutiny. This means that non-peer-reviewed articles are unlikely, or at least not as likely, to meet the same standards that peer-reviewed articles do.

7. Are Free Article Directories Legitimate?

Yes! As with anything, some databases are going to be better for certain requirements than others. But, a scholarly article database being free is not a reason in itself to question its legitimacy.

Free scholarly article databases can provide access to abstracts, scholarly article websites, journal repositories, and high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles. The internet has a lot of information, and it's often challenging to figure out what information is reliable. 

Research databases and article directories are great resources to help you conduct your research. Our list of the best research paper websites is sure to provide you with sources that are totally legit.

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Our open access publishing is key to delivering on our mission

Open access (OA) is a key part of how Oxford University Press (OUP) supports our mission to achieve the widest possible dissemination of high-quality research.  We publish rigorously peer-reviewed, world-leading, trusted open access research, upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and integrity.

We work closely with our publishing partners to ensure that we offer open access in a sustainable way, supporting publications for their communities and offering researchers publishing options for making their research available to all and compliant with funder mandates.

Our open access publishing in numbers

Our open access articles have the highest number of policy and patent document mentions, relative to volume of output, compared to other major academic publishers*

Our open access articles have the 2nd highest mean lifetime citation rate compared to other major academic publishers**

12 of our journals are diamond OA, meaning authors publish for free and readers access for free

We publish over 120 fully open access journals

More than 250 of the books we have published are open access

Over 400 of our journals have adopted a research data policy

Our Read & Publish agreements cover more than 900 institutions at which authors can use funds to publish their article open access in an OUP journal

More than 22,000 of the journal articles we published in 2022 are open access

Open access for Journals

OUP’s options for publishing open access in journals include:

Fully open access

Articles published in fully OA journals are available to all; no subscription is required. OUP’s fully OA journals use Creative Commons licenses and there is usually an Article Processing Charge (APC) for OA publication.

Hybrid open access

Hybrid journals include a mix of open access articles and articles available to those with a journal subscription.

Hybrid journals offer authors the option of gold open access publishing. With gold open access, authors usually pay an APC to make their research articles available immediately upon publication, under a Creative Commons licence with re-use rights for readers.

For articles published under a Creative Commons licence, readers can re-use the work under the terms of the applicable licence.

‘Read and Publish’ transformative agreements

OUP has agreements with many institutions to provide access to OUP journals for faculty and students and provide funding for open access publishing for affiliated researchers. Find out which institutions are participating, and how to take advantage of available funding for publishing in an OUP journal .

Green open access and self-archiving

OUP has self-archiving policies that permit authors to take advantage of green open access by depositing their accepted manuscript (i.e. the post-acceptance version, before copyediting) into a non-commercial repository. In non-commercial repositories, articles can become freely available after the proscribed embargo period. Find out more about OUP green OA for journals .

Inclusive publishing

OUP believes that the move to open access and open research needs to be equitable and inclusive for all. We want to ensure that authors can publish in their journal of choice. As part of our Developing Countries Initiative , corresponding authors based in qualifying countries publishing in any of OUP’s fully open access journals are eligible for a full waiver of their open access charge.

Open access for Books

OUP has supported OA for books since 2012 as part of our mission to publish high-quality academic and research publications and ensure they are accessible and discoverable.

Publishing your book on an OA basis makes your work freely available online, with no barriers to access. OUP applies the same peer review and editorial development processes to all books whether published open access or under a customer sales model.

If you are considering publishing a book on an OA basis with OUP, please discuss the idea with your Editor. In most instances, the open access fee for books is met by a research funder under their funding and open access policy. All prospective authors are encouraged to provide information on any funding which directly supports the research for a proposed book so that we can plan the publishing route accordingly. You can also consult our information on funders and funder policies.

When a book is published OA it is:

available to read on the Oxford Academic platform both in a browser and as a downloadable PDF

available on Google books as a full preview

indexed in, and available from, the OAPEN online library and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) as a PDF

sold in print and as an eBook

Your editor will be able to provide a quote for open access based on your proposal. Our open access fee excludes any element for costs associated with print manufacture, stock, warehousing, and fulfilment. Our fee is based on the average costs associated with developing and producing a monograph adjusted in the case of longer works or works which involve additional features.

As well as publishing new books on an open access basis we are also able to convert backlist titles to OA and if you are the author of a published work and a funder has made funds available to help accelerate OA by converting existing published works, please contact your Editor.

Find out more about licences, charges and self-archiving for your open access book .

*Data source: Altmetric. Comparing number of policy and patent document mentions, relative to number of articles published, to Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Frontiers, Hindawi, Institute of Physics Publishing, MDPI, PLOS, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley.

**Data source: Dimensions. Comparing the mean lifetime citation rate of open access articles to those published by Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Frontiers, Hindawi, Institute of Physics Publishing, MDPI, PLOS, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley.

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Finding Open Access - Free Journals: Free Journal Article Databases

Free journal article databases.

• Citations and Bibliographies

Finding open access (free) journals

This LibGuide provides a list with active links to assist in finding open access (free) journals.

Options for finding reliable full text journal articles.

Other good sources for journals, newspapers, and more available for free on the Internet:

Google Scholar - A search engine for scholarly publications from peer-reviewed journals, professional societies, books, theses, and other sources.

Highwire Press - Offers free articles in biological, physical and social sciences and medicine. The site includes a search engine. Highwire has also put together a list of links to other large archives of scientific resources (highwire.stanford.edu/lists/largest.dtl)

Public Library of Science - A nonprofit scientific/medical organization making articles available for free.

BioMed Central - Publishes a number of journals that are available as open access, including Environmental Health and Journal of Biology. Others are available free to registered users.

OAIster - Indexes over three million digitized resources worldwide and can be limited to text, images, audio, or video files.

The Directory of Open Access Journals - Includes articles from more that 700 titles from around the world. Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, Fishery Bulletin, Journal of Construction Education, and Biopolicy are just a few of the titles included.

Scitopia - A federated (“one-stop-shopping”) search portal for publications of a number of professional societies in the areas of science and technology. Over three million documents, including patents and government publications, can be found here.

Scientific Journals International - A Publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, health, education, and social sciences. Links to online issues are included.

Encyclopedia of Life - A collaborative initiative to collect information on every species on earth. Contributing organizations include Smithsonian Institution, Royal Botanic Garden, and American Museum of Natural History.

Internet Public Library - “Information you can trust” with subject indexes, newspapers, magazines, special collections, and more.

WorldCat - Sometimes called the catalog of catalogs, WorldCat lets you search through library holdings from thousands of libraries around the world. Search for everything from books, articles, CDs, DVDs, audio files, and more. This is a great resource for locating material that can be obtained through Interlibrary Loan if it is not available on the Internet.

WolframAlpha - A Wolfram Research resource, this "computational knowledge engine" can answer a wide variety of questions and provide information on various topics. Subjects covered include mathematics, statistics and data analysis, chemistry, engineering, and earth sciences among many more.

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The Trusted Solution for Open Access Publishing

Fully Open Access Topical Journals

IEEE offers over 30 technically focused gold fully open access journals spanning a wide range of fields.

Hybrid Open Access Journals

IEEE offers 180+ hybrid journals that support open access, including many of the top-cited titles in the field. These titles have Transformative Status under Plan S.

IEEE Access

The multidisciplinary, gold fully open access journal of the IEEE, publishing high quality research across all of IEEE’s fields of interest.

About IEEE Open

Many authors in today’s publishing environment want to make access to research freely available to all reader communities. To help authors gain maximum exposure for their groundbreaking research, IEEE provides a variety of open access options to meet the needs of authors and institutions.

Call for Papers

Browse our fully open access topical journals and submit a paper.

News & Events

IEEE Announces 6 New Fully Open Access Journals and 3 Hybrid Journals Coming in 2024

IEEE Commits its Entire Hybrid Journal Portfolio to Transformative Journal Status Aligned with Plan S

IEEE and CRUI Sign Three-Year Transformative Agreement to Accelerate Open Access Publishing in Italy

New IEEE Open Access Journals Receive First Impact Factors

IEEE Access, a Multidisciplinary, Open Access Journal

IEEE Access is a multidisciplinary, online-only, gold fully open access journal, continuously presenting the results of original research or development across all IEEE fields of interest. Supported by article processing charges (APCs), its hallmarks are rapid peer review, a submission-to-publication time of 4 to 6 weeks, and articles that are freely available to all readers.

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How to publish open access with ieee.

This newly published on-demand webinar will provide authors with best practices in preparing a manuscript, navigating the journal submission process, and important tips to help an author get published. It will also review the opportunities authors and academic institutions have to enhance the visibility and impact of their research by publishing in the many open access options available from IEEE.

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IEEE Publications Dominate Latest Citation Rankings

Each year, the Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) from Web of Science Group examines the influence and impact of scholarly research journals. JCR reveals the relationship between citing and cited journals, offering a systematic, objective means to evaluate the world’s leading journals. The 2022 JCR study, released in June 2023, reveals that IEEE journals continue to maintain rankings at the top of their fields.

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10 Free Research and Journal Databases

3-minute read

• 6th April 2019

Finding good research can be tough, especially when so much of it is locked behind paywalls . But there are free resources out there if you know where to look. So to help out, we’ve compiled a list of ten free academic search engines and databases that you should check out.

1. Google Scholar

Even if you’ve not used Google Scholar before, you’ll know Google. And, thus, you can probably guess that Google Scholar is a search engine dedicated to academic work. Not everything listed on Google Scholar will be freely available in full. But it is a good place to start if you’re looking for a specific paper, and many papers can be downloaded for free.

CORE is an open research aggregator. This means it works as a search engine for open access research published by organizations from around the world, all of which is available for free. It is also the world’s largest open access aggregator , so it is a very useful resource for researchers!

3. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)

Another dedicated academic search engine, BASE offers access to more than 140 million documents from more than 6,000 sources. Around 60% of these documents are open access, and you can filter results to see only research that is available for free online.

4. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a database that lists around 12,000 open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social science, and the humanities.

PubMed is a search engine maintained by the NCBI, part of the United States National Library of Medicine. It provides access to more than 29 million citations of biomedical research from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. The NCBI runs a similar search engine for research in the chemical sciences called PubChem , too, which is also free to use.

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6. E-Theses Online Service (EThOS)

Run by the British Library, EThOS is a database of over 500,000 doctoral theses. More than half of these are available for free, either directly via EThOS or via a link to a university website.

7. Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

SSRN is a database for research from the social sciences and humanities, including 846,589 research papers from 426,107 researchers across 30 disciplines. Most of these are available for free, although you may need to sign up as a member (also free) to access some services.

8. WorldWideScience

WorldWideScience is a global academic search engine, providing access to national and international scientific databases from across the globe. One interesting feature is that it offers automatic translation, so users can have search results translated into their preferred language.

9. Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar is an “intelligent” academic search engine. It uses machine learning to prioritize the most important research, which can make it easier to find relevant literature. Or, in Semantic Scholar’s own words, it uses influential citations, images, and key phrases to “cut through the clutter.”

10. Public Library of Science (PLOS)

PLOS is an open-access research organization that publishes several journals. But as well as publishing its own research, PLOS is a dedicated advocate for open-access learning. So if you appreciate the search engines and databases we’ve listed here, check out the rest of the PLOS site to find out more about their campaign to enable access to knowledge.

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Free journals by Subjects

• Agricultural and Biological Sciences
• Anthropology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Arts and Humanities
• Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
• Biomedical Engineering
• Biotechnology
• Business, Management and Accounting
• Chemical Engineering
• Civil and Structural Engineering
• Computational Mechanics
• Computer Science
• Decision Sciences
• Dermatology
• Earth and Planetary Sciences
• Economics, Econometrics and Finance
• Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Epidemiology
• Engineering
• English Literature
• Environmental Science
• Geography, Planning and Development
• Health Professions
• Horticulture
• Immunology and Microbiology
• Linguistics and Language
• Machine Learning
• Materials Science
• Mathematics
• Mechanical Engineering
• Multidisciplinary
• Neuroscience
• Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics
• Physics and Astronomy
• Physiotherapy
• Political Science and International Relations
• Public Administration
• Social Sciences
• Statistics and Probability

List of free publication journals indexed in Scopus, SCI

This web page aims to provide the latest list of free publication research journals. These journals are Web of Science and Scopus indexed. Moreover, all these scientific journals are open access . Researchers are advised to click on the journal title to know more journal details.

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• Part of Cato Institute (Aug. 3, 2021)
• Part of University of California Press
• Part of Open: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture
• Part of Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
• Part of R Street Institute (Nov. 1, 2020)
• Part of Leuven University Press
• Part of UN Secretary-General Papers: Ban Ki-moon (2007-2016)
• Part of Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 12, No. 4 (August 2018)
• Part of Leveraging Lives: Serbia and Illegal Tunisian Migration to Europe, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Mar. 1, 2023)
• Part of UCL Press

Harness the power of visual materials—explore more than 3 million images now on JSTOR.

Enhance your scholarly research with underground newspapers, magazines, and journals.

Explore collections in the arts, sciences, and literature from the world’s leading museums, archives, and scholars.

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Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

PubMed Central (PMC) Home Page

PubMed Central ® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM)

Discover a digital archive of scholarly articles, spanning centuries of scientific research.

Learn how to find and read articles of interest to you.

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Browse the PMC Journal List or learn about some of PMC's unique collections.

For Authors

Navigate the PMC submission methods to comply with a funder mandate, expand access, and ensure preservation.

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Learn about deposit options for journals and publishers and the PMC selection process.

For Developers

Find tools for bulk download, text mining, and other machine analysis.

9.8 MILLION articles are archived in PMC.

Content provided in part by:, full participation journals.

Journals deposit the complete contents of each issue or volume.

NIH Portfolio Journals

Journals deposit all NIH-funded articles as defined by the NIH Public Access Policy.

Selective Deposit Programs

Publisher deposits a subset of articles from a collection of journals.

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Research Journals

List of research journals

Free and Fast publication journals with impact factor

Researchers can publish their research for free in the SCI journals on fast-track mode.

There are various free and fast publication journals (Scopus as well as SCI) that provide a quick publication facility.

More related journals:

• Impact Factor of Springer journals in 2023
• Web of Science (SCI) journal ranking 2023
• Monthly publishing SCIE journals
• Thomson Reuters journal list 2023 pdf

List of Free and Fast publication journals

• Science & Education
• Research in Science Education
• Journal of Science Education and Technology
• Foundations of Science
• International Journal of STEM Education
• Implementation Science
• The Journal of Technology Transfer
• Educational Psychology Review
• Journal of Chinese Political Science
• Journal of Manufacturing Systems
• Journal of Systems Architecture
• Ad Hoc Networks
• Computer Communications

We have provided below the details of fast-publishing SCI Scopus journals that publish without APC. A few journals are hybrid open access journals. Hybrid journals are subscription journals in which it is possible to publish individual open access articles against a publication fee.

1) Science & Education

Impact Factor: 2.921 First Decision (Average): 26 days Publisher: Springer

2) Research in Science Education

Impact Factor: 2.469 First Decision (Average): 10 days Publisher: Springer

3) Journal of Science Education and Technology

Impact Factor: 3.419 First Decision (Average): 14 days Publisher: Springer

4) Foundations of Science

Impact Factor: 0.793 First Decision (Average): 13 days Publisher: Springer

5) International Journal of STEM Education

Impact Factor: 5.789 First Decision (Average): 16 days Publisher: Springer

6) Implementation Science

Impact Factor: 7.96 First Decision (Average): 9 days Publisher: Springer

7) The Journal of Technology Transfer

Impact Factor: 5.337 First Decision (Average): 4 days Publisher: Springer

8) Educational Psychology Review

Impact Factor: 8.24 First Decision (Average): 9 days Publisher: Springer

9) Journal of Chinese Political Science

Impact Factor: 2.635 First Decision (Average): 11 days Publisher: Springer

10) BioSystems

Impact Factor: 1.957 First Decision (Average): 21 days Publisher: Elsevier

Subject area: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (all), Applied Mathematics, Modeling and Simulation, Statistics and Probability

11) Journal of Manufacturing Systems

Impact Factor: 9.498 First Decision (Average): 21 days Publisher: Elsevier

Subject area: Hardware and Architecture, Software, Control and Systems Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

12) Journal of Systems Architecture

Impact Factor: 5.836 First Decision (Average): 21 days Publisher: Elsevier

Subject area: Hardware and Architecture, Software

13) Ad Hoc Networks

Impact Factor: 4.816 First Decision (Average): 40 days Publisher: Elsevier

Subject area: Computer Networks and Communications, Hardware and Architecture, Software

14) Computer Communications

Subject area: Computer Networks and Communications

We wish that the list of free and fast publication journals will help you in your research.

11 thoughts on “Free and Fast publication journals with impact factor”

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Hi, I wanted to know your price.

We don’t charge any amount.

• Pingback: Physiotherapy Journals with high impact factor - Research Journals

hi, may I know what category in the list of journals can publish Knowledge, Attitude & Practice of Food safety research?

It may come under the Agriculture/ Biology etc.

Can I know the Index journal publications for Design related areas + Ceramic Design /product design/ consumer oriented products

Please provide a broad subject/ area for this.

Dear Dr. Sharma, can you provide please a list of journals in the area of animal science and genetics (poultry) where I can send my work, without paying any fee for the authors? thanks in advance. my e mail is: [email protected]

The Iranian Journal of Applied Animal Science publishes without any publication fees.

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Free Journals with Open Access Publication

The terms “free journals” and “open access” are being used frequently by the publishers but at some points, these terms are very confusing for the authors. Free Journals should be used only for those journals that are free for article publication and do not charge any kind of fee from the author to publish their research work. On the other hand, open-access journals should be used only for those journals that allow everyone to read and download articles freely without charging any kind of fee (neither access fee nor subscription fee).

Before proceeding further to discuss both terms, ‘free journals’ and ‘open access journals’; let me introduce you few free open-access refereed journals published by AIJR.

Free journals with open access by AIJR

(free to publish and free to read).

• Journal of Modern Materials  (Materials Research Journal)
• Advanced Nano Research  (Journal for Nanoscience Research)
• Journal of Modeling and Simulation of Materials  (Simulation Journal)
• Extensive Reviews (Publishes only Review Papers from All Academic Fields)
• International Journal of Methodology (Articles focusing on Research Methodologies)

Besides Free Publication (Normal Publication), the above journals are also offering rapid review through optional fast-track publication , and the author needs to send an additional email request to consider articles under the fast track. All submitted articles to journals published by AIJR undergo peer review and upon acceptance made available immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download.

Let’s back to our discussion to differentiate between the terms “Free Journals” and “Open Access Journals”. Open Access is a standard term that simply means that the journal articles under open access will be available free to read, download, and reuse as per license terms of the journal. This term has further been classified into, Gold, Green, and Hybrid open access based on the embargo time to make the article freely available and archiving policy for the authors. Since the term “open access” is self-explanatory that, the article will be available freely, I think there is no need to use the term “Free Journal” for those journals whose only article is available freely based on the open access model. Using the term ‘Free journal’ for those whose only published articles are available freely confuses authors with the free publication.

Open Access Journal with Low-cost publication

(free to read but not free to publish).

AIJR also offers low-cost ($50) publication under the regular publication model in the following journals-

• Advanced Journal of Social Science  (All fields related to Social Sciences & Humanities)
• International Annals of Science  (All research fields of Science disciplines)
• Advanced Journal of Graduate Research (Specific Journal for Bachelor / Master Degree Student’s Research)

Many publishers list their journals under the term Free Journal and by free journal, they meant open access journals which confuses many authors. Free Journals normally should be considered only those journals that offer free publication without charging any kind of fee from the author(s). We can find many blogpost complaints about journals that were supposed to be free but after acceptance author suddenly received a bill to pay. I think those things happen due to publishers highlighting those journals as free journals instead of saying open access and the author might not read the full terms and conditions for publishing and get trapped. I believe that journal publishers should use the proper term “Free Journal” for free publication and “Open Access” for free article availability to avoid confusion and trapping authors. Journal publishers should use the terms “Free Open access journals” or its other variant only when they are offering both, free publishing as well as free availability.

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ISRDO is the world's leading open-access, peer-reviewed publication platform, with highly qualified reviewers.

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Recent Articles

Sustainable Solutions from Nature: Research Advancements and Application Prospects in China

Environment Science and technology

Investig atones demns traivg sed vunt lectoes legere

Analyzing the Main Factors Behind Biodiversity Decline and Conservation Strategies in Ethiopia: A Comprehensive Overview

Enhancing Climate Resilience in Madagascar's Cotton Farming: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach

Detailed Case Study: Himalayan Mountain Formation

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The problem with making all academic research free

T here has been an earthquake in my corner of academia that will affect who teaches in prestigious universities and what ideas circulate among educated people around the world.

And it all happened because a concept rooted in good intentions — that academic research should be “open access,” free for everyone to read — has started to go too far.

The premise of open-access publishing is simple and attractive. It can cost libraries thousands of dollars a year to subscribe to academic journals, which sometimes means only academics affiliated with wealthy colleges and universities may access that research. But under open-access publishing, nearly anyone with an internet connection can find and read those articles for free. Authors win, because they find more readers. Academics around the world benefit, because they can access the latest scholarship. And the world wins, because scientific and intellectual progress is facilitated by the free exchange of ideas.

By now this model has taken hold in the natural sciences, especially in biology and biomedicine; during the pandemic many publishers removed paywalls from articles about vaccines and treatments. The Biden administration requires federally funded scholarly publications to be made freely available without any delay.

However, there is no such thing as a free academic article. Even with digital distribution, the expenses of running a journal are considerable. These costs include hosting the websites where people submit, peer-review, and edit articles; copyediting; advertising; preserving journal archives; and maintaining continuity as editors come and go.

As a result, unless journals have a source of revenue other than subscription fees, any move toward open access raises the question of who will cover the costs of publication.

One answer is that the money will come from authors themselves or their academic institutions or other backers. This works well enough in the natural sciences, because those researchers are often funded by grants, and some of that money can be set aside to cover a journal’s fees for publishing scientific articles. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation demands that all research funded by the foundation, including the underlying data, be published open access.

According to an MIT study , however, only a small fraction of scholars in the humanities publish their articles on an open-access basis. Unlike biologists and biomedical engineers, humanities scholars such as philosophers and historians do not get grants that can cover the publishing costs.

This means that if open access is to take hold in those fields as well — as many publishers and academics are advocating — the costs will have to be covered by some foundation or other sponsor, by the scholars’ institutions, or even by the scholars themselves. And all these models have serious downsides.

I’m a political philosopher. The earthquake in my field that I mentioned earlier shook one of our most prominent journals: the Journal of Political Philosophy.

Publishing an article in this journal has long made the difference between whether a candidate gets hired, tenured, or promoted at an elite institution of higher education. The high quality has stemmed in large part from the rigorous approach of the founding editor, Robert Goodin.

At the end of 2023, the publisher, Wiley, terminated its contract with Goodin. The reasons were not immediately clear, and over 1,000 academics, including me, signed a petition stating that we would not serve on the editorial board or write or review for the journal until Wiley reinstates Goodin. I recently attended a panel at an American Philosophical Association conference where philosophers voiced their anger and puzzlement about the situation.

One source of the problem appears to be that Wiley now charges the authors of an article or their institutions $3,840 to get published open access in the journal.

The Journal of Political Philosophy is actually hybrid open access, which means it waives the article processing charges for authors who permit their work to appear behind a subscription-only paywall. Nonetheless, Goodin and Anna Stilz , a Princeton professor and Journal of Political Philosophy editorial board member, point out that publishers like Wiley now have a strong incentive to favor open-access articles.

In the old model, in which university libraries subscribed to journals, editors were mainly incentivized to publish first-rate material that would increase subscriptions. In the open-access model, however, now that authors or their universities must cover the costs of processing articles, publishers of humanities journals seem to be incentivized to boost revenue by accepting as many articles as possible. According to Goodin , open access has “been the death knell of quality academic publishing.” The reason that Goodin lost his job, Goodin and Stilz imply, is that Wiley pressured Goodin to accept more articles to increase Wiley’s profits, and he said no. (Wiley representatives say that lines of communication had collapsed with Goodin.)

Early this year, Goodin cofounded a new journal titled simply Political Philosophy . The journal will be published by the Open Library of Humanities, which is subsidized by libraries and institutions around the world. But this version of open-access publishing does not have the financial stability of the old subscription model. Scholars affiliated with the Open Library of Humanities have pointed out that the project has substantial overhead costs, and it relied on a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that has already ended. The Open Library of Humanities is an experiment, and I hope that it works, but as of now it publishes only 30 journals , compared with the 1,600 journals that Wiley publishes.

The fact remains that no one has satisfactorily explained how open access could work in the humanities and social sciences.

In his 2023 book “ Athena Unbound : Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All,” UCLA history professor Peter Baldwin attempts an answer. He points to Latin America, where some national governments cover all expenses of academic publishing. But this proposal ignores the fact that the governments of the United States and other nations probably do not want to pay for humanities and social sciences journals.

Baldwin also floats the idea of preprint depositories where academics could share documents on the cloud before they have undergone the (somewhat expensive) process of peer review. But this means that academics would lose the benefits that come from getting double-blind feedback from one’s peers. This idea would reduce the costs of publishing a journal article, but it would turn much academic writing into fancy blogging.

Ultimately, Baldwin’s solution is that authors might “have to participate directly, giving them skin in the game and helping contain costs.” This means academics might ask their employers to pay the article processing charges, ask a journal for the processing fees to be waived, or dig into their own pockets to pay to publish.

And it might mean less gets published overall. The journal Government and Opposition, published by Cambridge University Press, is entirely open access and charges $3,450 for an article to be published. I’d have to apply for a discount or a waiver to publish there. Or I could do what political philosophers in Japan and Bosnia and Herzegovina have told me they do: avoid submitting to open-access journals. Their universities will not cover their article processing charges except maybe in the top journals, and even the reduced fees can run into hundreds of dollars that these professors do not have.

In “Athena Unbound,” Baldwin notes that Harvard subscribes to 10 times as many periodicals as India’s Institute of Science. One can bemoan this fact, but one may also appreciate that Harvard’s largesse spread enough subscription revenue around to reputable journals to enable academics to avoid paying to publish in them, no matter whether they teach at regional state schools, non-elite private schools, or institutions of higher education in poor countries. For all its flaws, the old model meant that when rich alumni donated to their alma maters, it increased library budgets and thereby made it possible for scholars of poetry and state politics to run and publish in academic journals.

Until we have more evidence that open-access journals in the humanities and social sciences can thrive in the long run, academics need to appreciate the advantages of the subscription model.

Nicholas Tampio is a professor of political science at Fordham University in New York City.

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International Journal of Research Publications (IJRP) is having ISSN (2708-3578) (online), and DOI:  10.47119/27083578 , bimonthly international journal, being published since the year 2017. IJRP is an active member of Crossref and all published papers are issued DOI number.

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Maintaining trust in science and increasing research literacy

This month, British Science Week took place from 8–17 March 2024. A ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), it provides a platform for STEM events and activities; ultimately, I imagine, to not only celebrate these subjects, but inspire future scientists and promote public understanding and appreciation of science as a whole.

Pharmacists, of course, ought to know only too well the inherent value of science — or need only to look back at the emergence of, and response to, the COVID-19 pandemic to remind ourselves of the importance of science in our everyday practice , and even wider than that, the role that science played in restoring world order . Indeed, data published in 2023 showed that COVID-19 increased public trust in science — at least in the British sample that was surveyed. I am sure then that others too will find it reassuring to know that the latest iteration of an annual survey that consulted more than 32,000 people across 28 countries showed scientists to be among those most trusted to tell the truth. The authors of an even larger study on the topic, however, go on to warn us, in a pre-print of their paper, “we cannot discount the concern that lack of trust in scientists by even a small minority may affect considerations of scientific evidence in policymaking”. This is a point I have been pondering this week.

While many factors will influence people’s trust in science, I was alarmed to see several examples of papers published in their final format that contained remnants of text (within the body of the published manuscripts) that were seemingly lifted directly from response boxes of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools. I won’t draw attention to the papers in question here (they involved another publisher) but there is a question to be asked about the downstream impact that such glaring flaws in authoring, peer review and publication processes will have on trust in scientists in allowing papers to be constructed in this way and for such errors to go unchecked before reaching the public domain. I am particularly keen to help increase pharmacy professionals’ research literacy, so my focus this month is on studies that use a mainstay of the scientific method: the experimental design.

The first paper , published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research , is a randomised, controlled, interventional study, examining adherence to medication in patients with glaucoma. Randomised, because 190 patients with open-angle glaucoma recruited to the study were assigned at random to one of the study groups; interventional, because the study set out to assess the impact of an educational intervention on specific outcome measures; and controlled, because as well as the intervention group (i.e. those assigned to a group receiving the education), a group of participants were assigned to ‘usual care’ to enable a comparison of specific measurement with the intervention group in a before-and-after design. The outcome measures were adherence to medication, eye drop administration technique and knowledge about glaucoma, which were assessed at baseline (i.e. at the start of the study, before any intervention/usual care) and at a follow up.

The authors hypothesised that adherence to medication would be significantly improved as a result of delivering their educational intervention. I found very little information on the intervention itself other than it involved the provision of an educational booklet, which included information on administration technique, and individual discussions with those in the intervention group while they waited in the clinic. In case readers are questioning the rationale for such a study, the authors argue that non-adherence is a problem in the treatment of glaucoma, with only a minority of patients showing good adherence, which in any case declines over time. It could be considered fortunate for the patients (but perhaps not for the study) that, at baseline, 62.1% of the participants were found to be fully adherent to their glaucoma medications. This is a relatively high rate of adherence and might be expected to limit the impact that an intervention could have. Nonetheless, the authors found the intervention to significantly improve patients’ adherence to their eye drops as well as their administration technique, compared to the control. This is good to know and provides further evidence that one way of having a positive impact on patients is, indeed, to quote a phrase, ‘education, education, education’ .

The second paper I read is published in the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice , entitled “Impact of uricosurics on mortality outcomes in patients with COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials”. Compared to the first paper above, this study was a systematic review (of randomised, controlled trials), because it sought to systematically search the available literature and retrieve all papers relevant to the study; and meta-analysis, because it sought to use a credible method to statistically combine the individual results contained within the pool of relevant studies to answer the research hypothesis. In this case, the research hypothesis was that use of medication with uricosuric properties (i.e. those that increase the excretion of uric acid), compared to other interventions, could increase ‘mortality events’ among patients with COVID-19 and hyperuricaemia. Overall, the authors report that while uricosurics in general have no significant impact on such outcomes, a subgroup analysis found ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to reduce the risk of mortality in patients with COVID-19. I must say that this is not the first time that vitamin C has been investigated as a potential treatment in COVID-19 , and I would have thought that the recent large-scale report of two harmonised, randomised clinical trials, which found that vitamin C has “low probability of improving organ support-free days and hospital survival” in hospitalised patients with COVID-19, would have to be considered too. Nonetheless, the authors of the current study recommend further trials.

Returning to pharmacy and our efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, one positive point of learning is that the vast network of pharmacies staffed by a scientifically-trained workforce ought to be an invaluable resource in dealing with future health emergencies, not only from a delivery-of-care perspective, but also for future research endeavours. This is certainly acknowledged within the interventional PANORAMIC study, where pharmacy teams have been encouraged to help recruitment of volunteers from underserved and diverse backgrounds. I salute all these efforts to increase our involvement in research.

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