Institutional Repositories hold free-to-view research produced by a given institution, such as articles or theses. See the Leeds Beckett Repository here:
Or search other institution's repositories by using JISC's Open DOAR tool:
Newspapers are a good place to start when looking at current events. The following papers have some free content:
This page is for any library users looking for study resources that are free to use. Search Discover, then filter by 'Format' and then 'Print Book' and scroll down to 'Held by Library' if you wish to filter by either Sheila Silver or Headingley libraries.
You can also find our journal titles by filtering on 'Format' and then 'Journal, Magazine'.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): A list of good quality freely available open access journals and journal articles. DOAJ covers most subject areas.
Public Library of Science (PLOS): provides openly accessible good quality journal articles covering science, technology and medicine.
Google Scholar: search engine containing academic journal articles and books. Unlike DOAJ and PLOS many journal articles are not freely available.
CORE: provides access to millions of openly available research papers.
Open Library of Humanities (OLH): freely available, peer reviewed access to academic papers in the humanities.
BioMed Central (BMC): providing access to high quality peer reviewed journal articles, BMC covers physical sciences as well as maths and engineering.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): access to Academic peer-reviewed books and chapters.
Oapen: freely accessible academic books, and book chapters covering a range of disciplines.
EThOS is the UK’s national thesis service which aims to maximise the visibility and availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses. EThOS aims to provide a national aggregated record of all doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions. It also aims to provide free access to the full text of as many theses as possible for use by all researchers to further their own research. You can search the EThOS database without having to register. You do, however, need to register and log in if you want to download a thesis from EThOS or to order digitisation of a thesis.
An online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
A directory of open access journals and journals with some kind of open access to their materials.
A single point of access to a wide range of secondary data including large-scale government surveys, international macrodata, business microdata, qualitative studies and census data from 1971 to 2011.
A search engine which indexes web-based dictionaries. More than 19 million words in more than 1,000 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook® search engine.
Online access to the Census of England and Wales, the most recent being held on 21 March 2021 by the Office for National Statistics.
Resource for UK accountants and accountancy professionals. Register for:
CIMA offers links to professional information, events, employers, etc and also support for CIMA students; plus a list of further useful sites.
Major professional body – many useful links; there is a student area on the site.
From The Architects' Journal, but far more. Architecture news updated daily, and information on companies, buildings, design and products. Reports and case studies with plans and drawings. Free registration.
Supplements the monthly magazine with expanded multimedia project stories, in-depth interviews with giants of architecture, daily news updates, weekly book reviews, green architecture stories and archival material, as well as links to people and products.
An independent gateway to architecture and design information and videos. Contains sections on news and trends, products and material, people, and industry news.
Bdonline is made by the publishers of Building Design magazine and provides around the clock news, videos, blogs, culture, reviews of the latest buildings from all corners of the world.
Devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future.
Website of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Includes a directory of all RIBA's members, their Library Catalogue, online exhibitions and information portals on topics such as sustainability.
This is an important online resource for visual arts. It has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images. They are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching, learning and research.
Google analyses associated text, not just the file names or picture credits, so it is good at finding relevant images.
Here you can peruse 27,000 works and over 43,000 images from the V&A collections. These are provided free for educational use.
Images on this site are freely available for download for personal, academic teaching or study use and it's great for social history, medical or scientific images.
Supplements the monthly magazine with expanded multimedia project stories, in-depth interviews with giants of architecture, daily news updates, weekly book reviews, green architecture stories and archival material, as well as links to people and products.
Bdonline is made by the publishers of Building Design magazine and provides around the clock news, videos, blogs, culture, reviews of the latest buildings from all corners of the world.
This site is designed for use by construction industry students, lecturers and professionals who need to understand contract documentation, such as specifications and schedules of work.
Website of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Includes a directory of all RIBA's members, their Library Catalogue, online exhibitions and information portals on topics such as sustainability.
Website providing business news, trends and profiles of successful businesspeople.
A directory of resources which allows you to find information ranging from culture and economic information to Trade Tutorials, Trade Law and Statistical Data Sources.
Free (within England & Wales) information database covering abstracts and full text of systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare from around the world. It also contains a bibliography of controlled trials; a bibliography of articles and books on the science of research synthesis; a register of published economic evaluations of health care interventions; information on healthcare technology assessments and the full text of systematic reviews of empirical methodological studies.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) provides national guidance and advice to improve health and social care.
Open-access publications in science and medicine. Advocate for freely available research communication.
Freely available search tool covering over 11 million MEDLINE citations back to the mid-1960's and additional life science journals. It also includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.
From climate change to intelligent design, HIV/AIDS to stem cells, science education to space exploration, science is figuring prominently in our discussions of politics, religion, philosophy, business and the arts. ScienceBlogs is a portal to this global dialogue, a digital science salon featuring the leading bloggers from a wide array of scientific disciplines.
UK's most complete range of information and research on all aspects of social care. Includes information about all aspects of social care, from fostering, to mental health, to human resources.
Hundreds of recipes, pages of advice, vegan and vegetarian section, video clips, product information.
The Foundation promotes the nutritional well-being of society through the impartial interpretation and effective dissemination of scientifically based nutritional knowledge and advice.
The FSA carries out a range of work to make sure food is safe to eat, including funding research on chemical, microbiological and radiological safety, as well as food hygiene and allergy.
Website providing access to more than 26,000 summarised documents from over 7,500 development organisations - all available free to download.
Architecture, Planning & Landscape Information Gateway - a global gateway for information and a forum for its exchange, centred around more than 1,100 reviewed links to architecture, planning and landscape-related websites. These reviews are organised into thirteen themed Gateways - Architecture, Construction, Culture, Heritage, Housing, Interior Design, Landscape, Planning, Regeneration, Sustainability, Transport, Urban Design and Other Information Resources.
The HRM Guide is a series of linked websites containing hundreds of free Human Resource Management-related articles and features.
The leading European business network for corporate social responsibility with around 75 multinational coporations and 27 national partner organisations as members.
Ethical performance contains reports and news stories on best practice ethical initiatives from across the world.
The primary reference point for corporate responsibility (CR) reports and resources worldwide. The majority of content is available free of charge as a service to the global CR stakeholder community.
Works with business to build a sustainable future for people and planet..... and provides a framework to support and challenge business to improve its performance and benefit society through our four areas of expertise – community, environment, workplace and marketplace.
Well regarded legal gateway site. It is split into the following sections aimed at specific audiences, Information for Individuals, Information for Students, Information for Companies, Information for Lawyers.
A very comprehensive site providing links to worldwide information on the legal profession, including links to electronic journals, law directories and others. Many sources are full text.
A publishing company providing electronic publishing products and services for the legal market. The Web site includes browse-able indexes of the UK legal Web. Includes articles on the Internet by Nick Holmes originally published in the Solicitors Journal.
Maintained by the Templeman Law Library at the University of Kent at Canterbury to help students and others find their way around legal resources on the internet
Statistics can be a great source to support an argument, or to help visualize information. Here are a few free-to-access sources:
Office for National Statistics (ONS): The UK's largest independent producer of official statistics.
Eurostat: Official statistics from the European Union
UK National Statistics: The official UK statistics site.