Koha is the library's catalog. Search for books and test kits. To search for journals, newspapers, or other periodicals, please use our other databases.
Google Scholar searches the internet for articles, books, reviews, and other publications. Not all publications are indexed in Google Scholar and not all results are scholarly or peer-reviewed. We recommend you use Google Scholar as a supplemental a tool to help with your research.
Did you know that you can find full-text articles available through William James College Library's subscriptions on Google Scholar? It takes just a minute to set up!
Watch this short video to learn how to connect Google Scholar to WJC Library!
Did you finally find the perfect article to help with your research only to see that the publisher wants you to pay to access the full-text?Unpaywall is a browser extension that searches the internet for free and legal versions of research papers. Simply download and install the extension on your Chrome or Firefox browser. Visit Unpaywall's website to see how it works and to download your own copy.
Unpaywall: "Read paywalled research papers for free."
Still can't find a free copy? Use the library's free interlibrary loan service and we will do our best to get you a copy of the item quickly.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative defines open access as meaning "...its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
While open access is an exciting and growing initiative, it is still important to evaluate the resource and ensure it is from a reputable source. Grand Valley State University Libraries developed a list of Open Access Journal Quality Indicators to help navigate the world of open access publishing.
Open access journals make articles freely available on the Internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text. Benefits of publishing in an open access venue may include:
The open access landscape is complex. There are thousands of peer-reviewed open access journals, with new titles emerging rapidly using a variety of models. While there are many high-quality, peer-reviewed open access publications, there are also journals/publishers that engage in unprofessional or unethical practices. The following guidelines are intended to help you evaluate open access publications as you consider appropriate publication venues, or invitations to serve as reviewers or editors.
Note that there is no single criterion that indicates whether or not a publication is reputable. Rather, look for a cumulative effect of more positives or more negatives.
Journals and Peer-Reviewed Papers
PLoS (Public Library of Science)
"More than 100,000 authors from over 190 countries, including 61 Nobel Laureates, have published with PLOS. Authors who seek highly respected, peer-reviewed journals that reach the widest possible audience choose to publish with PLOS."
SSRN (Social Science Research Network)
"SSRN´s eLibrary provides 740,146 research papers from 343,012 researchers across 30 disciplines."
NIH (National Institutes of Health) and PubMed
Authors of research papers funded by the NIH are required to post their papers to PubMed Central no later than 12 months after the official date of publication. These articles are freely accessible online at PubMed.
BioMed Central
"BMC has an evolving portfolio of some 300 peer-reviewed journals, sharing discoveries from research communities in science, technology, engineering and medicine."
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
"DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals."
Books
Hathi Trust
"HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world."
DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books)
"8027 Academic peer-reviewed books and chapters from 212 publishers."
Data
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
"The mission of the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) is to facilitate research in criminal justice and criminology, through the preservation, enhancement, and sharing of computerized data resources; through the production of original research based on archived data; and through specialized training workshops in quantitative analysis of crime and justice data."
Health and Medical Care Archive
"The data collections in HMCA include surveys of health care professionals and organizations, investigations of access to medical care, surveys on substance abuse, and evaluations of innovative programs for the delivery of health care."
Harvard Dataverse
Open repository for data from multiple disciplines. You can search tens of thousands of datasets or upload your own.
Dryad
Dryad is a nonprofit repository for data underlying the international scientific and medical literature.