Virtual Library

This WWW Virtual Library: International Affairs Resources is an Internet directory of over 2000 annotated links to high-quality English-language sources of information and analysis in many international and global studies topics. Sites are carefully selected for their long-term value, favoring those with cost-free, authoritative information and analysis online.


Search Engines and Repositories for Open Access Scholarly Papers and Articles


These sources provide access to cost-free and open source scholarly materials in international studies topics that are often not readily available through the major search engines



• The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine is "one of the world's most voluminous search engines especially for academic open access web resources,... operated by Bielefeld University Library [in Germany]," providing scores of millions of documents from more than 6,000 sources, many in international studies topics. About 75 percent of the documents are available free in full-text.


CORE (COnnecting REpositories)-- "Aims to facilitate free access to scholarly publications distributed across many systems... gives you access to millions of scholarly articles aggregated from many Open Access repositories." Many international studies articles are available, in full-text.
Use the "refine your search" option for best results.


DART-Europe-- "Partnership of research libraries and library consortia who are working together to improve global access to European research theses." Through this interface, a "single European portal for the discovery of electronic theses and dissertations," you can access in full-text over 1.1 million open access research theses from over 570 universities in 29 European countries.

Directory of Open Access Journals-- Provides free access to millions of articles in over 17,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journals in 80 languages and from 130 countries. Use the advanced search option.


Google Scholar "enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research... to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web." Many international affairs sources are included. Particularly good for finding Open Access, free, and recent items. For search technique tips, see the Google Scholar Blog and the Research Buzz article "Google Scholar and the Full-Word Wildcard."


IDEAS-- "The largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics and available freely on the Internet," with millions of research items, most available for free download through a thorough search system. "Includes bibliographic metadata from over 2,000 participating archives, including all the major publishers and research outlets."

• The International and Area Studies Commons of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons posts thousands of open-source academic papers in international and area studies topics. These are part of the much larger Digital Commons Network that "brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work."

Internet Archive Scholar "includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals through the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web." Provides a fulltext search capacity and a User Guide. For more tips, see the blog entry "Search Scholarly Materials Preserved in the Internet Archive."


London School of Economics Research Online-- "Aims to be a complete database of research produced by LSE Staff... made as useful as possible by the inclusion of abstracts and electronic links to journal articles or publishers' websites." Large repository for high-quality scholarly production in politics and economics, in many formats, much of it available free in full-text or video form.


Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations-- "International organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations." Provides a worldwide directory to find online electronic theses and dissertations.


OAIster-- Accessed here through WorldCat, "a union catalog of millions of records representing Open Access resources that was built by harvesting from Open Access collections worldwide... Today, OAIster includes more than 25 million records representing digital resources from more than 1,100 contributors," including many free full-text items in international studies topics. Use the advanced search option for best results.


Open Access Theses and Dissertations-- "Aims to be the best possible resource for finding Open Access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world... currently indexes [over 5 million] theses and dissertations," including many on international topics.


OpenDOAR- From JISC, UK, "an authoritative directory of academic Open Access repositories... As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents."


Political Research Online-- "Collaborative project led by the American Political Science Association and a consortium of political science and related associations... a pre-print server that serves as the common resource for all emerging scholarship in political science," such as conference papers, early scholarly drafts, and papers from research institutes. Requires free registration.


• The Social Science Open Access Repository posts a "steadily growing collection of full-text social-science documents which you can access freely," in many languages, obtained both by professional self-postings and "through co-operation with institutes, scientific associations, publishers and editors."  Many of the documents are in international studies topics.

• The Social Science Research Network "is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences." Many thousands of academic and research institute papers are available for free download, including in international studies topics.

Unpaywall-- A widely professionally-used system that harvests and retrieves millions of items of scholarly "Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories, and make[s] it easy to find, track, and use." You can download a browser extension to access the system most easily. Users guides to Unpaywall are posted.


WorldWideScience.org "is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals [which] provides real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed multilingual scientific literature." Powerful search facility provides bibliographic citations and availability information for a huge number of scholarly science and social science publications in many languages. Some are available in cost-free, full-text form. For most effective results, use the Advanced Search option and consult the "Help" section.


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This section of the WWW Virtual Library system was created, and is edited and maintained, by Dr. Wayne A.Selcher, Professor of International Studies Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA 17022-2288  U.S.A., as a volunteer and non-profit public service. This website copyright 1997-present by Wayne A. Selcher. E-mail: wayneselcher@comcast.net