Open Access Research

Different types of resources serve different research needs. Here's some advice to help you decide which resource you should use from this guide:

• Digital Libraries: Best for curated collections of books, manuscripts, and historical or cultural materials. Great for primary sources. archival research, and unique items.
• Journals: Use when you need peer-reviewed, up-to-date research articles and scientific studies.
• Repositories: Ideal for preprints, datasets, theses, and institutional research outputs not yet, or ever, published in journals.
• Government and Public Data: Perfect for official statistics, reports, and open data on topics like demographics, health, and policy.
• Open Educational Resources: Use for freely available teaching and learning material such as textbooks, lesson plans, and modules.
• Gray Literature: Helpful for reports, working papers, conference proceedings, and other research produced outside traditional publishing channels.

Consider what kind of information you need: primary or secondary, formal or informal, current or historical, and choose accordingly. 

Gray literature refers to research that isn't published in books or journals but can still be very useful. This includes reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks, conference papers or presentations, theses and dissertations, etc. 

Why use it? It often provides current, practical, or hard-to-find information.

Try These Sources

(!) Remember to check who wrote it and whether it's credible, since this literature is usually not peer-reviewed.