LibGuides: Open Access: Home

What is Open Access (OA)?

In the case of older books, open access is the digitization of items in which copyright has expired making the items readily available for researchers.

More currently, many journals have opted to provide materials open access. While the items are still peer-reviewed and often published in both in print and online, they are provided free to researchers.

Gold OA are journals that specifically publish all materials open access.
Green OA allows for self-archiving of items published in subscription materials on some form of repository such as our own CSLScholar. This later form of OA is at the discretion and request of the author.

Religious Open Access Resources

ATLA Digital Library
The CDRI collections provide access to digital images of woodcuts, photographs, slides, papyri, coins, maps, postcards, manuscripts, lithographs, sermons, shape-note tune books, and various forms of Christian art, architecture, and iconography.
Bibliographic Information Base in Patristics
A database of articles on patristic studies
Bibliographie Papyrologique Online
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
A variety of classic religious texts and community forums for religious scholars
E-Clavis
Bibliography of Christian Apocrypha compiled by NASSCAL
more...less...
For those with specialized knowledge, contributions are solicited.
Folkebladet
The official newspaper of the Lutheran Free Church in Minneapolis
Kretzmann's Popular Commentary
The Kretzmann Project. The Popular Commentary of the Bible by Paul E. Kretzmann, Ph. D., D. D., has been a favorite among confessional Lutherans since publication of the first volume in 1921. The four volume work, completed in 1924, consists of nearly 3,000 pages. Kretzmann, as it is popularly known, has been out of print for quite some time. Many of us have found copies in used bookstores. The project was initiated so that Kretzmann can be available to everyone with the click of a mouse.
Lutheran Theology website
Confessions, sacraments, etc in thematic structure
Open Access Digital Theological Library
Search a variety of OA resources from leading theological institutions.
Post-Reformation Digital Library
The Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) is a select database of digital books relating to the development of theology and philosophy during the Reformation and Post-Reformation/Early Modern Era (late 15th-18th c.). Late medieval and patristic works printed and referenced in the early modern era are also included. The PRDL is a project of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research.
RIM (Research in Ministry)
Abstracts of theses and dissertations relating to religion, theology, and ministry.
Sant'Agostino
A searchable database of the works of Augustine in Latin, Italian, English, Spanish, French, and Dutch
Theological Commons
Princeton digital collection of various theological resources that are searchable and grouped into collections.
Theological Journals Search
This Google search interface focuses solely on Theologically relevant materials that are readily available as open access.

Other Academic Open Access Resources

Bartleby
A large library of literature and reference materials including items such as Harvard Classics
Chronicling America
A Library of Congress program to digitize newspapers from all over the US
Digital Public Library of America
A searchable connection to a variety of resources in various institutional repositories in the United States
Directory of Open Access Journals
A searchable database to identify and connect to relevant OA publicaitons.
Europeana
The European version of DPLA with a focus on European history and culture
HathiTrust
Focuses on preserving higher level research and sharing that knowledge
Internet Archives
Includes a variety of digitized books, an archive of the Internet (Wayback Machine), audio, video, and television.
JSTOR
JSTOR provides multi-disciplinary indexing for a large number of journals as some full-text open access resources
Oxford University Research Archive
An searchable institutional repository of the scholarly work produced at Oxford
Packard Humanities Classical Latin Texts
Project Gutenberg
A large library of 54,00 volumes that are public domain that have been digitized.