Systematic Reviews & Other Review Types

This guide will help you get started with your next systematic review, scoping review, or other review types.

Introduction

Open Access Health Information is not stored in one massive location. You must search utilizing a combination of sources to locate open access articles, books, and more!

*All of the material available through these websites is free to read. However, not all of the material can be reused. Please check individual licenses for exact reuse guidelines.

OA Catalogs

OAIster
OAIster serves as a search portal for digital collections of electronic books, online journals, audio and image files, and movies provided by the research library community. Users can search by keyword, title, creator, subject or resource type. OAIster is a union catalog of digital records built by harvesting records using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

OA Search Engines

Science.gov
Gateway to government science information and research results.
Evidence Aid
EvidenceAid provides free access to published systematic reviews of relevance to natural disasters, humanitarian crises or major healthcare emergencies, that include health outcomes.
CORE
Search across hundreds of open repositories from around the world.

Google Scholar
Note: Follow these instructions to link Google Scholar with Temple's resources.
Google Scholar provides search for scholarly literature. It covers disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

Open Data Sharing

NIH Data Sharing Repositories
Healthdata.gov
Inventory of publicly available health data resources.
HSRIC Directory of Data, Tools & Statistics
Health Services Research- Information Central is an index of selective links representing a sample of available health information for research.
re3data
Research data repository registry
Dryad
General open data repository
Figshare
General open data repository
Zenodo
General open data repository
Data Portals
Global open government data
Data Hub
11,000 datasets
DataCite
DataCite is a registry of datasets, software, images, and other research material. They also provide DOIs to act as persistent identifiers for research data and outputs.
ICPSR Data Archive
A data archive of over 250,000 files of research including specialized collections of data in education, aging, substance abuse, and other fields.
Scientific Data - Recommended Repositories
The scholarly journal Scientific Data maintains a list of recommended public data repositories. The list includes repositories for scientific data in most scientific disciplines, including health sciences and medicine.
Open Access Directory - Data Repositories
The Open Access Directory maintains a list of repositories and databases that have open access data.
Project Data Sphere
Project Data Sphere offers historical, patient-level data from academic and industry phase III cancer clinical trials.

PrePrints /OA Self-Archived Directories

search.bioPreprint
search.bioPreprint searches across several preprint databases to discover yet-to-be published or reviewed biomedical research articles. This is a free resource provided by the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System.

PsyArXiv
SSRN Medical Preprints
OSF (Open Science Framework)
Cogprints
An electronic archive for self-archived papers in any area of psychology, neuroscience, and Linguistics. (See Medicine category.)

OA Repositories/Repository Directories

SHARE 2.0
ARL/COS open access initiative to search all institutional repositories. Launched September 2016
OSF Preprints
The open preprint repository network. Including search results from arXiv, PeerJ, Research Papers in Economics, and others, in addition to the branded preprint services hosted by COS (PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, and engrXiv). Launched September 2016
OpenDOAR
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.
BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)
An online search tool for open access resources and documents. Hosted at the Bielefeld University Library in Germany, BASE harvests its data from open access scholarly repositories.
NIH Data Sharing Repositories
List of NIH NIH-supported data repositories that make data accessible for reuse.
ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)
International directory of open access institutional and national repositories maintained by ePrints.
ROARMAP
Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies is a companion directory of ROAR that lists mandates of institutions and governments about open access publishing
SRDR (Systematic Review Data Repository)
Open-Access Medical Image Repositories
List of repositories for locating OA medical images. Note*:Please check individual licenses for exact reuse guidelines.
NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePort)
The Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT) Website provides a central point of access to reports, data, and analyses of NIH research.
NIH-RePORTER (RePORT Expenditures and Results) module
RePORTER is an electronic tool that allows users to search a repository of NIH-funded research projects and access publications and patents resulting from NIH funding.

Open Access at Temple University

Temple University Electronic Theses & Dissertations
All Temple University dissertations submitted Fall 2008 and thereafter are available electronically in full-text through this collection, as are all masters theses submitted in May 2010 and thereafter. A few theses and dissertations submitted prior to 1980 are available here as digital copies of the print original.
CommonHealth
A journal of the College of Public Health at Temple University, is a peer-reviewed, online-only, open access journal for rapid dissemination of high quality research and scholarship related to all aspects of public health.

Publishing in an OA journal? Quick Tips

Trust your instincts
Look at the quality of the articles published in the journal
Check to see if the journal is indexed in PubMed and included in DOAJ
Think. Check. Submit.
Spam emails or calls may = scam alert (Dear esteemed scholar…)
Google the journal to find out what others are saying.
Don’t be too trusting! Don’t be afraid to validate affiliations, editorial board, and impact factors.
When in doubt contact the library to check for you.

Databases

PubMed Central
PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

AJOL (African Journals Online)
AJOL is a database of journals published in Africa, covering the full range of academic disciplines. Includes hundreds of open access journals.
National Center for Biotechnology Information
Provides access to biomedical and genomic information.
WHO IRIS
WHO global digital library - online access to WHO published material
LILACS
A comprehensive index of scientific and technical literature of Latin America and the Caribbean. For 30 years contributing to increase visibility, access and quality of health information in the Region.
African Index Medicus
An international index to African health literature and information sources.
Europe PubMed Central (PMC)
Europe PMC includes resources from PubMed and PubMed Central (PMC), projects developed at the NCBI in the USA. Europe PMC is part of a network of PMC International (PMCI) repositories that also includes PMC Canada.

Clinical Trials

ClinicalTrials.gov
ClinicalTrials.gov is the NLM's database of clinical trials data and publications. Studies and results can be viewed online or downloaded. Most studies are submitted when they begin, and updated throughout the study.
Project Data Sphere
Project Data Sphere offers historical, patient-level data from academic and industry phase III cancer clinical trials.

OA Books

DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books)
Directory of peer-reviewed open access ebooks. The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books.
Springer Open
Open Textbook Library

OA Journal Publishers

PLOS (Public Library of Science)
A nonprofit open-access publisher and advocacy organization. Publisher of PLOS Medicine, PLOS Genetics and more!

BioMed Central
BioMed Central contains peer-reviewed open access journals. It covers all areas of biology, biomedicine and medicine as well some broad interest titles.

BMJ Open
An online, open access journal, dedicated to publishing medical research from all disciplines and therapeutic areas.
Peer J
Fully peer-reviewed and Open Access journal in the Biological and Medical Sciences.
Dove Medical Press
A privately held UK company specializing in the publication of Open Access peer-reviewed journals across the broad spectrum of science, technology and especially medicine.
Cell Press
Cell Press publishes several "Gold OA" peer reviewed journals, and several hybrid journals, which are subscription-based but offer some open access articles. All Cell Press papers become open archive 12 months after publication.
Bioline International
Bioline International is a pioneer in the provision of open access to peer reviewed bioscience journals published in developing countries. These journals contain timely research on public health, international development, tropical medicine, food and nutritional security, and biodiversity.
National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Journals Library
NIHR research published in their own publicly open-access journals.
Sage Open
SAGE Open is a peer-reviewed, "Gold" open access journal from SAGE that publishes original research and review articles in an interactive, open access format. Articles may span the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities.
Academic Journals
Academic Journals is a broad-based publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals. Academic Journals currently publishes 111 open access journals covering art and humanities, engineering, medical science, social sciences, biological sciences, physical sciences and agricultural sciences.
HighWire Press
HighWire Press at Stanford University develops and maintains the web versions of important journals in biomedicine and other disciplines. A list of journals with free full-text articles online is available.
Springer Open
SpringerOpen is Springer's portfolio of fully open access journals and books, covering all areas of science, including medicine. The entire content published with SpringerOpen is freely accessible online immediately upon publication.
Taylor & Francis Open
Currently publish a number of pure open access journals, with no subscription content. The articles in these journals receive both rigorous peer review and expedited online publication.
Wiley Open Access
Wiley Open Access is a program of fully open access journals. All research articles published in Wiley Open Access journals are immediately freely available to read, download and share.
Elsevier Open Access Journals
Elsevier's Open Science division publishes a wide range of open access peer reviewed journals. All articles published via Elsevier Open Access Journals are immediately freely available to read and share
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Publishes over 500 OA journals.
MDPI
MDPI is an academic publisher based in Switzerland that publishes over 200 fully open access journals in health sciences and medicine.
Academic Medicine Journal
Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges--Includes some free and open-access articles.
F1000Research
1000Research is an Open Science Open Peer-Reviewed publishing platform for the life sciences.
Journal of Medical Internet Research
An open-access journal covering health informatics and health services/health policy, with a focus on emerging technologies in health, medicine, and biomedical research.
MedCrave Online Journals
MedCrave publishes over 100 specialized and inter-disciplinary journals . Their primary focus is science, technology, and medicine, but they also publish arts and humanities journals.
Medknow
Medknow publishes over 450 peer reviewed journals in health sciences and medicine. Most journals provide immediate full online access to articles, and most articles can also be downloaded as PDFs.
eLife
eLife is a nonprofit organization that published scientific research news and research articles. Research is selected and evaluated by working scientists and is freely available to all readers.

OA Directories

DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
A community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
ROAD (Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources)
ROAD, the Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources, is a service offered by the ISSN International Centre with the support of the Communication and Information Sector of UNESCO.
Open Science Directory
A search tool for open access journals and journals in special programs for developing countries.
Open Access Directory
The Open Access Directory is a community-run and community maintained wiki of simple factual lists about open access (OA) in regards to science and scholarship. It lists scholarly articles about open access and links to other directories, repositories, publishers, books, and journals. Hosted by Simmons University.

BrowZine Web
BrowZine contains articles found in Open Access and subscription databases, uniting them into complete journals, and then arranging these journals on a common newsstand. This is a way to browse, read and monitor scholarly journals across the disciplines.