Open Access Resources
Government of India — Free Resources
Free
National Digital Library (NDL)
IIT Kharagpur's virtual repository with 30M+ learning resources across all engineering disciplines.
Free
NPTEL
IIT/IISc online courses — 471M+ views, 50,000+ video hours in engineering & sciences.
Govt
SWAYAM MOOCs
National MOOC platform with 2,000+ courses. Earn credit-eligible certificates from IITs.
Free
Shodhganga
INFLIBNET reservoir of Indian theses & dissertations from universities — ideal for research.
Govt
e-PG Pathshala
UGC postgraduate e-content — textbooks, videos, simulations for PG engineering subjects.
ONOS
One Nation One Subscription
Central Govt scheme: national access to 30+ international STEM publishers via INFLIBNET.
🌍 International Open Access — Engineering, Science & Others
Free
arXiv
Cornell's preprint server for engineering, CS, physics, maths & EE — 2M+ papers.
Free
engrXiv
Open preprint server dedicated to engineering and related fields.
Free
DOAJ
Directory of Open Access Journals — 1,724+ engineering journals indexed and searchable.
Free
DOAB
Directory of Open Access Books — 10,000+ engineering titles freely downloadable.
OA
Elsevier Open Access Journals
Open access journals from Elsevier.
OA
Hindawi Publishing
Open access STM publisher — Wiley-affiliated, free full-text engineering journals.
Free
IEEE Open Access
IEEE's open access journals in electrical engineering, computing & technology.
Free
IntechOpen Books
Read, share and download more than 8,000 peer-reviewed open access books.
OA
MDPI Journals
Peer-reviewed open access publisher with 400+ journals in engineering & applied sciences.
OA
PLOS
Public Library of Science — open access across biology, medicine and applied sciences.
OA
Routledge Open Access Books
Open Access Books: Engineering.
OA
Springer eBooks
Open Access Books with Springer.
OA
Springer eJournals
Open Access Journals with Springer.
OA
Taylor & Francis Journals
Peer-reviewed Journals and Articles.
🔧 Free Engineering, Science, & Others Textbooks & Course Materials
Free
FreeTechBooks
Free CS, engineering and programming textbooks, notes & lecture materials legally online.
Free
Open Textbook Library
Open textbooks are licensed by authors and publishers to be freely used and adapted. Download, edit and distribute them at no cost.
Free
MIT OpenCourseWare
Free MIT course materials — lecture notes, assignments, exams for all engineering subjects.
Free
Khan Academy
Free interactive exercises in maths, physics, chemistry and computing for engineering students.
Free
edX / OpenEdX
MIT & Harvard-founded platform with audit-free courses from top global universities.
Free
Google Books
Millions of book previews & full public-domain engineering texts freely available.
Free
Project Gutenberg
60,000+ free eBooks — classic and public-domain science, technology & math texts.
📚 Open Access Resources for Students
Academic Databases & Search Engines
- Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) — Free search engine for scholarly literature across disciplines; access to articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions.
- CORE (core.ac.uk) — World's largest collection of open access research papers; 200+ million articles from 10,000+ repositories.
- BASE (base-search.net) — Over 350 million documents from 10,000+ sources; multi-disciplinary academic web resources.
- DOAJ (doaj.org) — 19,000+ peer-reviewed open access journals covering all academic disciplines.
- OpenDOAR (v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar) — Directory of open access repositories worldwide; quality-assured academic repositories.
Science & Technology
- PubMed Central (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc) — Free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences; 8+ million articles.
- Europe PMC (europepmc.org) — Life sciences literature database; 41+ million publications.
- bioRxiv (biorxiv.org) — Preprint server for biology; latest biological research.
- ChemRxiv (chemrxiv.org) — Preprint server for chemistry; chemical sciences research.
- OpenStax (openstax.org) — Free peer-reviewed textbooks in science, math, and humanities.
- MIT OpenCourseWare (ocw.mit.edu) — Free MIT course materials: lecture notes, assignments, videos.
Books & E-Books
- Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) — 70,000+ free e-books; classic literature and historical texts.
- Open Library (openlibrary.org) — 20+ million book records; borrowing and reading online.
- Internet Archive (archive.org) — Digital library of websites, books, media; 40+ million books and texts.
- BookBoon (bookboon.com) — Free textbooks and business e-books; student-focused resources.
- OpenTextbook Library (open.umn.edu/opentextbooks) — Open licensed, peer-reviewed academic textbooks.
- LibreTexts (libretexts.org) — Free open textbooks in STEM and humanities subjects.
Subject-Specific Resources
- Engineering & Computer Science: IEEE Xplore Open Access, ACM Digital Library (selected open access), OpenCourseWare Consortium
- Medicine & Health Sciences: WHO Library, Cochrane Library (some free content), MedlinePlus
- Social Sciences: SocArXiv, ERIC, Social Science Open Access Repository
- Humanities & Arts: JSTOR Open Access, HathiTrust, Digital Public Library of America, Europeana
- Law & Legal Studies: Google Scholar Case Law, LexisNexis Communities, Justia
Data & Statistics
- Google Dataset Search (datasetsearch.research.google.com) — Search for datasets across the web; scientific and government data.
- Data.gov (data.gov) — US government open data; 300,000+ datasets.
- World Bank Open Data (data.worldbank.org) — Free access to global development data; economic and demographic statistics.
- UNESCO Institute for Statistics (uis.unesco.org) — Education, science, culture data; international statistics.
- Kaggle Datasets (kaggle.com/datasets) — Machine learning and data science datasets; community-contributed data.
- figshare (figshare.com) — Research outputs and datasets; multidisciplinary repository.
Media & Educational Videos
- Khan Academy (khanacademy.org) — Free educational videos and exercises; K-12 through college level.
- TED-Ed (ed.ted.com) — Educational videos and lessons; engaging animated content.
- Coursera Audit (coursera.org) — Free course auditing (no certificate); university-level courses.
- edX Audit (edx.org) — Free access to course materials; top university content.
- YouTube EDU (youtube.com/edu) — Curated educational content; lectures and tutorials.
- Academic Earth (academicearth.org) — Free online college courses; video lectures from top universities.
Research Tools
- Zotero (zotero.org) — Free reference management software; citation and bibliography tool.
- Mendeley (mendeley.com) — Reference manager and academic network; free basic version.
- Connected Papers (connectedpapers.com) — Visual literature review tool; discover related research.
- Unpaywall (unpaywall.org) — Browser extension for finding legal open access; 30+ million free scholarly articles.
- Open Access Button (openaccessbutton.org) — Find free, legal research articles; request papers from authors.
Writing & Language Resources
- Grammarly Free (grammarly.com) — Grammar and spelling checker; writing enhancement tool.
- Hemingway Editor (hemingwayapp.com) — Readability checker; writing style improvement.
- Purdue OWL (owl.purdue.edu) — Free writing resources; citation guides (APA, MLA, Chicago).
- Duolingo (duolingo.com) — Free language learning; 40+ languages.
International & Regional Resources
- Europe: OpenAIRE, HAL (French repository)
- India: INFLIBNET, Shodhganga
- Africa: African Journals Online
- Latin America: SciELO, Redalyc
💡 Tips for Students
- Start with Google Scholar — Most comprehensive and user-friendly.
- Check DOAJ — For peer-reviewed journal articles.
- Use Unpaywall browser extension — Automatically finds free versions.
- Explore subject-specific databases — More targeted results.
- Bookmark favorites — Create personal resource library.
- Verify credibility — Check peer-review status and publisher reputation.
- Cite properly — Use provided citation tools or Zotero/Mendeley.