As a scholar, it is nearly impossible to get free access to online academic resources that will aid you in your work as most of them are tagged with a subscription fee. But that should be a thing of the past after you have digested the content of this article. You can be able to find where to get all kinds of online academic journals completely for free.
Writing on this topic takes me back to when I was working on my final year project report. The moment I got my topic, I immediately went online to do some research. Lo and behold I found many related resources on my topic but my joy was instantly cut short when I tried opening these documents and they wouldn’t budge because I have to pay for it and get a code to unlock the file.
I was heartbroken but I didn’t give up on my search.
I kept researching maybe I would see even one that gives free access. The best I saw only gave free access up to chapter one and asked me to pay if I wanted the complete package. I experienced another moment of heartbreak. After all my struggle, I couldn’t find any resources that gave me free access. I had to use blogs, websites, YouTube videos and guides from my supervisor to write my project report.
It wasn’t very satisfying for me because I kept wondering what sort of valuable information must have been locked away in those files that wouldn’t open without payment. I also wondered how the locked information must have benefitted me like how it would have made my project report outstanding and the amount of knowledge I must have gained too.
Well, it’s not like I couldn’t pay for it but I was scared of putting my card details out there and getting scammed. Better safe than sorry, yea?
Every scholar or working professional out there whether in the medical or legal field must have had a similar experience to mine and you will agree with me that it is not a very nice experience. Having free access to a couple of academic journals contributes to your knowledge and makes problem-solving quicker and easier.
These academic journals contribute as a great resource in academic writing such as thesis, dissertation, or coursework so that you can use them to cite references in your work. If you are working in a particular field and want to learn how to go about solving a particular problem or you just want to acquire knowledge, academic journals are super helpful but only if they offer free access and are not locked behind a paywall.
In this blog post, I have curated a list of free online academic journals that you can access for free and write a good thesis or gain that knowledge without paying or being scared of falling for scams. This information can be highly beneficial to students, researchers, journalists, and other working professionals.
What Is An Academic Journal?
An academic journal is a periodical that contains articles written by experts in a particular field of study.
Free Online Academic Journals
The free online academic journals cut across a wide range of disciplines allowing researchers, students, working professionals, and knowledge seekers to get the information they need without paying for free. Note that these free online academic journals are legal and are not pirated.
Without any further ado, the following are the top free online academic journals:
- Journals 4 Free (J4F)
- Sci-hub
- BioMed Central (BMC)
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ
- Public Library of Science (PLOS)
- African Journals Online (AJOL)
- Academic Journals (AJ)
- Science Open
- Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)
- Elsevier
1. Journals 4 Free (J4F)
First on the list is Journals 4 Free or J4F, a platform that offers non-pirated academic journals across a wide range of academic disciplines. The academic journals here are arranged in categories like health sciences, business & economics, social sciences, physics & astronomy, and many others. When you select a category, you will see more sub categories to enable you to find exactly what you are looking for.
The perks of J4F are that there is a wide range of free journals available, there are over 17,000 free journals available on the platform across multiple disciplines and they are in multiple languages. You can find journals as far back as 1999 and as recent as 2022 on the platform. You can also search for exactly what you are looking for and get results from related journals.
2. Sci-hub
Sci-hub is a platform that believes that information should not be hidden, rather, it should be out there in the open to contribute to individual and worldwide success. The platform is an activist of open-access academic journals and has raked up some legal issues due to this, thus not all countries can have access to their platforms.
The journal on this platform only concentrates on science, especially medical and health sciences. Sci-hub provides unrestricted access to all scientific knowledge ever published.
3. BioMed Central (BMC)
BMC aims to become a leader in providing free academic journals in the areas of biology, health sciences, and medicine. This platform is highly recommended for those in these fields as they can have access to over 250 journals. If you are working on anything related to biology and the medical field be rest assured that you will find a truckload of helpful information on BMC.
4. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ
DOAJ has thousands of academic journals and over 8 million articles that cut across various academic fields and are provided in up to 80 different languages. When you visit the site, you get to see the option to search for what you are looking for. You can search by subject, title, ISSN, or across fields. The academic journals on the platform are accessible in up to 132 countries.
All services are completely free on DOAJ. If you are also an advocate of free access to academic journals and articles, you too can submit your work on the platform so that it can be available for free to the thousands of people who need it.
5. Public Library of Science (PLOS)
PLOS is another platform that runs an Open Access journal platform in the field of science to empower researchers and make science publicly available online without any restrictions. The platform launched in 2001 and has the approval of 34,000 scientists from 180 countries to operate as a platform that provides free access to scientific journals as they believe that it will take science forward.
You will find free academic journals on microbiology, neuroscience, molecular biology, ecology, cancer treatment and research, neuroscience, and many others. If you are a scientist or researcher and believe in giving the global public access to your work, you can go on to share your work with other scientists and researchers on PLOS to discuss and work together.
6. African Journals Online (AJOL)
This is the world’s largest platform where you can find free African-published scholarly journals. The platform aims to increase global and continental online access, awareness, quality, and use of African-published, peer-reviewed research. There are over 670 African journals from 38 countries including South Africa, Togo, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Egypt.
These journals cut across different categories such as religion, history, veterinary science, African studies, humanities, philosophy, and many others. AJOL is designed to be used by researchers, librarians, policymakers, and authors.
7. Academic Journals (AJ)
You can find a host of free online academic journals on Academic Journals that cut across fields like physical sciences, engineering, medical sciences, arts and education, legal studies, and many others. You can either search for what you are looking for or click on one of the categories like agricultural sciences for example where you will see more topics to find what you are looking for.
The journals are also arranged in alphabetical order to make it easy to find what you need.
8. Science Open
Science Open is a platform with 85 million free scientific publications and 25,000 academic journals that are all open access. The platform offers its services to publishers, universities, colleges, and research centers. Science Open is partnered with UCL Press, Michigan Publishing or the University of Michigan, DOAJ, American Psychological Association, Edinburgh University Press, and many top organizations.
9. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)
This is a search engine built to search for academic documents such as journals, articles, dissertations, and other detailed work. Users can search from over 330 million documents and the results can be filtered to free so that you can only see the free ones.
The BASE is the Google for any academic document. To use the platform, you simply need to sign up for free and get access to millions of content on the internet.
10. Elsevier
Elsevier provides open-access journals to researchers, authors, librarians, and authors from all works of life. Every journal on the platform has undergone peer review before being uploaded to be read and downloaded for free.
To get access to the open-access journals on Elsevier, you will have to sign up for an entirely free account.
These are platforms that offer free online academic journals. I might not have stated it but for each of the websites, you have to sign up for an account before you can have access to the materials. Some of the websites do not allow the download of the materials but you can read them online for free while others allow you to read them online or download them onto your device if you want.
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