Research Guides: Sociology: PhD: Open Access

Open Access

OpenDissertations This link opens in a new window
Formerly known as American Doctoral Dissertations 1933-1955. OpenDissertations offers free access to nearly 100,000 key dissertations, including records from 1955 to the present. Since 2015, the H.W. Wilson Foundation has expanded the scope of the American Doctoral Dissertations database to include records for dissertations and theses.

Library of Congress
Searches across and provides access to the more than 300 digital collections created by the Library of Congress. Includes photos, prints, drawings, maps, books, manuscripts, audio recordings, films, notated music, newspapers, and archived websites.
Caselaw Access Project
The Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) expands public access to U.S. law. Our goal is to make all published U.S. court decisions freely available to the public online, in a consistent format, digitized from the collection of the Harvard Law Library.

CAP includes all official, book-published United States case law — every volume designated as an official report of decisions by a court within the United States. Our scope includes all state courts, federal courts, and territorial courts for American Samoa, Dakota Territory, Guam, Native American Courts, Navajo Nation, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Our earliest case is from 1658, and our most recent cases are from 2018.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, covering a range of subjects.

ERIC (Public) This link opens in a new window
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is a digital library of education research materials sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. It indexes and abstracts journal articles, books, conference papers, policy papers, and other education-related materials.
Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
Over 2.5 million full-text books online. Download free books and texts. The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books.
National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts This link opens in a new window
The NCJRS: National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database is published by the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice's National Criminal Justice Reference Service, an information clearinghouse for people around the U.S. and the world involved with research, policy, and practice related to criminal and juvenile justice, and drug control.
SafetyLit This link opens in a new window
SafetyLit provides abstracts of reports from researchers who work in the more than 30 professional disciplines relevant to preventing unintentional injuries, violence, and self-harm. Among these are anthropology, economics, education, engineering specialties, ergonomics and human factors, health and medicine, law and law enforcement, psychology, sociology, and other fields.
U.S. Census Bureau This link opens in a new window
Online access to a wide array of population statistics.
WGBH Open Vault This link opens in a new window
Open Vault is the home of WGBH Media Library and Archives, providing online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH. The ever-expanding site contains video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools, all of which are available for individual and classroom learning. Visitors can become a "member" (free) of Open Vault: to access records and save findings.