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The Directory of Open Access Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals

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Reference management. Clean and simple.

The top list of academic research databases

2. Web of Science

5. ieee xplore, 6. sciencedirect, 7. directory of open access journals (doaj), get the most out of your academic research database, frequently asked questions about academic research databases, related articles.

Whether you are writing a thesis , dissertation, or research paper it is a key task to survey prior literature and research findings. More likely than not, you will be looking for trusted resources, most likely peer-reviewed research articles.

Academic research databases make it easy to locate the literature you are looking for. We have compiled the top list of trusted academic resources to help you get started with your research:

Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Besides searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator .

• Coverage: 90.6 million core records
• References: N/A
• Discipline: Multidisciplinary
• Access options: Limited free preview, full access by institutional subscription only
• Provider: Elsevier

Web of Science also known as Web of Knowledge is the second big bibliographic database. Usually, academic institutions provide either access to Web of Science or Scopus on their campus network for free.

• Coverage: approx. 100 million items
• References: 1.4 billion
• Access options: institutional subscription only
• Provider: Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters)

PubMed is the number one resource for anyone looking for literature in medicine or biological sciences. PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF on PubMed Central (PMC) .

• Coverage: approx. 35 million items
• Discipline: Medicine and Biological Sciences
• Access options: free
• Provider: NIH

For education sciences, ERIC is the number one destination. ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center, and is a database that specifically hosts education-related literature.

• Coverage: approx. 1.6 million items
• Discipline: Education
• Provider: U.S. Department of Education

IEEE Xplore is the leading academic database in the field of engineering and computer science. It's not only journal articles, but also conference papers, standards and books that can be search for.

• Coverage: approx. 6 million items
• Discipline: Engineering
• Provider: IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

ScienceDirect is the gateway to the millions of academic articles published by Elsevier, 1.4 million of which are open access. Journals and books can be searched via a single interface.

• Coverage: approx. 19.5 million items

The DOAJ is an open-access academic database that can be accessed and searched for free.

• Coverage: over 8 million records
• Provider: DOAJ

JSTOR is another great resource to find research papers. Any article published before 1924 in the United States is available for free and JSTOR also offers scholarships for independent researchers.

• Coverage: more than 12 million items
• Provider: ITHAKA

Start using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with PubMed and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Beside searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator .

PubMed is the number one resource for anyone looking for literature in medicine or biological sciences. PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF on PubMed Central (PMC)

Tomorrow´s Research Today

SSRN provides 1,463,042 preprints and research papers from 1,871,574 researchers in over 65 disciplines.

New Networks

Research disciplines, applied sciences.

APPLIED SCIENCES are those disciplines, including applied and pure mathematics, that apply existing scientific knowledge to develop practical applications.

Health Sciences

HEALTH SCIENCES are those disciplines that address the use of science and technology to the delivery of healthcare.

HUMANITIES are those disciplines that investigate human constructs, cultures and concerns, using critical and analytical approaches.

Life Sciences

LIFE SCIENCES are those disciplines that study living organisms, their life processes, and their relationships to each other and their environment.

Physical Sciences

PHYSICAL SCIENCES are those disciplines that study natural sciences, dealing with nonliving materials.

Social Sciences

SOCIAL SCIENCES are those disciplines that study (a) institutions and functioning of human society and the interpersonal relationships of individuals as members of society; (b) a particular phase or aspect of human society.

Products and Services

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SSRN is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of preprints and research papers and is composed of a number of specialized research networks.

Special thanks to:

“The only truly modern academic research engine”

Oa.mg is a search engine for academic papers, specialising in open access. we have over 250 million papers in our index..

A free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature

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Introducing semantic reader in beta.

Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up What Is Semantic Scholar? Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at Ai2.

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities. ®

Digital Commons Network ™

The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.

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The Best Research and Reference Websites

Where to look when you need information

• Emporia State University
• DeveloperWeek 2024: Dates, News, Rumors, and Everything Else to Know

Research websites come in handy in all kinds of situations, whether you're looking for the average rainfall in the Amazon rainforest, researching Roman history, or just having fun learning to find information.

This list of the best research websites will help greatly, and most of them are updated daily with new information.

I like to pair these sites with free research organizational tools to keep track of everything I gather online.

Best Research Websites

• Library of Congress : LOC.gov lets you not only ask a librarian for help , but also search catalogs of libraries from all over the world. This is truly a huge resource that should be on your Top 10 best research sites list. Anything from Academia Sinica in Taiwan to Yale University in the U.S. is here and ready to be searched.
• ReferenceDesk.org : Dubbed "The Internet's Best Reference Source," this extremely useful web directory provides everything from business and finance information to federal government resources, scholarship details, links to newspapers and calendars, search engines, and more.
• Ask the Space Expert: NASA's source for space and science research help. Use the video links to listen to questions answered by experts. These are from 2013 through 2015.
• USA.gov : This is where you should start when looking for specific U.S. government information. Learn about the country in general or education, housing, disability services, jobs, taxes, laws, and more.
• Reference.com : Extremely simple to use with a basic layout, this reference website lets you browse by category or search by keywords to research everything from food and health to history, beauty, education, technology, vehicles, art, and more.
• Refdesk.com : Billing itself as the internet's fact-checker, this site includes in-depth research links to breaking news, editorials, Today in History, Word of the Day, and other references.
• Encyclopedia.com : The #1 online encyclopedia that lets you search over 200 reference books and encyclopedias at once. The Picks of the week is a neat section to examine each week.
• Encyclopedia Britannica : One of the world's oldest encyclopedias online; has featured posts and category listings. The company launched in the 18th century and has been publishing exclusively online since 2011.
• Purdue University Quick Reference : This site has tons of information that includes resources specific to Purdue University and surrounding areas in Indiana. It also includes an Ask a Librarian service.
• Prescriber's Digital Reference : A wonderful research tool when gathering detailed medical information. The drug name browser includes summaries (dosage, description, and more) for hundreds of drugs.
• iTools.com : Serves as a gateway for reference and research links. It uses other websites for its searches, like YouTube and Google.
• ResearchGate : Scientific knowledge from over 160 million publication pages; browse topics in categories like engineering, biology, climate change, medicine, math, and more.
• Baseball-Reference.com : Here's everything you ever wanted to know about baseball.
• FOLDOC : Free Online Dictionary of Computing is a detailed computing dictionary for researching the meaning behind computer-related tools, standards, jargon, languages, and more. The "random" button is a fun way to learn new concepts.

Depending on the type of research you're doing or how you need to reference the information, you may need quick access to books. There are lots of places to find free book downloads , textbooks , and educational movies .

Other Ways to Do Research

Search engines like Google are a great way to perform online research. You can locate books, articles, interviews, and lots more. Learn how to search better to get the most out of your research.

Another top source of expert information is your local librarian— search for libraries near you at WorldCat . Librarians are trained to find answers to obscure questions, they're friendly, and best of all, you can talk with them face to face. They often ask you questions you might not have considered, leading to even better results. You can get help from librarians online, too, through some of the sources above.

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The 5 Best Platforms to Publish Your Academic Research

Academic research is a central component of scientific advancements and breakthrough innovations. However, your research journey is complex and ever-changing. You must take into consideration funding options, how to securely store your information, choosing where to publish your research, finding manuscript peer reviewers, and many more.

To keep up with the change, you and other researchers require modern, easy-to-navigate research platforms to help you uncover, store, verify, compile, and share content, data, and important insights to continue to carry out breakthrough research.

This article explains how to identify the best platforms for publishing your research and gives you a list of five platforms to help you publish. Towards the end, you’ll also see a mention of how Orvium can further assist you with publishing.

How to Identify the Best Platforms for Publishing

When trying to identify the best platforms for publishing your research, you have to consider several factors, including:

• Does the platform support your research journey ? Can you collaborate with other authors and researchers, discover public groups and research papers and manuscripts (including Open Access work), view interactive graphs, images, tables, etc., track citations, and build a professional research profile?
• Is the platform easy to use ? Does it offer rich functionalities that are easy to understand, and if so, which ones?
• Does it use artificial intelligence and machine learning ? Automated actions (email alerts, etc.) can help you unlock breakthroughs faster and deliver deeper insights.
• What security and governance does it have ? Platforms must be secure and compliant according to local regulations since researchers often deal with sensitive data.

The 5 Best Platforms to Publish Academic Research

Researchgate.

ResearchGate is a platform hosting over 135 million publication pages with a community of 20 million scientists. The platform allows you to show off your work, access papers and advice from other researchers, make contacts and even find jobs. Some of its more prominent features include:

• Dedicated Q&A section with searchable keywords to target experts in your particular field or area of study
• Ability to create a personal profile page where you can display all research-specific details about yourself, including up to five pieces of work (including datasets and conference papers)
• In-depth stats on who reads your work and the ability to track your citations
• A private messaging service that allows you to send messages to other researchers
• A comments section to provide feedback when viewing a paper
• A “projects” section to tell others about your upcoming work.

In addition, it's completely free to use!

Academia is a research-sharing platform with over 178 million users, 29 million papers uploaded, and 87 million visitors per month. Their goal is to accelerate research in all fields, ensure that all research is available for free and that the sharing of knowledge is available in multiple formats (videos, datasets, code, short-form content, etc.). Some of their more prominent features include:

• Mentions and search alerts that notify you when another researcher cites, thanks, or acknowledges your work, and automatic reports of search queries
• Ability to create a personal profile page
• “Profile visitor” and “readers” features let you know the title and location of those who visit your profile or read your papers so you can learn about their research interests and get in touch
• A “grants” feature to allow you to find new grants and fellowships in your field
• Advanced research discovery tools allow you to see full texts and citations of millions of papers.

The platform is based on a “freemium” business model, which provides free access to research for everyone, and paid capabilities to subscribers.

ScienceOpen

ScienceOpen is a discovery platform that empowers researchers to make an impact in their communities. The platform is committed to Open Science, combining decades of experience in traditional publishing, computing, and academic research to provide free access to knowledge to drive creativity, innovation, and development. Some of their more prominent features include:

• You can publish your most recent paper as a preprint that’s citable and includes a DOI to share with peers immediately and enhance visibility
• A multidimensional search feature for articles with 18 filters and the ability to sort results by Altmetric scores , citations, date, and rating
• Ability to create a personal profile with minimal upkeep necessary
• Access to a suite of metrics (usage, citations, etc.) of your publications
• Ability to follow other researchers to stay up-to-date on their work and expand your network.

The platform is free to use, although some features (like publishing your preprint) may cost money.

IOPscience is a platform that embraces innovative technologies to make it easier for researchers to discover and access technical, scientific, and medical content while managing their own research content. They participate in several programs that offer researchers in developing countries several ways to gain access to journals at little or no cost. Some of their other features include:

• An enhanced search filtering feature allows you to find relevant research faster
• A social bookmarking feature allows you to interact with other researchers and share articles
• Ability to create a personal profile, customize your alerts, view recently published articles within your field or area of interest, and save relevant papers or articles
• Ability to receive email alerts and RSS feeds once new content is published.

IOPscience is free to use and functions on an Open Access policy, which you can check here .

Orvium is an open, community-based research platform that allows researchers, reviewers, and publishers to share, publish, review, and manage their research. Orvium protects your work with built-in blockchain integration to ensure that you maintain the copyright of your work and not only. Some of our more notable features include:

• Access to a modern web platform with Google indexing, notifications, and mobile-ready features
• Ability to manage your entire publication process, with control over when you submit, receive peer reviews, and publish your paper
• “Collaboration” and “full traceability” features allow you to track your profile impact, get in touch with other researchers, and have ownership over your work
• Recognition badges or economic rewards are given when you peer-review.

Orvium is completely free to use.

Orvium Makes Choosing a Platform Easy

No matter what platform or community you choose to be a part of, you now know what you need to look for when choosing one. You also learned about five excellent platforms where you can publish your academic research. Orvium will remain your one-stop-shop platform for all your research needs. Do you want to know how Orvium and our communities work? Check out our platform or contact us with any questions you may have.

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LITERATURE REVIEW SOFTWARE FOR BETTER RESEARCH

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As a full-time researcher, Litmaps has become an indispensable tool in my arsenal. The Seed Maps and Discover features of Litmaps have transformed my literature review process, streamlining the identification of key citations while revealing previously overlooked relevant literature, ensuring no crucial connection goes unnoticed. A true game-changer indeed!

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Using Litmaps for my research papers has significantly improved my workflow. Typically, I start with a single paper related to my topic. Whenever I find an interesting work, I add it to my search. From there, I can quickly cover my entire Related Work section.

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Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

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Canterbury University, NZ

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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

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KU Leuven, Belgium

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Daniel Fuller

Clarkson University, USA

As a person who is an early researcher and identifies as dyslexic, I can say that having research articles laid out in the date vs cite graph format is much more approachable than looking at a standard database interface. I feel that the maps Litmaps offers lower the barrier of entry for researchers by giving them the connections between articles spaced out visually. This helps me orientate where a paper is in the history of a field. Thus, new researchers can look at one of Litmap's "seed maps" and have the same information as hours of digging through a database.

Baylor Fain

Postdoctoral Associate – University of Florida

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Virtual reality, real-life lessons: UTM researcher studies how to effectively use VR in education

• X (Formerly Twitter)

When Bree McEwan was a university student in the early 2000s, it was a time when social networks like MySpace and Facebook were rapidly transforming the way people communicated.  

Then as a doctoral student around 2007, she became interested in the topic of interpersonal communication. As part of her dissertation research, one of her questions to participants was: how do you use these social networks to maintain your friendship networks?   

“It became very clear that this was a different way to maintain lots of networks,” says McEwan, now an associate professor at University of Toronto Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology . She's associate director of both ICCIT's digital enterprise management program and the  Data Sciences Institute  at U of T.  

McEwan has focused her research on the intersection between interpersonal communication and communication technology. She has been recognized as a 2024 faculty affiliate at the Schwartz-Reisman Institute and spoke at an annual SRI conference about social media content moderation.  

Over the years, she has also expanded her research focus to augmented and then virtual reality – which traces back to her time at DePaul University in Chicago.  

“There is a really great VR/AR industry community in the city, and I started seeing more and more opportunities within the city of Chicago to think about augmented reality,” she says.   

The university offered Discover Chicago classes to its first-year students, which allowed them to explore the city’s sites. From 2017 to 2019, McEwan decided to teach a Discover Chicago class on AR – she took students around the city and encouraged them to think about layers of technology and sense of place, along with social justice questions around technology.  

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. McEwan and a colleague were able to purchase a suite of headsets for first-year students. She set up a virtual reality classroom, and in 2020, taught part of the Discover Chicago class in VR.  

“That got me thinking a lot more about VR – what was working, what wasn’t working, and how we are able to communicate in this channel,” she explains. “That’s when I realized that VR is a potentially new way to have social interaction. It’s less about networks than social media, but it got me right back to my roots as an interpersonal scholar.”  

When she began at ICCIT in July 2021, McEwan wanted to study how VR can effectively be used in education. She established the McEwan Mediated Communication Lab – or McMC Lab – that researches how people experience social interaction within VR, with support from students in the Research Opportunity Program.    

Now she can expand her research, thanks to a SSHRC Insight Grant that will fund a study on how VR headsets can enhance educational opportunities. 

For this project, McEwan will be working alongside Michelle Liu from the department of curriculum, teaching and learning and ICCIT’s Michael Nixon. ICCIT Professor  Rhonda McEwan , who taught the first VR-related classes at UTM, rounds out the team.   

McEwan says there’s a common belief that VR is better for education because it gives students an immersive environment. However, she and her colleagues have questioned whether immersive learning through VR is in fact better.

She points to studies that show people experience “cognitive overload” while wearing VR headsets, which makes it harder for them to learn.   

“In a lot of these studies, people are put into a VR headset for the very first time and then they’re being asked to learn something,” she says. “But they’re already learning how to use the headset, how to use the interface, and how to use the VR and work through that environment.”  

As part of the SSHRC Insight Grant, McEwan and her colleagues will test whether people have better learning outcomes if the VR headset has a low cognitive load – meaning they’re placed in a classroom setting rather than a more immersive environment when they put on the headset.   

The team wants to learn whether the non-immersive VR environment is better for didactic learning – which is when teachers instruct a class of students who sit and listen. McEwan says the team will also test whether VR headsets that offer more immersive experiences have better outcomes for students who are engaging in more creative tasks.   

“If we can figure out what kinds of learning are more useful in what kind of environments, maybe we can influence some of the folks who are designing virtual environments into creating environments that work better for different purposes,” McEwan says. “Maybe we can have learning experiences within VR that are better designed.”  

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• Symposium on 20 years of the Research Centre

Symposium on 20 years of the Research Centre , Date: 2024.09.19 , format: Report , area: Authority

In May 2025, the Research Centre of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees ( BAMF -FZ) celebrates its 20th anniversary and therefore invites to an international, scientific conference that will be held on 21 and 22 May 2025 in Nuremberg. The latest topics in migration and integration research will be discussed, such as the recruitment of skilled labour or the social participation of refugees. Ahead of the international conference, another conference will be held specifically dedicated to the situation of people who are obliged to leave the country on 20 and 21 May 2025. We cordially invite researchers to participate in the events with their contributions. The closing date for submissions is 30 November 2024.

In 2005, the Immigration Act mandated the Federal Office to conduct scientific research on migration and integration. This laid the foundation for today's Migration, Integration and Asylum Research Centre at the Federal Office. More than 50 employees currently work at the BAMF -FZ, which includes a Research Data Centre ( BAMF - FDZ ) since 2021.

"We can look back on 20 exciting and insightful years of migration and integration research. In recent years, these topics have become particularly important for Germany. For example, we are facing rising numbers of migrations to Germany as a consequence of international wars and crises. Furthermore, the shortage of skilled labour as a result of demographic change and educational expansion is becoming more noticeable.

Our research responds to various challenges in these areas and provides findings that policymakers can utilise in dealing with them. Wherever possible, we seek dialogue and network with scientists from other research institutions in order to broaden our perspectives and join forces. Our international conferences in May 2025, which I am very much looking forward to, will also provide such a networking opportunity."

Call for Papers - submit your contribution now!

For the international conference "analyse. evaluate. inform - Conference on 20 years of the BAMF Research Centre" on 21 and 22 May 2025, we invite you to submit contributions on the following topics:

• Immigration of skilled labour to Germany
• Living situation of refugees in Germany
• Innovative methods of migration and integration research

The deadline for submission is 30 November 2024, further information on the submission process can be found in the call for papers .

Contributions will be selected by 31 January 2025 and information on the registration will be made available in spring 2025.

Regardless of the above-mentioned conference, we would also like to draw your attention to the call for papers for the closing conference of the research project "Feasibility Study on the Immigration/Mobility of Persons Required to Leave Germany ( MIMAP )" entitled "Irregularly staying Migrants: Empirical Findings and Methodological Advances" on 20 and 21 May 2025. Contributions can address the topic from various thematic and methodological perspectives. The deadline for submissions is also 30 November 2024. Further information can be found in the call for papers.

Further information

• Call for Papers: International conference on "20 years of the BAMF Research Centre" on "analyse. evaluate. inform"
• International Conference on "20 Years Research Centre at the BAMF": Submission of abstracts pdf, 102KB, accessible
• Call for Papers for the MIMAP closing conference
• MIMAP-Abschlusskonferenz: Formular zur Beitragseinreichung / MIMAP closing conference: Submission form pdf, 104KB, accessible
• Flyer on "Migration Research"