Research Guides: Social Work Research Guide: Open Access Social Work Resources

Finding Open Access Articles

Search Tools for Finding Open Access Articles

Google Scholar primarily searches the following: academic publisher websites, Google books, institutional repositories and .edu sites, .gov sites
SocArXiv is a repository of articles that have been made available by authors (often referred to as pre-print, post-print, or author accepted). SocArXiv has content across multiple disciplines, and includes a social work specific category.
PsycArXiv is also a repository. PsycArXiv includes clinical psychology, developmental psychology and other related areas.
PubMed is a federally supported database of health-sciences related articles, including psychology, psychiatry, and public health. PubMed Central is a subset of PubMed and is composed of all open access articles.
ERIC is a federally supported database of education-related articles.
BioMed Central Journals BioMed Central is an open access publisher of over 200 free online academic journals specializing in subjects related to science, technology and medicine. Areas of interest to social workers include public health, substance abuse, Alzheimer's research and health care policy.
Public Library of Science (PLoS) "The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource." PLoS journals are concentrated in the areas of biology, medicine and genetics but health policy, mental health, public health and other health areas may be of importance to some social work researchers.

OA Journals in Social Work and Related Disciplines

Directory of Open Access Journals From the website: "DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals."
OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories OpenDOAR is a directory which links to open access repositories from around the world. These repositories contain a wealth of freely available scholarly articles, data and dissertations from leading universities. Browse individual repositories or search across all repositories to find articles written by faculty and scholars from these universities.
ROAD - Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources Search open access journals, conference proceedings, academic repositories and recent (since 2014) monograph series.

PsycArXiv PsycArXiv is also a disciplinary repository. PsycArXiv includes clinical psychology, developmental psychology and other related areas.
SocArXiv Open archive of the social sciences, provides a free, non-profit, open access platform for social scientists to upload working papers, preprints, and published papers, with the option to link data and code.
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) This site acts as a repository for scholars in social sciences fields to share their research. Authors may upload and share their papers for no charge and papers are free or very low cost to download.
Springer Open Search within over 160 peer-reviewed open access journals and some open access books. Most journals are in the medicine and science but there are some articles covering the social sciences.
Taylor & Francis - Health & Social Care Open Access Research Links to collections of freely available, open access research from Taylor & Francis journals by the following subject categories: Health, HIV/AIDS, Sexuality & Sexual Health and Social Work.

Advances in Social Work includes peer-reviewed articles on current issues, challenges, and responses facing social work practice and education. Fully Open Access
Currents: Scholarship in the Human Services publishes critical and research work by current graduate students in the Human Services as well as articles by guest scholars. Fully Open Access
Columbia Social Work Review
International Journal of Conflict and Violence is a forum for scientific exchange and public dissemination of up-to-date scientific knowledge on conflict and violence. Fully Open Access
Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Policy and Practice is a peer-reviewed, open access journal sponsored by Memorial University's School of Social Work. The journal is international in scope, and publishes articles relating to social work analysis, research, polity, and practice. Fully Open Access
Journal of Comparative Social Work publishes articles on subjects of importance for social work with a special emphasis on comparative research. Fully Open Access
Journal of Human Services: Training, Research and Practice
Journal of Indigenous Social Development, formerly the Journal of Indigenous Voices in Social Work. JISD publishes on education, practice, research and policy making relevant to indigenous peoples’ social and economic well-being. Fully Open Access
Journal of Social Inclusion publishes articles that contribute to current knowledge and understanding of the social processes that marginalise individuals, families and communities. Fully Open Access
Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics
Journal of the Social Sciences
Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research includes research that advances knowledge of social problems, programs, and policies. Special emphasis is placed on publishing findings from studies of the effectiveness of social and health services, including public policies and practices. Open Access 2010-2019 (V.1 - V.10)
PLoS One
The Qualitative Report
Social Work and Society: International Online Journal is dedicated to critical analysis of the relationship between social work, social policy, the state and economic forces. Fully Open Access

Addiction Science & Clinical Practice provides a forum for clinically relevant research and perspectives that contribute to improving the quality of care for people with unhealthy alcohol, tobacco, or other drug use and addictive behaviors across a spectrum of clinical settings. Fully Open Access
Alcohol and Alcoholism publishes papers on the biomedical, psychological, and sociological aspects of alcoholism and alcohol research. Open Access after 12 month embargo
Harm Reduction Journal is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal whose focus is on the prevalent patterns of psychoactive drug use, the public policies meant to control them, and the search for effective methods of reducing the adverse medical, public health, and social consequences associated with both drugs and drug policies. Fully Open Access
Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions publishes refereed articles on innovative individual, family, group work, and community practice models for treating and preventing substance abuse and other addictions in diverse populations. Some Open Access
Substance Abuse Treatment Prevention and Policy is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of research concerning substance abuse, with a focus on policy issues. Fully Open Access
Addictive Behaviors Reports is an open-access and peer reviewed online-only journal offering an interdisciplinary forum for the publication of research in addictive behaviors. Fully Open Access

Behavior and Social Issues includes articles on the science of behavior analysis and its sub-discipline of cultural systems analysis. Hybrid OA; some articles open access.

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health is open access, peer-reviewed online journal that provides an international platform for communication on child and adolescent mental health across different cultural backgrounds. Fully Open Access
International Journal of Child, Youth, and Family Studies is an interdisciplinary, cross-national journal that is committed to scholarly excellence in the field of research about and services for children, youth, families and their communities. Fully Open Access
Journal of Family Strengths, formerly Family Preservation Journal, is an open-access, double-blind peer-reviewed online journal...devoted to presenting theoretical, practice, and evaluation articles on the strengths perspective in family-centered practice to improve services that promote and sustain family systems. Fully Open Access

Journal of Community Practice is an interdisciplinary journal grounded in social work. It is designed to provide a forum for community practice, including community organizing, planning, social administration, organizational development, community development, and social change. Some Open Access content.

Depression Research and Treatment is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research articles, review articles, and clinical studies related to all aspects of depression. Fully Open Access
International Journal of Mental Health Systems is an open access, online journal that provides a home for the latest mental health system research, policy and debates, as well as for articles with educational intent that will build capacity for mental health system research and development. Fully Open Access
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum includes research and multimedia from multiple disciplines that is oriented toward the understanding and practice of social justice, broadly defined. Fully Open Access
Critical Social Work: An Interdisciplinary Journal Dedicated to Social Justice aims to refine ideas about the individual and community, clarifying the relationship between interpersonal relations and institutional structures and identifying actions that promote both individual and community well-being. Fully Open Access
Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology aims to highlight 'engaged scholarship' and the very important social change work done by professionals and activists. Fully Open Access

Open Evidence-Based Practice Resources

California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare maintains a clearinghouse for evidence-based child welfare programs and practices.
Campbell Library of Systematic Reviews provides access to systematic reviews, usually international in scope, in education, criminal justice, and social welfare.

Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.

DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects) contains abstracts of quality assessed and critically appraised systematic reviews. Focuses primarily on systematic reviews that evaluate the effects of health care interventions, and the delivery and organisation of health services.

Evidence-Based Practice for Substance Abuse Disorders includes evidence-based interventions for treating substance use disorders. Each record includes a description of the intervention and its implementation, populations for which it has been shown to be effective, references to supporting literature, the availability of instructional manuals, and author/developer notes.

National Guideline Clearinghouse is a public resource for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, NGC is an initiative of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices is SAMSHA's searchable online registry of mental health and substance abuse interventions that have been reviewed and rated by independent reviewers.
Social Programs that Work from the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, lists EBPs for social programs related to crime prevention, substance abuse, mental health and more.

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) refers to freely available, digital, online information. Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and has less restrictive copyright. See SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

Open Access Explained

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship

OA Tools

UnPaywall is a browser extension that connects you to open access versions of articles when they're available.

Open Access Button is a browser extension to help find open access articles and open data. If an item is paywalled, the project will start a request for you to access the research.