Strategies for Finding Open Social Work Research
When looking for social work research that is open access and therefore free to use and read, there are several tools and strategies that can help.
- Search for what research exists on government websites at the county level, state level, or national level. Government-funded research is often required to be shared openly
- There are tools that can help you find open-access versions of articles when you're searching the internet and using things like Google Scholar.
- Some Journals are fully open access and are excellent sources for evidence and to stay abreast of what is happening in the field. Tools are available to help you identify what social work journals are freely available.
Open Access Social Work Resources
- Open Social Work OrganizationA collaborative project that addresses open education, open access, open science, and the practices that support them.
- PubMedA free resource from the US National Library of Medicine and a key resource for health sciences and adjacent subjects. Use the "Free Full Text" feature to access openly available research.
- ERIC: Institute of Education ServicesThis is the open interface developed and maintained by the Department of Education. Full text is linked when available openly. ERIC contains a large amount of gray literature (e.g. white papers, government reports, conference materials, etc...)
- SocArXiv.orgOpen 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.
- Every CRSreportCRS is Congress’ think tank, and its reports are relied upon by academics, businesses, judges, policy advocates, students, librarians, journalists, and policymakers for accurate and timely analysis of important policy issues.
- Information for PracticeDesigned to help social service professionals throughout the world conveniently maintain an awareness of news regarding the profession and emerging scholarship.
- The Community GuideProvides summaries of systematic review studies in an easy to use and evaluate format on a variety of topics.
Tools for Finding Open Access Articles
- UnpaywallBrowser extension that identifies a free, legal version of the page you’re on.
- OA ButtonSet up as a “bookmarklet” (or link in your bookmarks bar), this searches for a free, legal version of the page you’re on and automates a request to the author(s) if it can’t find one. You can also search for articles on OAButton’s webpage using the DOI, URL, and title.
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Tools for Identifying Open Access Journals
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)Provides access to high-quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Perform a search for "social work" and limit to subject to see a list of journals in your discipline.
