Open access and Birkbeck Library

We are committed to the principles of open access and we try to make as much Birkbeck research as possible freely and openly available.

Browse how we support open access

Birkbeck Institutional Research Online (BIROn): our openly accessible digital repository contains research material by our academics that has already been, or is about to be, published elsewhere.
Birkbeck Research Data (BiRD): any data that underpins our academics' publications or other works are stored in BiRD.

Independent Voices: this digital collection of alternative newspapers, magazines and journals is drawn from the special collections of participating libraries in the US. Birkbeck has contributed via an institutional subscription to undertake similar digitisation projects in the UK in collaboration with JISC. The first round of potential projects has been shortlisted amongst participating higher education libraries.
Knowledge Unlatched Project: this collaborative initiative enables open-access books. Birkbeck has contributed financially to various Unlatched collections that have been added to our catalogue.
Open Books Publishers: this platform offers free online editions of books that can be read or downloaded via our website. We have purchased various titles, which have been added to our catalogue.
Open Library of Humanities' Library Partnership Subsidy: we are a partnership member of this platform for open-access publishing of journals.

Access to Research: this scheme provides free access to a wide range of academic articles and research in public libraries across the UK.
BASE: this search engine provides free access to more than 70 million documents.
CORE: this aggregator provides free access to over 25 million scholarly articles.
GetFTR: this browser extension makes it easier for researchers to identify and access the content they are entitled to read when using major discovery resources such as Google Scholar, Google Search, Web of Science, PubMed, Primo, EBSCO Discovery Service, Lens, Summon and more. It is available to download from Chrome, Firefox and Edge.
Get the Research: this search engine connects the public with 20 million open-access scholarly articles. The site has been built by Impactstory in conjunction with the Internet Archive and the British Library.
Open Access Button: you can use this service to search for free research articles and data.
Unpaywall: this browser extension enables you to access paywall research papers for free.

JSTOR’s continuously expanding Open Community Collections feature freely accessible primary source materials in a wide variety of subjects contributed by libraries, museums, and archives. We have contributed to this initiative and the Birkbeck, University of London collection is available.

Transformative Agreements (Read and Publish): Birkbeck Library will sign up to these agreements where possible. These agreements serve as a temporary, transitional tool moving us away from the traditional subscription models to open access publishing being the norm for academic journals.