Wikipedia:List of free online resources

The following list is meant to help you with your own research, by offering links to respectable information sources on the web, available free of charge. Inclusion on the list doesn't automatically mean the absolute truth is on these websites, so always be critical and compare information between different sources.

The content of the subsections is alphabetically organized.

Please add free online sources if you know some that are missing in this list, but try to keep it relevant and trustworthy.

General resources and link lists

 * Wikiversity - sister project that provides information on most academic subjects
 * Footnote - historic documents through their partnerships with The National Archives, the Library of Congress and other institutions (partly free)
 * Google Scholar - provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature
 * Paperity - multidisciplinary aggregator of Open Access journals and papers; provides free full text, advanced search and permanent URLs for all articles
 * ipl2 - merger of the collections of resources from the Internet Public Library (IPL) and the Librarians' Internet Index (LII) websites, hosted by Drexel University College of Information Science and Technology
 * Refdesk - free and family-friendly web site that indexes and reviews quality, credible, and current web-based resources
 * DeepDyve - big archive of literary and scholarly journal articles; free five-minute full-text previews.
 * Library of free projects - Free project resources (but no software).

Searching for photographs by content
Resources for sourcing and searching for photographs by the content that is depicted. Though the search engines may be accessed for free, indexed images themselves may be under restricted license.


 * Google Books - Searchable archive of magazines and books (some full-text, including photograph captions and references to photographs from related articles and content).
 * United States Library of Congress - Searchable archive of historic photographs, maps, performing arts, newspapers.
 * Life (magazine) Photo Gallery Archives (web site) - Searchable archive of photographs of news and sporting events, celebrities, travel.
 * NASA Images - Searchable archive of aeronautics, space and space exploration photographs.
 * Pexels - Public domain photographs
 * LibreShot (web site) - CC0 1.0 (public domain) photographs

Newspapers and news agencies

 * Aljazeera - in Arabic and English
 * Asia Times Online
 * Associated Press
 * The Australian
 * Australian Broadcasting Corporation
 * BBC Online
 * CBS News
 * CNN
 * The Daily Telegraph
 * Fox News Network
 * The Guardian
 * Haaretz
 * The New York Times
 * NPR - National Public Radio
 * PBS News
 * People's Daily - in Chinese, English, French and Spanish
 * PRI - Public Radio International
 * Reuters
 * REPORTLINE
 * Russia Beyond the Headlines
 * Tehran Times
 * Xinhua News Agency

Biographies

 * Australian Dictionary of Biography - over 10,000 scholarly biographies of persons who were significant in Australian history
 * Dictionary of Canadian Biography - biographies devoted to people who have played an significant role in what is now Canada, who died between the years 1000 and 1930 or whose last known date of activity falls within these years
 * Oxford Dictionary of National Biography -  collection of more than 57,000 specially written biographies, which describe the lives of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond from the 4th century BC to the 21st century. Login is required to access, and it's not strictly free - however, if you're in the UK, entering your library card number will almost certainly get you in. Many libraries elsewhere in the world also have unrestricted access.
 * Project Gutenberg's very large collection of free, public-domain Biographies

Information and library science

 * Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) - from EBSCO Publishing, the bibliographic database covers librarianship, classification, and information management, and indexes nearly 600 periodicals, plus books, research reports, and proceedings

Philosophy

 * Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
 * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (web site)
 * University of San Diego (web site) - Ethics Updates, resources and updates on current literature, both popular and professional, that relates to ethics

Science, mathematics, medicine & nature

 * E!Science News - aggregated news source from major science outlets and universities

Agriculture

 * California Agriculture (web site) - peer-reviewed journal, reporting research, reviews and news from the University of California and its Agriculture and Natural Resources division

Biology and Medicine

 * Open Biology (web site) - biology on the cellular level
 * Entrez (web site) - Life Sciences search engine from the National Center for Biotechnology Information
 * Global Health Observatory (GHO) (web site) - portal providing critical data and analyses for key health themes, as well as direct access to the full database, including the WHO Statistical Information System (WHOSIS)
 * PubMed (web site) - comprises more than 19 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books from the United States National Library of Medicine (includes: PLOS ONE, Nutrition Journal)
 * Europe PubMed Central - International Pubmed central repository
 * PubMed Central Canada - Canadian repository

Math

 * arXiv - math/science archive
 * Encyclopedia of Mathematics
 * MathWorld
 * PlanetMath

Nutrition

 * Nutrition Journal - human nutrition journal by means of ethical guidelines
 * Project Gutenberg's public domain books on Nutrition

Space

 * European Space Agency - ESA
 * NASA
 * Space.com - space news
 * Internet Archive collection of historic NASA films, in the public domain

Technology & computer science

 * The Association for History and Computing - organisation dedicated to the use of computers in historical research
 * NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) - resource for students, educators, researchers, and the public for access to NASA's current and historical technical literature since it was first released in 1994
 * Free website Analyzer - is a free online service that collects information about domains and keywords for which they were optimized.

Social sciences

 * American Enterprise Institute: private, not-for-profit institution dedicated to research and education on issues of government, politics, economics, and social welfare.
 * Fernand Braudel Center: the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations.
 * Glossary of Selected Social Science Computing Terms and Social Science Data Terms
 * Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research: free access for general social survey and national election survey.
 * National Geographic Society
 * OECD: Economic, social, and infrastructure data on industrialized countries.
 * The Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF): "The Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) is established for overseas young Chinese to exchange their views on social, economic, political and cultural issues concerning China and to develop common aspirations through regular discussions."
 * World-Systems Archive
 * World Values Survey: "The World Values Survey is a worldwide investigation of sociocultural and political change. It has carried out representative national surveys of the basic values and beliefs of publics in more than 65 societies on all six inhabited continents, containing almost 80 percent of the world's population."
 * UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division: world population data and trends.
 * United Nations Human Development Report Office

Anthropology

 * ALLBUS Data Service: online archive of German General Social Survey data. Free download - for scientific purposes - of high quality data on attitudes, behavior, and social structure in Germany.
 * Project Gutenberg's shelf of historic, public domain Anthropology Books
 * Library of Congress Resource Links on Anthropology

Culture

 * Culture.si. Texts about the culture of Slovenia are available under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license, the same license as used by Wikipedia. See Enhance Wikipedia! and Terms of Use. Published by the Slovenian Ministry of Culture and Ljudmila (media laboratory).

Economics

 * AllBusiness.com
 * List of Periodicals with articles available
 * The Economist
 * Index of Economic Freedom: from The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal.
 * International Monetary Fund: IMF research and links to World Economic Outlook.
 * Review of Radical Political Economics: "The Review of Radical Political Economics (RRPE) publishes articles on radical political economic theory and applied analysis from a wide variety of theoretical traditions: Marxist, institutionalist, post Keynesian, and feminist. RRPE is published by Sage Publications."
 * UNDP World Income Inequality Database
 * UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) FAOSTAT International data on food production, land use, nutrition.
 * World Bank: World Development Indicators database.

Geography, places and travel

 * BBC News: Country Profiles - includes audio and video clips
 * The Canadian Encyclopedia (also in French)
 * ELDIS: Country and Regional Profiles - a family of knowledge services from the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex
 * Eurostat - statistics on European Union countries
 * Federal Research Division: Country Studies - from the Library of Congress, published between 1988 and 1998, information on some countries may no longer be up to date
 * The World Factbook (web site) - published by the Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S.

History

 * Wikibooks: World History from Wikibooks, a Wikimedia Foundation project
 * EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History: Wiki collection of primary source historical records from Western Europe, hosted by the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University.
 * Talessman's Atlas of World History: Collection of world history maps ranging from ancient to modern times, by amateur historian Thomas Lessman
 * The Historical Atlas of South Asia by Joseph Schwartzberg.
 * Euratlas historical maps of Europe.
 * National, State & Local Newspaper Archives - Collection of free newspaper archives in the United States, from the XooxleAnswers professional online research service.
 * The History Guide - Material for high school (particularly AP European History) and undergraduate students. Includes lectures on Ancient and Medieval European History, Early Modern European History, Modern European Intellectual History, and 20th Century Europe
 * Lectures in Medieval History - Lecture notes by Dr. Lynn H. Nelson, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Kansas.

Law

 * African Court of Justice - African Union
 * Coalition for the International Criminal Court
 * Amnesty International: human rights.
 * European Union law
 * Human Rights Watch
 * International Court of Justice - (ICJ) United Nations' judicial body
 * International Criminal Court - ICC is in Hague, Netherlands governed by the Rome Statute
 * Law Library of Congress - United States Internet Law Library of Congress

Political science

 * Adam Carr's Election Archive: User:Adam Carr maintains the world's largest online archive of election statistics from every democratic country in the world.
 * Reports and publications of the Brookings Institution, public policy think tank in Washington, D.C.
 * Reports and publications of the Cato Institute, public policy think-tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.
 * Reports and publications of the Center for American Progress, public policy think tank in Washington, D.C.
 * EULib: large, searchable collection of official European Union news and documents.
 * Foreign Affairs: periodical published by the Council on Foreign Relations.
 * Foreign Policy: a leading quarterly of international affairs.
 * Glossary of Political Economy Terms
 * Hoover Institution: "a public policy research center devoted to advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy—both domestic and foreign—as well as international affairs."
 * The Jamestown Foundation "The Jamestown Foundation's mission is to contribute to U.S. understanding of its strategic adversaries that pose a threat to democracy and freedom."
 * : Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Woodrow Wilson Center: think-tank on political, social, and economic issues affecting Russia and other successor states to the Soviet Union.
 * Marxists Internet Archive - Collection of primary source documents
 * Monthly Review: independent socialist journal.
 * New Left Review: a key journal of the international Left.
 * Paul Hensel's International Relations Data Site
 * The Socialist Register

Psychology

 * Psychology's Feminist Voices (web site) - Collection of first-hand accounts of feminist psychologists (videos, interviews, profiles)

Religious studies

 * The Catholic Encyclopedia
 * Goettingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages (ancient and medieval Hindu, Buddhist and Jain texts)
 * Internet Sacred Text Archive
 * The British Library's complete collection of sacred texts
 * Project Gutenberg's extensive shelf of historic, public domain Religious Texts
 * Synod Commission for Monasteries of Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Sociology

 * Project Gutenberg's public domain Sociology books

Sports

 * American College of Sports Medicine - American Collge of Sports Medicine
 * ESPN
 * Free Internet Chess Server
 * the Kinesiology Network - the Kinesiology Network
 * LA84 Foundation - digital resources include academic journals, scholarly books, popular sports magazines of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and an extensive offering of Olympic publications
 * NBC Sports - has a history of broadcasting professional sports, including Olympics
 * Sports Dietitians Australia - sports nutrition
 * Sports Illustrated