ScientificCommons.org - The Open Access Search Engine

UPDATE: ScientificCommons was closed down in 2014

How can I find research papers and theses that are freely available? ScienceCommons is a search engine and portal that is still in beta but now lists 893 repositories (according to Peter Suber at Open Access News). A search for anthropology gives more that 44 000 hits but a quick check reveals that not all papers or theses are open access.

ScientificCommons.org is a project of the University of St.Gallen (Switzerland) and hosted and developed at the Institute for Media and Communications Management:

The major aim of the project is to develop the world’s largest communication medium for scientific knowledge products which is freely accessible to the public. A key challenge of the project is to support the rapidly growing number of movements and archives who admit the free distribution and access to scientific knowledge

>> visit ScientificCommons

There is another search engine as well: OAIster. There a search for anthropology gives 54679 records - but also included some papers with restricted access (f.ex. from journals like Current Anthropology)

See also 2007 Highlights over at Savage Minds: “2007 was a great year for the open access movement".

SEE ALSO:

Already lots of publications in the open access anthropology repository Mana’o

2006 - The Year of Open Access Anthropology?

For Open Access: “The pay-for-content model has never been successful”