The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), through NASSDOC, is committed to promoting social science research by providing access to research support information and scholarly content. In this effort, the Directory of Open Access Social Science Resources (DOASR) has been developed as a unified platform that brings together a wide range of freely accessible academic materials. It compiles e-journals, e-books, working papers, repositories, e-prints, article databases, archival collections, and socio-economic databases, each accompanied by a brief introduction to help users navigate and explore them effectively.

While categorising these resources, utmost care has been taken to broadly group the databases based on the primary nature of their content—such as e-journals, e-books, working papers, repositories, e-prints, article databases, and socio-economic databases. However, some platforms offer multiple types of documents and may appear relevant to more than one category; in such cases, classification has been done keeping in view the major and most prominent focus of the database.

By offering structured access to a vast collection of open access content, DOASR strengthens ICSSR’s mission to support researchers, scholars, and students in advancing social science research and knowledge dissemination.