These databases provide direct access to scholarly research papers (preprints, working papers, articles) across multiple disciplines. While some are social-science focused, others are multidisciplinary but include a large collection of social science research papers.
| DATABASE | INTRODUCTION | TYPE OF DOCUMENTS AVAILABLE |
|---|---|---|
| Google Scholar | The most widely used academic search engine that indexes scholarly works across all disciplines. It provides direct links to free/open versions of research articles where available (institutional repositories, OA journals, author uploads). | Articles, working papers, theses, conference papers |
| SSRN (Social Science Research Network) | Global repository for social sciences research, including economics, law, political science, management, and interdisciplinary studies. | Working papers, preprints, forthcoming articles |
| RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) | Volunteer-driven network offering free access to economics and related social sciences research. | Working papers, journal articles |
| SocArXiv | Open archive for sociology and related social sciences, encouraging transparency and open scholarship. | Preprints, working papers |
| PsyArXiv | Preprint server for psychology and behavioral sciences. | Preprints, articles |
| ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) | US-based database with journal articles, reports, and research papers in education and social sciences. | Articles, reports, conference papers |
| NBER Working Papers | Leading source of economics and policy-related working papers, many available free. | Working papers |
| OpenAIRE | EU-based platform aggregating open access research outputs across disciplines, including social sciences. | Articles, preprints |
| CORE | Harvests millions of open access research papers from repositories and journals worldwide. Covers all fields including social sciences. | Articles, preprints |
| BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) | One of the world’s largest OA search engines, harvesting from institutional repositories. Strong coverage in social sciences and humanities. | Articles, preprints, reports |
| OpenAlex | Successor to Microsoft Academic, providing free metadata and access links for scholarly works across disciplines. | Articles, working papers |
| HAL-SHS | French multidisciplinary repository with strong collections in social sciences and humanities. | Preprints, postprints |
| OAIster (via WorldCat) | Union catalogue of millions of open access scholarly papers from repositories worldwide, including social sciences. | Articles, preprints |
| arXiv (Social Science category) | Well-known preprint server mainly for physics, math, and CS, but also includes economics, quantitative finance, and some social sciences. | Preprints |
| SSOAR (Social Science Open Access Repository) | Specialized repository for social science articles, especially European research. | Articles, working papers |
| SciELO | Latin American-led open access platform, includes strong social science content. | Journal articles |
| Redalyc | Network of Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese journals providing OA social science articles. | Journal articles |
| Academia.edu | Researchers upload and share their own works. Widely used in social sciences. | Uploaded papers, drafts |
| ResearchGate | A scholarly collaboration network where many authors share full-text articles directly. | Articles, preprints |
| Economic and Political Weekly | Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) is a leading peer-reviewed journal published by the Sameeksha Trust in India, known for its interdisciplinary research and commentary on economic, political, and social issues. EPW offers a hybrid open access model — selected articles are made freely available online. These open access pieces reflect EPW’s commitment to promoting critical, independent research and widening the reach of social science knowledge. | Articles |
| J-STAGE | J-STAGE is a platform for scholarly publications in Japan. It hosts academic journals, conference proceedings, technical reports, etc., spanning fields like basic sciences, engineering, medicine, humanities & social sciences. | Journals and Articles |
| F1000Research | F1000Research is an Open Research publishing platform for scientists, scholars and clinicians offering rapid publication of articles and other research outputs without editorial bias. All articles benefit from transparent peer review and editorial guidance on making all source data openly available. F1000Research operates under a continuous publication schedule. | Articles |
| Paperity | Paperity was launched in 2014 as the first aggregator of Open Access journals and papers, gold and hybrid, that covers all academic disciplines and actively indexes dispersed journal websites. The purpose of Paperity is to give readers easy and unconstrained access to thousands of journals from hundreds of disciplines in one central location. | Journal |
| EconBiz | With EconBiz you search for scholarly literature quickly and professionally. For students, researchers and teachers EconBiz offers orientation and help in the search for articles, working papers, e-books and more. | Articles |
