Virtual Reference Collections

Virtual Reference Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETDs)

Theses and Dissertations are the most valuable scholarly resources that involve the collaborative work of researchers, supervisors, experts, and others. These are the results of at least three years of scientific work accomplished within a laboratory, through a research team, institute, or a university. 

The Online Dictionary for Library & Information Science (ODLIS) defines Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) as "The Master's theses and Ph.D. dissertations submitted in digital form rather than in print on paper, as opposed to those submitted in hard copy and subsequently converted to a machine-readable format." ETDs are transforming the scholarly communication landscape through knowledge creation and sharing for industrialization and modernization. 

ETD repositories have become platforms for the intellectual achievements of scholars and their institutions by making their research output available globally. It provides easy & wider access to theses and dissertations. To enable the researchers to access ETD contents from a single point, many institutional, national and international networks and organizations have taken initiatives to establish ETD repositories. 

The students, researchers, and faculty members can use these resources to find scholarly output by researchers worldwide. 

ETD Initiatives – In India
1

ShodhGanga

URL- https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/

"Shodhganga" denotes digital repository of Indian Electronic Theses and Dissertations set-up by the INFLIBNET Centre. It provides a platform for research scholars to deposit their Ph.D. theses and make it available to the entire scholarly community in open access.

 
2

ShodhGangotri

URL- https://shodhgangotri.inflibnet.ac.in/

Under the initiative called "ShodhGangotri", research scholars/research supervisors in universities are requested to deposit an electronic version of the approved synopsis submitted by research scholars to the universities for registering themselves for the Ph.D. programme now it is expanded to MRPs/PDFs/Emeritus Fellowship, etc. The repository on one hand would reveal the trends and directions of research being conducted in Indian universities, on the other hand, it would avoid duplication of research.

 
3

Krishikosh

URL- https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/home

Krishikosh is a digital repository of accumulated knowledge in agriculture and allied sciences, having collection of old and valuable books, old journals, thesis, research articles, popular articles, catalogues, conference proceedings, case studies, annual reports, newsletters, brochures, bulletins and other grey literatures spread all over the country in different ICAR Research Institutions and State Agricultural Universities.

 
4

IndCat: Online Catalogue of Theses

URL- https://indcat.inflibnet.ac.in/index.php/main/theses

IndCat is a union database of theses covering the Metadata of doctoral theses submitted to 458 Universities/Institutes in India. It has 4,50,118 unique records from all subject areas.

 
5

Database of Theses and Dissertations – DELNET (Metadata)

URL- https://delnet.in/delnet-databases.html

DELNET provides access to database of Theses and Dissertations submitted to Indian Universities, which covers various subjects. The database has 1,48,995 records.

 
6

CSIR Open Access Repository of Indian Theses

URL- http://eprints.csirexplorations.com/

CSIR Explorations repository collects, preserves and disseminates in digital format the research output of the AcSIR (Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research) community.

 
ETD National-level Initiatives
1

BDTD: Brazilian Digital Theses & Dissertations - Brazil

URL- http://bdtd.ibict.br/vufind/

Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), integrates the theses and dissertations information systems existing in teaching and research institutions in Brazil. It also encourages the registration and publication of theses and dissertations in electronic means. It enables the Brazilian S&T community to publish and disseminate their theses and dissertations produced in the country and abroad, giving greater visibility to national scientific production.

 
2

Chinese Doctoral Dissertations Full-text Database (CDFD) -China

URL- https://www.nlc.cn/newen/dissertations/

The database has collected dissertations covering basic science, engineering technologies, agriculture, medical science, philosophy, humanity, social sciences, and so on. As of 2022, the database has collected more than 500,000 doctoral dissertations from more than 500 institutions.

 
3

CiNii Dissertations -Japan

URL- https://ci.nii.ac.jp/d/?l=en

CSIR Explorations repository collects, preserves and disseminates in digital format the research output of the AcSIR (Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research) community.

 
4

Diss Online – Germany

URL- https://www.dnb.de/EN/Home/home_node.html

The German National Library houses the largest national collection of online dissertations in Europe. Online dissertations and theses since 1998 were collected. Since then, the collection has grown to more than 2,84,000 documents (as of November 2020).

 
5

Dissertations.se – Sweden

URL- https://www.dnb.de/EN/Home/home_node.html

Dissertations.se lets you search among university dissertations from Sweden, written in English. At the moment there are 84485 finished dissertations in the database - and about half of these are available for download as PDF.

 
6

Lithuanian Electronics Thesis and Dissertation (eLABa ETD)

URL- https://www.elaba.lt/elaba-portal/en/paieska

eLABa ETD searches lithuanian dissertations, their abstracts, master's and bachelor's theses repository of the Lithuanian Academy Electronic Library.

 
7

HKU Scholars Hub- Hong Kong

URL- https://hub.hku.hk/advanced-search?location=thesis

The HKU Scholars Hub is the current research information system of The University of Hong Kong. As a key vehicle of HKU's Knowledge Exchange Initiative, The Hub aims to enhance the visibility of HKU authors and their research, and to foster opportunities for collaboration.

 
7

HKU Scholars Hub- Hong Kong

URL- https://hub.hku.hk/advanced-search?location=thesis

The HKU Scholars Hub is the current research information system of The University of Hong Kong. As a key vehicle of HKU's Knowledge Exchange Initiative, The Hub aims to enhance the visibility of HKU authors and their research, and to foster opportunities for collaboration.

 
8

Institutional Repositories Database (IRDB) – Japan

URL- https://irdb.nii.ac.jp

IRDB is a database service that collects and provides metadata of content registered in academic institutional repositories in Japan.

 
9

National Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations in Taiwan

URL- https://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/cgi-bin/gs32/gsweb.cgi/login?o=dwebmge

The National Library's online dissertation service is free for public use. It has become one of the most important academic support websites in the country.

 
10

NZresearch - New Zealand

URL- https://digitalnz.org/nzresearch

NZresearch discovers and provides access to New Zealand's most comprehensive selection of research papers and related resources.

 
11

Ohiolink Electronic Thesis and Dissertations (ETD) Center-US

URL- http://etd.ohiolink.edu

OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) contains over 58,000 theses and dissertations from students at 31 of Ohio's world-renowned academic institutions. Theses and dissertations from Ohio's academic institutions were downloaded more than six million times from researchers around the globe in 2015.

 
12

RCAAP – Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal

URL- https://www.rcaap.pt

RCAAP portal aims to collect, aggregate and index Open Access scientific contents from Portuguese institutional repositories. RCAAP constitutes a single entry point for searching, discovery and recall of thousands of scientific and scholarly publications.

 
13

Renati- Peru

URL- https://renati.sunedu.gob.pe/?locale=en

Regulations of the National Registry of Works leading to Degrees and Titles - RENATI

 
14

TESEO- Spain

URL- https://www.educacion.gob.es/teseo/irBusquedaAvanzada.do

A Spanish Ministry of Education database where you can retrieve doctoral theses written at Spanish universities. The website allows you to monitor and consult every thesis file since 1976.

 
15

TesiOnline- Italy

URL- https://www.tesionline.it/ricerca

Selects and publish degree theses to highlight the merit of authors and give them visibility.

 
16

TDX Online – Spain

URL- http://www.tdx.cat/

TDX (Theses and Dissertations Online) is a digital cooperative repository of doctoral theses presented at Spanish universities. The consultation of theses is opened and allows the user to construct searches on the complete text of the files

 
17

Tez Merkezi – Turkey

URL- https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/giris.jsp

Tez Merkezi is a repository which provides access to doctoral theses and dissertations. Theses search can filtered using Thesis name, advisor, subject, thesis number, etc.

 
18

Theses - Canada

URL- https://library-archives.canada.ca/eng/services/services-libraries/theses/Pages/theses-canada.aspx

Theses Canada is a collaborative program between Library and Archives Canada and Canadian universities. It strives to acquire and preserve theses and dissertations from participating universities; provide open access to Canadian digital theses and dissertations in the collection.

 
19

Theses – France

URL- https://www.theses.fr/

Theses.fr provides access to all doctoral theses being prepared in France; doctoral theses defended in France and to people and organizations related to these theses.

 
20

Theseus – Finland

URL- https://www.theseus.fi/

Theseus gives you online access to theses and publications from Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences. Entire theses and publications can be read and utilized in the research and development work.

 
21

Trove – Australia

URL- https://trove.nla.gov.au

Trove is a single point of entry to a treasure trove of artefacts, curiosities and stories from Australia's cultural, community and research institutions. On Trove you can find more than 14 billion digital items on any topic.

 
ETD – International level Initiatives
1

Global ETD Search (NDLTD: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations)

URL- http://search.ndltd.org/

Searches the 6,455,288 electronic theses and dissertations contained in the NDLTD archive. NDLTD harvests metadata from participating repositories. NDLTD organizes all harvested metadata in a NDLTD Union Archive. This Archive, contains records of millions of ETDs, is managed by the University of Cape Town Digital Libraries Laboratory.

 
2

DiVA

URL- http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/search.jsf?dswid=-4847

The publications in the DiVA portal have originally been registered and published in the local DiVA database of one of the 50 DiVA members. DiVA portal is a common finding tool for all publications that have been registered and published with each DiVA member. For each title in the database there is bibliographic information, usually an abstract and in several cases a link to the full text where the work is published.

 
3

DART-Europe E-theses Portal

URL- https://www.dart-europe.org/basic-search.php

DART-Europe was founded in 2005 as a partnership of national and university libraries and consortia to improve global access to European research theses. Access to 1,387,292 open access research theses from 585 Universities in 29 European countries is provided by the portal.

 
4

WorldCat

URL- https://search.worldcat.org/

WorldCat is a great resource for locating unique, trustworthy materials that you often can't find anywhere except in a library. And by connecting thousands of libraries' collections in one place, WorldCat makes it easy for you to browse the world's libraries from one easy search box. It provides access to 30 million thesis and dissertations.

 
ETD – Open Access Databases
1

Open Access Theses and Dissertations

URL- https://oatd.org/

OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes 6,810,395 theses and dissertations.

 
2

EBSCO Open Dissertations

URL- https://opendissertations.org/

EBSCO Open Dissertations, institutions and students are offered an innovative approach to driving additional traffic to ETDs in institutional repositories. Our goal is to help make their students’ theses and dissertations as widely visible and cited as possible

 
3

PQDT OPEN (ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global)

URL- https://about.proquest.com/en/products-services/pqdtglobal/

PQDT Open provides the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge. The content that was available at PQDT Open is now discoverable and freely downloadable from proquest.com. The ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (PQDT) ™ database is the world's most comprehensive curated collection of multi-disciplinary dissertations and theses from around the world, offering over 5 million citations and 3 million full-text works from thousands of universities.

 

Virtual Reference Collection: Open CourseWare (OCW)

OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open digital publication of high-quality college and university‐level educational materials. These materials are organized as courses, often including course planning materials, evaluation tools, and thematic content. 

OCW is a revolutionary educational concept, allowing people worldwide free access to online lectures, readings, and learning materials provided by universities and colleges. These are free and openly licensed, accessible anytime via the Internet. 

Major Open Courseware
1

MIT OpenCourseWare

URL-https://ocw.mit.edu/

MIT OpenCourseWare has been creating new opportunities for millions of learners and educators, sharing Open Educational Resources (OER) from MIT and helping to lead a global revolution in free access to knowledge. MIT OpenCourseWare continues to build on this foundation. With a new web platform, ever-growing content, and collaborations across the vibrant open education ecosystem, we're creating a world of more equitable and inclusive education for all.

 
2

Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative (Oli)

URL- https://oli.cmu.edu/

Improve learning and teaching through science OLI supports better learning and instruction with high-quality, scientifically based, classroom-tested online courses and materials. This Learning Engineering approach means courses are designed based on learning science research. But it also means, in turn, they contribute to that research and propel the domain of learning science forward.

 
3

Harvard Online

URL- https://pll.harvard.edu/

Harvard Online brings learners an extensive catalog of courses built on global expertise and research. Curated series of courses combine faculty and disciplines from across the University to extend learning opportunities. Each course was developed by Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL). VPAL seeks to shape the future of education by discovering new ways to build the competence, curiosity, and confidence of learners on our campuses and around the world.

 
4

Open Yale Courses

URL: https://oyc.yale.edu/

Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

 
5

Open Michigan

URL- https://open.umich.edu/

Open Michigan enables the University of Michigan community to make the products of its research, teaching, and creative work available to the world beyond campus. We are the home for all things open at the University of Michigan including expertise and services for open educational resources, open data, and open publications.

 
6

Kyoto University OCW

URL- https://ocw.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/

Kyoto University OpenCourseWare (OCW) compiles videos of classes and open classes held at Kyoto University, lecture materials, and class syllabuses as digital contents and widely publishes them to the world. The purpose is to share knowledge with society primarily for educational use. You can access the website of Kyoto University OCW and view the contents both inside and outside the university.

 
7

Doshisha University's Open Courseware

URL- https://opencourse.doshisha.ac.jp/en/index.html

Doshisha University Open Course Ware, materials that are actually used in our classes are presented through the Internet as part of the Doshisha University Open Course Project. The materials presented here will be used for various purposes not only by the students and teachers of Doshisha University, but also by those who hope to learn at our university, those who are interested in our university, and the general public.

 
8

Utah State University (USU)

URL- https://www.usu.edu/online/

USU's mission has always been deeply intertwined with extension and distance education. Deliver knowledge to eager learners, a spirit of innovation has been ingrained in our history and our future. USU Online continues to lead the charge in shaping the future of education, providing students with transformative and enriching learning experiences.

 
9

OpenLearn

URL- https://www.open.edu/openlearn/

OpenLearn is a free learning platform, delivered by The Open University as part of its Royal Charter commitment to support the wellbeing of the community. Since its launch in 2006, OpenLearn has become an integrated part of The Open University, with the site attracting over 100 million visitors. Many of these visitors go on to make an enquiry about becoming a formal student, strengthening the journey between informal and formal learning.

 
10

Hokkaido University Open Courseware

URL- https://www.global.hokudai.ac.jp/

Hokkaido University Open Courseware is a collection of archived materials such as recorded lectures, reading lists, notes, and other documents that were once used in our classrooms and are placed online for public access. We make this material available on our website for free. If you’re interested in learning online but do not have enough time to take a course, you can use Open Courseware from the comfort of your own home.

 
11

University of Massachusetts -Boston – OpenCourseWare

URL-http://ocw.umb.edu/courselist/

UMass Boston OCW is a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners world wide. Whether you are a high school student preparing for college, a faculty member looking for ideas for a new course, or a community member researching a topic, you are likely to find something of interest in the UMass Boston OCW collection.

 
12

University of the People

URL- https://www.uopeople.edu/

University of the People is opening the gates to higher education by offering online, tuition-free, accredited degree programs to any qualified applicant.

 
Open Courseware (OCW) – India
1

Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC)

URL-https://cec.nic.in/cec/

Dissemination of Educational programmes through broadcast as well as non-broadcast modes. Production of Educational programmes (Audio/Visual and Web Based) and related support material further setting up of appropriate facilities for such production. Research activities related to optimizing the effectiveness of such programmes. Providing a forum for the active involvement of academics and other scholars in the creation of appropriate educational programmes. Studying, promoting & experimenting with new technology that will increase the reach and / or effectiveness of educational communication.has been creating new opportunities for millions of learners and educators, sharing Open Educational Resources (OER) from MIT and helping to lead a global revolution in free access to knowledge. MIT OpenCourseWare continues to build on this foundation. With a new web platform, ever-growing content, and collaborations across the vibrant open education ecosystem, we're creating a world of more equitable and inclusive education for all.

 
2

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)

URL- https://nptel.ac.in/

Largest online repository in the world of courses in engineering, basic sciences and selected humanities and management subjects. YouTube channel for NPTEL – most subscribed educational channel, 1.3 billion views and 40+ lakhs subscribers. More than 56000 hours of video content, transcribed and subtitled. Most accessed library of peer-reviewed educational content in the world. Translation of more than 12000 hrs of English transcripts in regional Indian languages.

Online brings learners an extensive catalog of courses built on global expertise and research. Curated series of courses combine faculty and disciplines from across the University to extend learning opportunities. Each course was developed by Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL). VPAL seeks to shape the future of education by discovering new ways to build the competence, curiosity, and confidence of learners on our campuses and around the world.

 
3

Society for the Advancement of Library and Information Science (SALIS)

URL- https://www.salis.in/index.php

As envisaged in its objectives, every chapter of SALIS is periodically conducting lectures on emerging trends by inviting experts. The experts are either the practicing librarians or academicians from Library and Information Science Schools and allied fields. It also has conducted special programmes to impart softskills, which is very much essential for library professionals in the age of globalization and liberalisation. The thrust areas are Information and Communication Technology(ICT), human resource development and training with emphasis on information literacy, the ability to handle digital environment efficiently with the latest digital tools and techniques.

Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

 
4

SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds)

URL- https://swayam.gov.in/

SWAYAM facilitates hosting of all the courses, taught in classrooms from Class 9 till post-graduation to be accessed by anyone, anywhere at any time. All the courses are interactive, prepared by the best teachers in the country and are available, free of cost to any learner. More than 1,000 specially chosen faculty and teachers from across the country have participated in preparing these courses. The courses hosted on SWAYAM are in 4 quadrants – (1) video lecture, (2) specially prepared reading material that can be downloaded/printed (3) self-assessment tests through tests and quizzes and (4) an online discussion forum for clearing the doubts.

Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

 
5

DIKSHA

URL- https://diksha.gov.in/

DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) is a national platform for school education. DIKSHA can be accessed by learners and teachers across the country and currently supports 36 Indian languages. Each State/UT leverages the DIKSHA platform in its own way, as it has the freedom and choice to use the varied capabilities and solutions of the platform to design and run programs for teachers, learners and administrators.

Michigan enables the University of Michigan community to make the products of its research, teaching, and creative work available to the world beyond campus. We are the home for all things open at the University of Michigan including expertise and services for open educational resources, open data, and open publications.

 
6

National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS)

URL- https://www.nios.ac.in/

NIOS is an “Open School" to cater to the needs of a heterogeneous group of learners up to pre-degree level. It was started as a project with in-built flexibilities by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in 1979. In 1986, the National Policy on Education suggested strengthening of Open School System for extending open learning facilities in a phased manner at secondary level all over the country as an independent system with its own curriculum and examination leading to certification.

University OpenCourseWare (OCW) compiles videos of classes and open classes held at Kyoto University, lecture materials, and class syllabuses as digital contents and widely publishes them to the world. The purpose is to share knowledge with society primarily for educational use. You can access the website of Kyoto University OCW and view the contents both inside and outside the university.

 
7

Swayam Prabha

URL- https://www.swayamprabha.gov.in/

The SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 40 DTH channels devoted to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. Every day, there will be new content for at least (4) hours which would be repeated 5 more times in a day, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience. The channels are uplinked from BISAG-N, Gandhinagar. The contents are provided by IITs, UGC, CEC, IGNOU. The INFLIBNET Centre maintains the web portal.

University Open Course Ware, materials that are actually used in our classes are presented through the Internet as part of the Doshisha University Open Course Project. The materials presented here will be used for various purposes not only by the students and teachers of Doshisha University, but also by those who hope to learn at our university, those who are interested in our university, and the general public.

 
8

Nishta Online

URL- https://itpd.ncert.gov.in/

National Initiative for School Heads' and Teachers' Holistic Advancement. The motivation and empowerment of teachers is required to ensure the best possible future of our children and nation”. As per the recommendation of NEP 2020, every teacher and head teacher is expected to participate in at least 50 hours of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) opportunities every year for their own professional development, driven by their own interests. mission has always been deeply intertwined with extension and distance education. Deliver knowledge to eager learners, a spirit of innovation has been ingrained in our history and our future. USU Online continues to lead the charge in shaping the future of education, providing students with transformative and enriching learning experiences.

 
9

D’Source

URL- https://www.dsource.in/

Digital online content for learning Design with distance e-Learning programs on Design. Social networking for Higher Learning with collaborative Learning Space for Design for Synchronous and Asynchronous Interaction and Digital Design Resource Database including the craft sector. It is a free learning platform, delivered by The Open University as part of its Royal Charter commitment to support the wellbeing of the community. Since its launch in 2006, OpenLearn has become an integrated part of The Open University, with the site attracting over 100 million visitors. Many of these visitors go on to make an enquiry about becoming a formal student, strengthening the journey between informal and formal learning.

 
10

Spoken Tutorial

URL- https://spoken-tutorial.org/

Spoken Tutorial is a multi-award winning educational content portal.  Here one can learn various Free and Open Source Software all by oneself.  Our self-paced, multi-lingual courses ensure that anybody with a computer and a desire for learning, can learn from any place, at any time and in a language of their choice.

University Open Courseware is a collection of archived materials such as recorded lectures, reading lists, notes, and other documents that were once used in our classrooms and are placed online for public access. We make this material available on our website for free. If you’re interested in learning online but do not have enough time to take a course, you can use Open Courseware from the comfort of your own home.

 
Online CourseWare
1

Class Central

URL-https://www.classcentral.com/

Class Central is a listing of online courses. It aggregate courses from many providers to make it easy to find the best courses on almost any subject, wherever they exist. Through Class Central, you can find courses; review courses you’ve taken (and read other people’s reviews); follow universities, subjects and courses to receive personalized updates; and also plan and track your learning.

OpenCourseWare has been creating new opportunities for millions of learners and educators, sharing Open Educational Resources (OER) from MIT and helping to lead a global revolution in free access to knowledge. MIT OpenCourseWare continues to build on this foundation. With a new web platform, ever-growing content, and collaborations across the vibrant open education ecosystem, we're creating a world of more equitable and inclusive education for all.

 
2

Supercourse

URL- https://www.bibalex.org/supercourse/

Supercourse is a repository of lectures on global health and prevention designed to improve the teaching of prevention. Supercourse has a network of over 65000 scientists in 174 countries who are sharing for free a library of 4802 lectures in 31 languages. The Supercourse has been produced at the WHO Collaborating Center University of Pittsburgh, with core developers Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D., Faina Linkov, Ph.D., Mita Lovalekar, M.D., Ph.D. and Eugene Shubnikov M.D. Earning and teaching through science OLI supports better learning and instruction with high-quality, scientifically based, classroom-tested online courses and materials. This Learning Engineering approach means courses are designed based on learning science research. But it also means, in turn, they contribute to that research and propel the domain of learning science forward.

 
Online CourseWare
3

Udemy

URL- https://www.udemy.com/

Udemy is an education technology company that provides an online learning and teaching platform. Courses are offered across a wide breadth of categories, including business and entrepreneurship, academics, the arts, health and fitness, language, music, and technology.

 
4

Udacity

URL- https://www.udacity.com/

Learn online and advance your career with courses in programming, data science, artificial intelligence, digital marketing, and more.

 
5

Khan Academy

URL- https://www.khanacademy.org/

Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. We tackle math, science, computing, history, art history, economics, and more, including K-14 and test preparation (SAT, Praxis, LSAT) content. We focus on skill mastery to help learners establish strong foundations, so there's no limit to what they can learn next.

 
6

edX

URL- https://www.edx.org/

edX is the online learning platform from world-leading digital education company 2U, Inc. Today, as part of 2U, edX connects over 81 million people worldwide with online learning that delivers real professional progress across nearly every career discipline, from artificial intelligence and robotics to sustainability and public health. Together with universities and organizations at the forefront of their fields, edX offers thousands of job-relevant programs designed to give every ambitious learner a path to achievement.

 
7

Open Education Global

URL- https://www.oeglobal.org/

Open Education Global is a member-based, global, non-profit supporting the development and use of open education around the world. foster collaboration and sharing through co-creation of education materials and the freedom to use, customize, improve, and redistribute them. foster international partnerships and a global participatory culture of learning, creating, sharing and cooperation.

 
8

Coursera

URL- https://www.coursera.org/

Coursera partners with more than 275 leading universities and companies to bring flexible, affordable, job-relevant online learning to individuals and organizations worldwide. Coursera offer a range of learning opportunities—from hands-on projects and courses to job-ready certificates and degree programs.

 
9

Saylor Academy

URL- https://www.saylor.org/

Saylor Academy is offer free and open online courses to all who want to learn. Whether you are looking for career advancement, degree completion, professional development, or more casual learning, we have something just for you. At Saylor Academy, you can earn modern, digital certificates of completion; earn tuition-free college credit through our network of partner schools; or even start a low-cost, convenient degree program.

 
10

Academic Earth

URL- https://academicearth.org/

Academic Earth built the first collection of free online college courses from the world’s top universities. Offer free guides and school rankings that can help reduce the stress of an online college search.

 
11

Future Learn

URL- https://www.futurelearn.com/

Coursera partners with more than 275 leading universities and companies to bring flexible, affordable, job-relevant online learning to individuals and organizations worldwide. Coursera offer a range of learning opportunities—from hands-on projects and courses to job-ready certificates and degree programs.

 

Virtual Reference Collection: Open Textbooks

An open textbook is a textbook licensed under an open copyright license and made available online to be used freely by students, teachers, and members of the public.  

Open textbooks: are created by educators, are reviewed by educators, contribute to successful learning outcomes, an open textbook is adaptable, an open textbook is structured, and an open textbook is shareable. 

These textbooks are typically digital and cover a wide range of academic subjects. The open license often used for these resources is called a Creative Commons license, which specifies the permissions granted to users. 

1

American Institute of Mathematics: Open Textbook Initiative

URL- https://aimath.org/textbooks/

The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) seeks to encourage the adoption of open source and open access mathematics textbooks. The AIM Editorial Board has developed evaluation criteria to identify the books that are suitable for use in traditional university courses.

 
2

Applied Math & Science Educational Repository

URL- https://amser.org/

AMSER (the Applied Math and Science Education Repository) is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use. AMSER is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the National Science Digital Library and is being created by a team of project partners led by Internet Scout.

 
3

BCcampus Open textbooks

URL- https://open.bccampus.ca/

B.C. Open Textbooks Collection (British Columbia) are original creations or major adaptations of existing works, funded by and published by BC Campus.

 
4

Bookboon

URL- https://bookboon.com/

Bookboon is a digital learning service provider for corporate learning & development, providing eBooks, audio learning, online courses & learning. Bookboon was originally founded in Denmark in 1988 under the name Ventus. Bookboon offers free university textbooks to students and content, focus lies on soft skills and personal development for bite-sized learning for professionals.

 
5

COOL4Ed

URL- https://www.cool4ed.org/

The COOL4Ed website is the first library service of the CDOSL (California Digital Open-Source Library). It has a collection of Course Materials Showcases where faculty, staff, and students can find free and open educational resources aligned with 52 CID courses. Easy discovery of almost 5,000 free and open eTextbooks within a collection of over 70,000 free and open educational resources.

 
6

Directory of Open access books

URL- https://bookboon.com/

DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers. All DOAB services are free of charge and all data is freely available. Directory of Open Access Books is a joint service of OAPEN, OpenEdition, CNRS and Aix-Marseille Université, provided by DOAB Foundation.

 
7

eCampusOntario Open Library

URL- https://openlibrary.ecampusontario.ca/

Open Educational Resources (OER) in Ontario refer to freely accessible and openly licensed educational materials that can be used for teaching, learning, and research. It covers 1,558 Resources in the Open Library.

 
8

EDSITEment

URL- https://edsitement.neh.gov/

EDSITEment is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Trust for the Humanities. EDSITEment offers free resources for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality K-12 humanities education materials in the subject areas of history and social studies, literature and language arts, foreign languages, arts, and culture.

 
9

EdTech Books

URL- https://edtechbooks.org/

EdTech books offersFree Textbooks and Journals by Industry-Leading Professors and Other Experts.

 
10

GALILEO Open Learning Materials

URL- https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/

GALILEO Open Learning Materials brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary materials.

 
11

Hathi Trust

URL- https://www.hathitrust.org/

Founded in 2008, Hathi Trust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. Hathi Trust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. Hathi Trust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.

 
12

IGNOU: eGyanKosh

URL- https://egyankosh.ac.in/

eGyanKosh - a National Digital Repository to store, index, preserve, distribute, and share the digital learning resources developed by the Open and Distance Learning Institutions in the country. Items in eGyanKosh are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved by IGNOU, unless otherwise indicated.

 
13

Inflibnet: e-PG Pathshala

URL- https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/

e-PG Pathshala is an initiative of the MHRD under its National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT) being executed by the UGC. The content and its quality being the key component of education system, high quality, curriculum-based, interactive e-content in 70 subjects across all disciplines of social sciences, arts, fine arts and humanities, natural & mathematical sciences, linguistics and languages have been developed by the subject experts working in Indian universities and other R & D institutes across the country.

 
14

LibreTexts

URL- https://libretexts.org/

The LibreTexts mission is to unite students, faculty and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER) to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society.

 
15

MERLOT

URL- https://www.merlot.org/merlot/

The MERLOT system created by California State University provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, researchers, and learners.

 
16

Milne Open Textbooks

URL- https://milneopentextbooks.org/

A collection of free online textbooks developed and peer-reviewed by faculty of the State University of New York (SUNY) system.

 
17

NCERT: epathshala

URL- https://epathshala.nic.in/

ePathshala is a portal/app developed by CIET, and NCERT. It was initiated jointly by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, CIET, and NCERT, and launched in November 2015. It hosts educational resources for teachers, students, parents, researchers, and educators, that can be accessed on the Web, and is available on Google Play, App Store and Windows. The content is available in English, Hindi, and Urdu. The platform offers a slew of educational resources, including NCERT textbooks for classes 1-12, audio-visual resources by NCERT, periodicals, supplements, teacher training modules and a variety of other print and non-print materials. These materials can be downloaded by the user for offline use with no limits on downloads.

 
18

Noba

URL- https://nobaproject.com/

Noba is a free online platform that provides high-quality, flexibly structured textbooks and educational materials. These textbooks and materials are licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License. Users may reuse, redistribute, and remix the content to suit their needs.

 
19

OER Commons

URL- https://www.oercommons.org/oer

OER commons is containing the rich open educational resources for teachers and learners. OER commons provides over 50,000 high-quality open education resources such as university courses, videos of lectures, assignments, and lecture notes etc. on arts, humanities, social science, mathematics, science, and technology.

 
20

Open Book Publishers

URL- https://www.openbookpublishers.com

Open Book Publishers (OBP), founded in 2008, is a leading independent open access academic press that publishes peer-reviewed, award-winning monographs, edited collections, textbooks, critical translations and more.

 
21

Open Oregon State Open Textbooks

URL- https://open.oregonstate.edu/textbooks/

Browse Oregon State’s University complete collection of open textbooks on OER Commons.

 
22

OpenStax

URL- https://openstax.org/

OpenStax is a non-profit educational initiative based at Rice University. Its mission is to give every student the tools they need to be successful in the classroom. They publish high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are free online and low cost in print.

 
23

Open Textbook Library

URL- https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

Hundreds of complete, open college-level textbooks collected by the University of Minnesota.

 
24

PBS LearningMedia

URL- https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/

PBS LearningMedia offers FREE educational resources for Pre K–12 educators and students. Available to teachers and students at no cost for educational use. Responsive to needs, trends, and current events. Designed to promote and support effective practices in teaching and learning with digital media.

 
25

RMIT Open Press

URL- https://rmit.pressbooks.pub/

RMIT Open Press offers additional author support for scholarly publishing, including open textbooks.

 
26

ShareMyLesson

URL- https://sharemylesson.com/

The American Federation of Teachers’ Share My Lesson is a free, award-winning community-based site that brings together educators, parents and caregivers, paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, specialized instructional support personnel, union and nonunion members, educational partners, and higher education professionals who have the common goal of finding and sharing the best educational resources available. Share My Lesson was created by the AFT and TES Global in 2012. From the beginning, we have been committed to providing our community of members high-quality and effective lesson plans and professional development resources—all for free.

 
27

TED-Ed

URL- https://ed.ted.com/

TED-Ed is TED’s youth and education initiative. TED-Ed’s mission is to spark and celebrate the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Everything we do supports learning — from producing a growing library of original animated videos, to providing an international platform for teachers to create their own interactive lessons, to helping curious students around the globe bring TED to their schools and gain presentation literacy skills, to celebrating innovative leadership within TED-Ed’s global network of over 650,000 teachers. TED-Ed has grown from an idea worth spreading into an award-winning education platform that serves millions of teachers and students around the world every week.

 
28

UC Press Luminos

URL- https://www.luminosoa.org/

Luminos is University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs.

 
29

Writing Spaces

URL- http://writingspaces.org/

WRITING SPACES: READINGS ON WRITING is a book series containing peer-reviewed collections of essays—all composed by teachers for students—with each volume freely available for download under a Creative Commons license. WRITING SPACES aims to build a library of quality open access textbooks for the writing classroom as an alternative to costly textbooks.

 

Virtual Reference Collection: Preprint Repositories

Preprint repositories also called archives / servers allows immediate sharing of research results and can provide quick feedback to help in the revision and preparation of a manuscript. It facilitates wide and free dissemination of research.  

A preprint is a scholarly manuscript posted by the author(s) to a repository or platform to facilitate open review. authors post their paper under a Creative Commons license which allows reproduction and reuse of the material if attribution is given to the original authors.  

Preprint repositories are platforms to facilitate researchers to deposit manuscripts that have not been peer-reviewed or published and to receive early feedback and attract attention to their research at an early stage.  

The researchers and faculty members can use these preprints repositories/archives (Physical Sciences arXiv and ChemRxiv, Biomedical Sciences bioRxiv and medRxiv and General Sciences including the Social Sciences SSRN) to share your early research findings/manuscript. It allows wide dissemination of research work and attracts more citations. Preprints are indexed by Scopus and Web of Science and also indexed in scholarly search engines like Google Scholar, Dimensions, Lens, and OSF preprints.  

Indian Preprint Repositories
1

AGRIRXIV

URL- https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/journal/agrirxiv/

AgriRxiv is a free, open access source of unpublished preprints across the agricultural sciences. It is hosted and managed by CABI (cabi.org), an international, inter-governmental, not-for-profit organization that improves people’s lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.

 
2

INDIARXIV

URL- https://ops.iihr.res.in/index.php/IndiaRxiv

IndianRxiv - A Preprints Repository Service for India (eISSN 2583-0007) is a community-led project dedicated to archiving preprints (first drafts of scholarly works) written by Indian researchers to enhance collaborations, promote the visibility of their research, and encourage open science. Open Access India manages the server, which is hosted by the Society for Promotion of Horticulture, Bengaluru.

 
3

ARXIV

URL- https://arxiv.org/

arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.

 
4

bioRxiv

URL- https://www.biorxiv.org/

bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is a free online archive and distribution service for unpublished preprints in the life sciences. It is operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a not-for-profit research and educational institution.

 
5

BodoArXiv

URL- https://osf.io/preprints/bodoarxiv

BodoArXiv gathers scholarly literature in medieval studies across the disciplines. BodoArXiv is a repository for papers at different stages of development, including works that may later be published as articles or behind a paywall.

 
6

COGPRINTS

URL- https://web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/cogprints.org/

CogPrints is a searchable electronic archive for self-archive papers in any area of psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics, plus areas of computer science , biology, medicine, anthropology , as well as any other portions of the physical, social and mathematical sciences that are pertinent to the study of cognition.

 
7

ChemRxiv

URL- https://chemrxiv.org/

ChemRxiv (pronounced 'chem-archive') is a free submission, distribution, and archive service for unpublished preprints in chemistry and related areas. ChemRxiv gives researchers across a broad range of fields related to the chemical sciences the opportunity to share early results with colleagues and receive recommendations for improvement, ahead of formal peer review and publication.

 
8

ERIC

URL- https://eric.ed.gov/

ERIC is an internet-based digital library of education research and information sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education. ERIC provides access to bibliographic records of journal and non-journal literature from 1966 to the present. ERIC's mission is to provide a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable Internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information for educators, researchers, and the general public.

 
9

CRYPTOLOGY

URL- https://eprint.iacr.org/

Cryptology ePrint Archive provides rapid access to recent research in cryptology. Papers have been placed here by the authors and did not undergo any refereeing process other than verifying that the work seems to be within the scope of cryptology and meets some minimal acceptance criteria and publishing conditions.

 
10

EarthArXiv

URL- https://eartharxiv.org/

EarthArXiv is a preprint server devoted to open scholarly communication. EarthArXiv publishes articles from all subdomains of Earth Science and related domains of planetary science.

 
11

EcoEvoRxiv

URL- https://ecoevorxiv.org/

EcoEvoRxiv (EcoEvo“archive”) is a not-for-profit subject-matter specific research repository for works related to ecology, evolution and conservation. The archived works can be empirical, theoretical, review or of any other research-related type.

 
12

Educational Resources Information Center

URL- http://eric.ed.gov/

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is an electronic archive of education research and information. ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the United States Department of Education.

 
13

EPrint Network Special Collection

URL- https://archive-it.org/collections/643

This collection provides searching of more than 1 million scientific e-prints. The E-print Network is a deep Web source of scientific and technical information created by researchers active in a wide range of fields, including chemistry, biology and life sciences, materials science, nuclear sciences and engineering, energy research, and computer and information technologies.

 
14

EngrXiv

URL- https://engrxiv.org/

engrXiv (Engineering Archive) is dedicated to the dissemination of engineering knowledge quickly and efficiently.

 
15

HPRINT

URL- https://hal-hprints.archives-ouvertes.fr/

hprints is an Open Access repository for scholarly manuscripts from the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences openly available to the widest possible academic audience. hprints is a tool for researchers to share their scholarly documents.

 
16

Mathematical Physics Preprint Archive

URL- https://web.ma.utexas.edu/mp_arc/?

An electronic archive for research papers in Mathematical Physics and related areas.

 
17

medrxiv

URL- https://www.medrxiv.org/

medRxiv (pronounced "med-archive") is a free online archive and distribution server for complete but unpublished manuscripts (preprints) in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences.

 
18

OSF PREPRINTS

URL- https://osf.io/preprints

Leading preprint service providers use this open source infrastructure to support their communities. It covers a wide range of disciplines, allowing researchers from various fields to share their preprints. OSF PREPRINTS covers the BodoArxiv, Paleorxiv, EdArxiv and SocArxiv.

 
19

ORGANIC EPRINTS

URL- https://orgprints.org/about.html

Organic Eprints is an international open access archive of electronic documents related to research in organic food and farming. The archive contains full-text papers together with bibliographic information, abstracts and other metadata. It also offers information on organisations, projects and facilities in the context of organic farming research.

 
20

PhilSci-Archive

URL- http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/

PhilSci-Archive is an electronic archive specifically tailored to and run by philosophers of science. The archive is offered as a free service to the philosophy of science community. Its goal is to promote communication in the field by the rapid dissemination of new work. PhilSci-Archive invites submissions in all areas of philosophy of science, including general philosophy of science, feminist philosophy of science, history and philosophy of science and history of the philosophy of science.

 
21

Research Papers in Economics (RePEc)

URL- http://repec.org/

Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralizeddatabase of working papers, preprints, journal articles, and software components.[1] The project started in 1997.[2] Its precursor NetEc dates back to 1993.

 
22

Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

URL- https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/

SSRN is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks. SSRN provides 1,309,415 research papers from 1,479,981 researchers in 70 disciplines. Scopus indexes the articles hosted on SSRN.

 
23

Solar Physics E-Print Archive

URL- http://solar.physics.montana.edu/cgi-bin/eprint/default_page.pl

The Solar Physics E-Print Archive is an on-line, searchable archive of links to on-line preprints and unpublished work of broad interest to researchers in solar Physics.

 
24

VIXRA

URL- https://vixra.org/

ViXra.org is an e-print archive set up as an alternative to the popular arXiv.org service owned by Cornell University. It has been founded by scientists who find they are unable to submit their articles to arXiv.org ViXra is an open repository for new scientific articles.

 

About Virtual Reference Collections (Open Access)

The Virtual Reference Collection is collection of various web-based information resources which identified, gathered, evaluated, and systematized to help you to access the wide range of information resources. These collections enable you to find the required teaching and scholarly research information effectively and helps keep up to date with latest developments in professional. These collections cover scholarly search engines, e-print archives, open textbooks, open courseware, digital libraries, and sources on finding thesis & dissertations, patents, & standard sources, professional organizations, and societies. The Central Library, IIT Delhi encouraged you to explore the numerous resources available in this growing virtual reference collection and we hope you will find these resources useful to you in support of your academic, research and professional work. 

The following category of virtual reference collections collected and updated by the CDD Central Library. 
•    Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETDs)
•    Open courseware
•    Open Textbooks
•    Preprint Repositories