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Open Access Resources: Home

A guide to open access resources for chiropractors and chiropractic students.

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Defining open access

What is open access? "Open access" refers to scholarly publications that are available for free online.

Where to Look for Evidence If You Lack Resources

Databases

BMC - This is a searchable database of 264 open-access, peer-reviewed science, technology, and medical journals. Or, you can browse articles by subject.

ClinicalTrials.gov - This is a registry and results database of approximately 170,000 clinical studies involving human participants conducted around the world. Studies can be searched by topic or location.

Dimensions - Dimensions covers millions of research publications connected by more than 1.8 billion citations, supporting grants, datasets, clinical trials, patents and policy documents.

DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals is a searchable database of over 1,500,000 articles from peer-reviewed, open access scientific and scholarly journals

Free Medical Journals - Has links to over 500 open access medical journals around the world arranged by specialty. Each journal must be searched separately.

Google Scholar - From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. 

Highwire - With over 3000 journals and reference works available, Highwire may be searched across all their resources or browsed by specialty. Not all their articles are free; sometimes there is a waiting period before the article is available open access.

HISTLINE - An index to the secondary literature on the history of medicine and related fields from antiquity. Also includes images and entries for manuscripts and rare books.

HSRProj - This database provides access to ongoing grants and contracts in health services research.

Index to Chiropractic Literature - The only exclusively chiropractic database, ICL covers the 1984-present chiropractic literature. Photocopies of journal articles may be ordered from the library's document delivery service.

The Lens - The Lens serves integrated scholarly and patent knowledge as a public good to inform science and technology enabled problem solving.

MedlinePlus - Published by the National Institutes of Health, this is a searchable database of health conditions, diseases, and wellness issues intended for the consumer

NCCIH - The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health contains information for researchers, links to other complementary and alternative resources, and evidence-based information on health conditions and alternative therapies with a searchable interface.

OAJSE - Open Access Journals Search Engine is a database of 4775 free, full text, quality-controlled journals worldwide published in English. These are searchable at the article level and across journals with their Google Custom Search.

Open Access Library - Search Engine that provides free access to over 2,000,000 academic articles.

OSTMED Osteopathic Literature Database - searchable database of full-text articles from the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association.

PEDro - The Physiotherapy Evidence Database consists of over 27,000 randomized trials, systematic reviews, and practice guidelines in physiotherapy. Besides the abstract, PEDro provides a link to the full text, where possible.

PLOS - Public Library of Science is a database of open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journals. it is searchable by specialty, such as biology or medicine.

PubMed - Comprises more than 33 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

PubMed Central - A free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine .

SciELO - stands for The Scientific Electronic Library Online

TRIP - The TRIP database contains high-quality, clinically relevant research articles. The user can view the abstracts of the articles, or link to the full-text if the article is linked from PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine's free full-text database.

Wiley Open Access - a group of open-access, peer-reviewed journals in the science and biomedical fields. It is searchable by journal title or across all journals.

eBooks

Digital Book Index - Digital Book Index provides access to more than 72,000 titles' records from over 1,800 publishers.

Early American Manual Therapy - This collection includes texts from the formative years of osteopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, neuropathy, massage, mechanical vibration, and magnetic healing in America.

Freebooks4doctors.com - Free access to more than 650 medical books sorted by specialty.

National Academies Press - Books on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health with over 3,000 free books available.

The Online Books Page - Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Library and "facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet."

Project Gutenburg - "The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search."

Homeopathy Collection - A project is currently underway to scan 500 books in the Homeopathy Collection of Taubman Medical Library and make their full text available online. The collection contains items dating from the mid-1800s to the present day.

NCBI Bookshelf - The NCBI Bookshelf is produced by the National Library of Medicine and provides online access to several biomedical textbooks. Full text is available through keyword searches but cannot be browsed.

Other online resources

Research

Evidence-based clinical practice toolkit - created by the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research

Studies on Chiropractic - published by the NBCE, these are summaries of studies done on the effectiveness and appropriateness of chiropractic care for several conditions.

Clinical Compass - Clinical guidelines and evidence-based resources

American Chiropractic Association-Chiropractic Research

Pediatric and Prenatal Chiropractic Research - produced by the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (ICPA)

Spine Research Institute of San Diego

Publications

Chiropractic History: A Primer

Chiropractic in the United States: Training, Practice, and Research

Practice Analysis of Chiropractic - published by the NBCE, this document summarizes the practice of chiropractic in the United States based on survey responses from chiropractors in all 50 states regarding their practices and professional responsibilities.

Manga Report II (Feb. 1998) - Enhanced Chiropractic Coverage under OHIP

Chiropractic Super Sites

Chiropractic Resource Organization - This site has links to chiropractic history, a searchable database of chiropractic research, unpublished field case reports, an image archive for free use, among other resources

Chiroweb.com - This site has links to webcasts, chiropractor forums, a searchable database of over 7000 articles from Dynamic Chiropractic, and classified advertising for equipment and practices.

Planet Chiropractic - This site has links to chiropractic news archives, a chiropractor directory, streaming audio and video, and listings for chiropractic jobs and practices for sale.

Spine-health.com - This site has links to a large number of pain-related back conditions, videos, therapies including chiropractic, and wellness topics.