Free Academic Materials from Publishers around the Country

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, most libraries and archives have been forced to close their doors. While there are a number of excellent online archival collections, state and local history encyclopedias, and digitized historic newspapers, and while many libraries now offer ebooks for checkout, the closure of research facilities can pose a particular problem for students, researchers, and teachers needing access to rather niche scholarly material. Below is a list of publishers and other sites offering free academic materials, including electronic versions of textbooks and monographs, to the general public. This is not an exhaustive list, and depending upon the duration of the pandemic, more publishers may opt to put their works online to meet a growing need.  

 

---

• Association of American Publishers 

An extensive list of links to specific publishers, especially those focusing upon K–12 teaching, and the resources they are offering at present: https://publishers.org/aap-news/covid-19-response/  

 

• Gateway to Oklahoma and Texas History 

Hundreds of out-of-print ebooks on the history of the two states: https://gateway.okhistory.org/explore/collections/OBOOKS/  

 

• Knowledge Unlatched 

Open access portal for select books from a number of academic publishers: https://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/  

 

• New York University Press 

Select titles available through the press’s open access portal, Open Square: http://opensquare.nyupress.org/  

 

• The Ohio State University Press 

Access to monographs and textbooks through Knowledge Bank: https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/131 

 

• Project MUSE 

Offering access to numerous journals and books from a number of academic publishers, including the University of North Carolina Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Temple University Press, and many more: https://about.muse.jhu.edu/resources/freeresourcescovid19/  

 

• Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem 

Offers scholarly monographs from select press for download: https://tome.figshare.com/  

 

• University of California Press 

Select titles available as downloadable ebooks through Luminos Open Access: https://www.luminosoa.org/  

 

• University of Georgia Press 

Access to select books online through Georgia Open Stacks: https://ugapress.manifoldapp.org/ 

 

• University of Michigan Press 

Free access to scholarly ebooks: https://blog.press.umich.edu/2020/03/ump-covid-19-free-access/ 

 

• University Press of Florida 

Access to selection of ebooks: https://floridapress.blog/2020/03/26/quarantine-reads-from-florida/  

 

• University Press of Kentucky 

Access to more than 1,000 ebooks through UKnowledge: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk/ 

 

• Vital Source 

Offering students at semester–calendar schools access to coursework materials produced by a variety of publishers: https://get.vitalsource.com/vitalsource-helps