Anneliese Taylor
Anneliese is the Head of Scholarly Communication. Contact Anneliese for help evaluating journals and publishers, assessing research impact, and for scholarly publishing resources.

Access to Research Resources during COVID-19

Remote online access to reliable scholarly research is essential during the Coronavirus crisis, and many publishers are responding by lifting access restrictions to some or all of their content. These resources complement UCSF’s vast online journal, book, video and database collections. We highlight the key resources for the UCSF community below, and point to where you can find additional free content.

Expanded Access to Resources during the COVID-19 Crisis

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of research and learning resources have been made freely available both to assist researchers studying the virus and to support remote learning and research. In most cases, publishers and vendor platforms have temporarily opened up content that is normally reserved for subscribers, with varying or as yet undetermined end dates. Some of the opened content is already licensed by UCSF, so we highlight here collections of particular interest to our community:

COVID-specific content

  1. COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) is a free resource of over 45,000 scholarly articles and preprints, including over 33,000 with full text, about COVID-19 and the coronavirus family of viruses for use by the global research community. Use the Explorer to search the dataset.
  2. Search COVID-related literature curated by PubMed’s LitCovid, the World Health Organization, and the Dimensions research analytics database.
  3. Elsevier’s Novel Coronavirus Information Center has opened access to over 20,000 full-text, machine readable articles related to COVID-19, “for as long as needed”. Clinical and patient resources are also provided, as well as access to selected textbooks.
  4. Other publisher portals for relevant content – see “COVID19 Research” section in Resource Category column.
  5. COVID-19 dataset resources compiled by the Library

General content

  1. JoVE Science Education video library of lab and scientific fundamentals – available to all UC campuses through June 15.
  2. JoVE Video Journal – trial access to all sections of this video methods journal is available for UC campuses through June 30. UCSF has existing subscriptions to several sections.
  3. Digitized books from UC campus libraries are available through HathiTrust’s Emergency Temporary Access Service. Select the “log in” button on any page to authenticate before searching. Full text of items with the “Temporary Access” label are available.
  4. Digitized books from the Internet Archive Open Library can be borrowed for 14 days with a free account.
  5. Additional free publisher and learning platform content is available from several publishers, and is being tracked as best as possible by the library community, given the volume and frequency of vendor updates.
  6. Open educational resources provide faculty and students with learning resources that are free to use, all year round.

Accessing UCSF’s Existing Online Resources

The UCSF Library offers a wealth of digital resources available 24/7 to the UCSF community, including online journals, ebooks, videos, databases, and digitized collections:

See help on getting full-text access remotely.

Can’t find what you’re looking for? Use the interlibrary loan ‘Request’ service to get electronic copies of journal articles and book chapters at no charge, or suggest an electronic title to be purchased by the Library.

Where to Get Help

Photo by Prachatai on flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0