Research Guides: Social Work Practice: Resources for After Graduation: OA Databases for Articles, Books, Reports

Before you begin...

Using a database is the most efficient way to search across collections of journal titles all at once. Each database helps you search a different body of literature and will yield results that help you form perspective on a topic. Note that Social Work content is cross disciplinary in nature. Your research will likely span across several subject areas.

Databases

Interdisciplinary

Directory of Open Access Journals DOAJ is a community-curated directory that indexes and provides access to high-quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Google Scholar
Open CRS - Congressional Research Service Reports Reports written by the Congressional Research Service in order to keep members of Congress and their staff up to date on a number of important policy and government issues.
OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories OpenDOAR links to open access repositories worldwide, offering free access to scholarly articles, data, and dissertations from leading universities. You can browse individual repositories or search across them to find work by faculty and scholars.
Taylor & Francis - Open Access Journals

Education

ERIC - Education Resource Information Center Sponsored by the Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, ERIC indexes many top social work journals, with some articles available as full-text PDFs. IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to changes under the Department of Government Efficiency (EO 14222), aimed at reducing federal spending, some journals will no longer be indexed in ERIC after April 2025.

Health & Science

BioMed Central Journals BioMed Central publishes over 200 free online academic journals, focusing on science, technology, and medicine. Relevant areas for social workers include public health, substance abuse, Alzheimer’s research, and health care policy.
Europe PMC Europe PMC provides free access to 45.8 million publications, preprints, and related resources from trusted sources in life sciences. Hosted by EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), it includes research articles, reviews, books, protocols, and more. Europe PMC integrates content from PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), and 34 life science preprint servers. It also offers links to free full-text versions via Unpaywall when available.
Public Library of Science (PLoS) PLoS is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making scientific and medical literature publicly accessible. While its journals focus on biology, medicine, and genetics, topics such as health policy, mental health, and public health may also be valuable for social work researchers.
PubMed MEDLINE and citations from additional life science journals, from the National Library of Medicine.

International Perspectives

IMF eLibrary The IMF eLibrary provides access to the IMF’s periodicals, books, working papers, studies, data, and statistical tools. It covers topics such as migration, globalization, development, trade, criminology, poverty reduction, gender issues, and more.
World Bank Group Open Knowledge Repository This collection offers access to research on topics such as development, policy, and social issues.

Government Information

Child Welfare Information Gateway
Publications and index to information about child abuse, adoption, foster care and more provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Green Book
Published by the House Ways & Means Committee, The Green Book provides background information and data on government programs under its jurisdiction. It covers key programs relevant to social work, including Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Medicare, and Social Services Block Grants.
Home Visiting Evidence Effectiveness
The Department of Health and Human Services offers this site to assess the effectiveness of home visiting program models for families with pregnant women and children up to age 5. It includes research evidence and model programs related to home visits.
National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)
The NCJRS database contains over 200,000 citations and summaries on topics such as juvenile justice, family violence, drugs and crime, rape, gang crimes, and other criminal justice issues. Research is available through the NCJRS Library via interlibrary loan or a fee-based photocopying service.
SAMHSA's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP)
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) hosts the Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center (formerly known as the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices or NREPP). The Resource Center is a searchable compendium of evidence-based mental health and substance abuse interventions. Users can search by topic area, substance, or condition as well as resource type (e.g., toolkit, treatment improvement protocol, guideline), target population (e.g., youth, adult), and target audience (e.g., resource for clinicians, prevention professionals, patients, policymakers).