Open Access Sources for Peer Reviewed Journal Articles on Climate Change Bhathiya Kekulandala Introduction Access to peer reviewed literature is a very important element in planning, designing and carrying out research. Peer reviewed literature is also an important source to develop organizational research portfolios and standards. Reading and following peer reviewed literature is an important element in developing careers of individual researchers as well. Therefore accessing, understanding, interpreting and sharing peer reviewed literature is an essential cultural element in a research institute that can be developed, nurtured and supported. The popularization and demand for the peer reviewed literature has shown significant growth over the last two decades. Professional organizations such as National Academy of Sciences in USA, Royal Society of London have been the sources for publication of authoritative peer reviewed literature. However publishing houses such as Nature publishing group, Royal society publishing, Willey, Springer, Elsevier has acquired publishing rights to many journals that were traditionally published by professional organizations. This has led to restriction of access as subscription costs for these journals have increased. Researchers and institutions from developing countries find it difficult to access these journals due to financial constrains as subscription costs are high. Furthermore financial regulations in some of these countries also prevent online transactions that limit the access. The importance of developing access to science, scientific information, increasing collaborations and Enhancing access to scientific literature has been recognized by UN agencies such as UNESCO that created Global Open Access Portal (GOAP)1. International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP)2, established by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in 1992 and registered as a UK charity in 2004, works with partners to support global research communication through innovation, networking and capacity strengthening, focusing on the needs of developing and emerging countries. Open Access Research publication The open access movement has been growing steadily over the last decade. Scientific establishment (especially professional organizations such as Royal Society of London, US National Academy of Sciences etc) and major publishing houses such as Willey, Springer, Elsevier also making several initiatives to release selected journal articles for free.
1 2
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/portals-and-platforms/goap/ http://www.inasp.info/
Furthermore there is a growing movement of open access peer reviewed journals. There are many organizations that are converting their publications process to open access. Open Access Resources This section provides information about open access sources to download peer reviewed journal articles and some useful tips. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) PNAS3 is one of the most respected, highly cited journals started in 1914. All journal articles (abstracts and Full text) are available for free download in its archive (http://www.pnas.org/content/by/year)
Figure One: Home page for the PNAS Archive Searching and Sorting Papers 1. Use the search function (marked with RED OVAL) 2. Use either Search tab or advance search tab Eg: If you use term “Climate” in the general search tab you will get following
“Searching journal content for climate in full text. Displaying results 1-10 of 3637”
It means that there are 3637 papers available for free downloading 3
http://www.pnas.org/site/aboutpnas/index.xhtml
3. Refine the search with relevant combinations of words Eg: if you use terms “Climate and Vulnerability� it will give you 415 papers 4. Start searching with general search tab. When you get familiar with the site and search functions, use the advanced function 5. The search result page will show 10 articles per page, skim over the titles and or abstracts to see whether it is useful for your work 6. You can also use the search function in your web browser to find key words in the search results page or abstracts Journal of Ecology and Society Ecology and society is another source for good articles on climate change, disaster risk reduction. It is an open access journal and it also has supporting mechanisms to encourage researchers from developing countries to publish their research. The information about the journal is available from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/about/. The journal and the web page has been structured in a simple user friendly manner and an be accessed at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/
Willey Online Library Wiley is international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons (http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-390001.html). Willey online library contains around 1500 journals from many fields. There are many journals that publish on climate change related issues. The online library is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/. The Willey online library contains articles from various journals and ADVANCED SEARCH FUNCTION NEED TO BE USED to find relevant papers.
Figure 2: Using advanced search function in Wiley online library TIPS 
Search for Free open access papers in the list they are marked as in figure 3
Free Papers are marked like this
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Select and download relevant papers
Google Scholar Google Scholar is a fantastic tool to search for peer reviewed papers. Google index the search results in simple lists and also indicate papers that can be downloaded free. Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) can be used as normal search engine. In addition research networking sites such Research Gate (http://www.researchgate.net/), Academia (http://www.academia.edu/) and Google Citations (www.google.com/citations). These provide opportunities to share each other’s research work.
B Kekulandala (bkekulandala@gmail.com)