Buzz
The DOAB open-access library offers thousands of freely accessible books, approved for open access, peer-reviewed, and categorized by various fields, including the latest publications such as those from 2016. This can be an excellent source of open-access books at little to no cost for the university library users you serve.
Steps
Browse books on DOAB
Go to the browsing page. To access the browsing page, first navigate to DOAB's homepage at http://www.doabooks.org/doab, then from the homepage, click on Browse to reach the DOAB browsing page. The default language is English, but you can also choose to browse in French.
Books on DOAB can be explored by:
By alphabetical order
By topic or field6,00017
Agriculture and Food Sciences67
Agriculture (General)
- Thumbnail image of the book's front cover.
- Book title.
- Book author(s).
- International Standard Book Number (ISBN).
- Year of publication.
- Number of pages.
- Digital Object Identifier – DOI.
- Language of the book.
- Publisher.
- Field – Subject.
- Book license. This will be discussed further below. The first 10 books listed in the Agriculture (General) category under Agriculture and Food Sciences on DOAB are licensed under six different Creative Commons licenses: CC CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-NC-ND, and an additional license from ANU Press.
Biology and Life Sciences45
Business and Economics253
Chemistry12
Earth and Environmental Sciences192
General Works4
Health Sciences361
History and Archaeology1070
Languages and Literatures625
Law and Political Science761
Mathematics and Statistics47
Philosophy and Religion343
Physics and Astronomy13
General Science595
1309
167
By Publisher
Search for Books on DOAB
DOAB Search Tools. To search on DOAB, first visit the DOAB homepage at http://www.doabooks.org. On the homepage, you will immediately see the search tools beneath the menu line, which include: (1) The search box, which by default displays the text Find books in DOAB...; (2) A small magnifying glass icon. Clicking on this icon will initiate the search; (3) To the right of the icon, you will find the phrase Advanced search.
- Relevance. This is the default sorting method.
- Year – Ascending. Sort by year from oldest to newest. The oldest books appear first, with the newest at the end.
- Year - Descending. Sort by year from newest to oldest. The newest books appear first, with the oldest at the end. For instance, if you choose this option, you will see the most recent book on economics available on DOAB was published in 2016.
economicseconomicsSearch
Refine Your Search
- Publisher - The publishing house. You can see 3 books from 3 different publishers.
- License - The license. You can observe 3 books with 3 distinct Creative Commons licenses.
- Language - The language. All 3 books are in English.
- Year - The year range from 2015 to 2016 with
- 2 books from 2015.
- 1 book from 2016.
CC BYCC BYLicense
Identify, verify the license, and download the books to your device
Identify the license ANU Press. Most of the books on DOAB are licensed under standard Creative Commons licenses. However, some books carry the ANU Press license. This license is issued by the Australian National University Press, abbreviated as ANU Press. The license is similar to the CC BY-NC-ND license, as it requires:
- Acknowledgment of the author.
- No commercial use.
- No derivative works or adaptations based on the original work.
Check the license. Suppose the book you selected after filtering is the one you wish to download. You know the book carries a CC BY license, which means you are free to use it in any way, as long as you do two things when referencing the use of the book:
- Acknowledge the publisher, MDPI AG - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (in this case, there is no mention of the author(s), only the publisher's name).
- Provide a link to the CC BY license, just as you see here.
Recommendation
- To reuse, always search for the word 'License' in the result lists to identify the specific license associated with each book on DOAB.
- Consult resources on Creative Commons licenses to better understand the usage rights tied to each Creative Commons license.
