Social Sciences

The Open Journals Collective (OJC) is an international collective of scholars, libraries, and university-based publishers. OJC believes that academic research should be available to all, with no author fees and no paywalls. Their mission is to build a sustainable future for academic journals by challenging the profit-making models of global corporate publishing and data systems. 

Through this partnership, CRL/NERL members and affiliates can invest in membership with OJC to support the first 3 collections to luanching January 1, 2026:

PolicyMap is a curated geographic data library with powerful mapping and analysis tools for academic research, instruction, and planning. The platform includes over 70,000 indicators from 170+ trusted sources, spanning public datasets from CDC, HUD, BLS, and FEMA; proprietary sources like Claritas (available summer 2025); and PolicyMap’s own analytics on equity, affordability, and neighborhood change.

Highlights and recent updates:

The OAPEN Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to sustainable, open access, peer-reviewed books in the humanities and social sciences. OAPEN operates three platforms: OAPEN Library, OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit, Directory of Open Access Books.

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is an open infrastructure indexing and discovery system committed to increasing the discoverability of open sciences. 

The Oxford Journals Collection boats 375 titles spanning research from 1996-present published in high-quality peer-reviewed journals in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Sciences, Law, Medicine, Life Sciences, Mathematics, and Physics.

Cairn aggregates scholarly journal content for social science and humanities journals published in France and Belgium.  Most of the content dates back only to 2001. As of late 2014, over 400 journals and 4,000 ebook titles (more than 300,000 full-text articles and book chapters) were included. Content is updated continually, averaging five new journal issues per day. Since 2010, Cairn also offers e-book packages from major French, Belgian and Swiss publishers.

The world's most comprehensive policy database, with over 17 million reporFrom the largest in Australia to the smallest in Zimbabwe, every year IGOs, NGOs, nonprofits, and think tanks around the world publish tens of thousands of items. Global Think Tanks finds and preserves grey literature from every continent, including voices from the Global South, small organizations missed by conventional search engines, and content recovered from groups that no longer exist.ts from 41,000 think tanks, agencies, governments, and cities—and tools to supercharge your research.

SAGE Premier Journal Collection provides access to over 1 million articles published in 1,000 international, peer-reviewed journals. Subscription to the collection includes complimentary access to archives back to 1999, where available, and content ownership of resources published during the agreement.

Social Explorer database contains the entire U.S. census history as well as numerous other demographic and environmental study reports, as well as mapping tools. The website seamlessly integrates spatial and numeric data through an easy-to-use interface and makes working with socio-demographic data simple even for a novice user.

Part of the World Newspaper Archive, created by CRL in partnership with Readex, Latin American Newspapers, Series 1 & 2 (1805-1922) provides access to key historical newspapers published in Latin America and the Caribbean between 1805 and 1922. Coverage features significant titles from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

The online edition of The Economist or Economist.com, provides insight and opinions on international news, politics, business, finance, science and technology.