Open Access Books

You can search for open access books using the following resources the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), which indexes provides access to academic peer-reviewed open access books free of charge. Additionally, some vendors and publishers provide access to some open access ebooks. Examples of resources where you can find open access academic books include:

• JSTOR: provides access to more than 6,500 open access books
• Springer Nature: provides access to more than a thousand open access books
• Taylor & Francis Open Access Books: provides access to more than 700 books and 13,000 book chapters published by Taylor & Francis
   

Previews and Excerpts

Previews and excerpts from books that are still protected by copyright can be found using Google Books. Books that are out of copyright are available in full on both Google Books and through HathiTrust Digital Library. 

Chapters from books can sometimes be found through SSRN, bePress Digital Commons Network, and academic institutional repositories. 

Document Delivery Services

If an excerpt of a book is not available through Google Books, you can search for the title on WorldCat, which searches holdings of libraries around the world. Some libraries offer fee-based services for scans of book chapters from their collection. A few libraries that offer this type of scanning service include:

• LA Law Library: E-Delivery
• Columbia Law School Document Delivery Service

Most academic law journals are open access. Journal articles can be found for free on the journal website. You can also search for and obtain full-text open access journal articles using the following resources:

• Directory of Open Access Journals: searches across more than 16,000 journals
• bePress Digital Commons Network: searches across more than three million works from more than 600 institutions that use the Digital Commons Network for their institutional repository
• African Journals OnLine (AJOL) is the world's largest and preeminent platform of African-published scholarly journals. AJOL is a non-profit organisation that works to increase global and continental online access, awareness, quality and use of African-published, peer-reviewed research. 

Google Scholar allows you to conduct keyword searches for scholarly articles from many disciplines, but results will be a mix of open access content and content behind a subscription paywall. Consider using Google Advanced instead to run searches for open access journal articles. Restrict your search by domain to .edu and by file type to PDF. 

Publications and reports from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and state governments are useful sources for obtaining up-to-date information and an overview of international law topics. 

Examples of NGOs include Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Examples of IGOs include the United Nations or the Council of Europe.

Most NGO and IGO websites allow users to browse content by topic or subject. Most also come equipped with a search bar, but if you have trouble finding relevant search results, consider using Google Advanced to run targeted searches and restrict your results to certain file types (e.g., .pdf) and/or search across a particular website (e.g., hrw.org) or domain (e.g., .edu, .int., .org, .gov)