Copyright Guide: Alternatives to Copyright

Some links / sources of open access, public domain, and Creative Commons licensed items (not exhaustive). Links may be for the open or Creative Commons licenced category in larger copyrighted fee-based sites

• MDPI   - peer-reviewed, open access journals
• DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals   - community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals
• HighWire Free Online Full-text Articles   - Coverage includes mostly life, physical, and medical sciences, with some social sciences
• BioMed  - article searchable and list of journals, in the fields of science, technology, and medicine 
• PubMed Central  - biomedical and life science journal articles compiled by the US National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM)
• JURN   - open access journal article search engine, mainly arts and the humanities, also science, business, and other topics.
• CORE: COnnecting REpositories   - largest collection of open access research papers
• arXiv   - Provides open access to over half a million e-prints in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics
• Frontiers   - access to peer-reviewed, quality-certified science research 
• Open Library of the Humanities   - OLH publishing platform supports academic journals from across the humanities disciplines
• PLoS (Public Library of Science)   - Open access biomedical journals
• Digital Commons Network  - Brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide
• OpenEdition   - A multilingual portal devoted to the humanities and social sciences
• Oxford Open Access Journals   
• Elsevier Open Access Journals   
• JSTOR Open Access Content   

Some links / sources of open access, public domain, and Creative Commons licensed items (not exhaustive). Links may be for the open or Creative Commons licensed category in larger copyrighted fee-based sites

Check licence and usage terms carefully. Although attribution may not be required by the licence terms, MtA recommends you still cite your source

Open Textbook Repositories in Canada

• eCampusOntario: Open Library    - free and openly-licensed educational resources
• Manitoba Open Textbook Initiative    - textbooks on a wide variety of subjects, many have been reviewed by post-secondary faculty.

Open Textbook Repositories outside of Canada

• OER Commons    - public digital library of open educational resources
• OpenStax College    - free, peer-reviewed textbooks on subjects including math, sciences, social sciences, humanities, business
• OAPEN   - OA academic books, platform specializes in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• MERLOT   - curated collection of Open Educational Resources
• Open Textbook Library   - collection of open textbooks on a variety of subjects
• Textbook Equity Open Education   - Creative Commons licensed textbooks, currently or recently used in U.S. colleges and universities  

Some links / sources of open access, public domain, and Creative Commons licensed items (not exhaustive). Links may be for the open or Creative Commons licensed category in larger copyrighted fee-based sites

Check licence and usage terms carefully. Although attribution may not be required by the licence terms, MtA recommends you still cite your source

• Unsplash   - Unsplash photos are made to be used freely
• Flickr Creative Commons   - some Flickr users offer their work under a Creative Commons license, users can browse or search under each type of license
• Photos Public Domain   - pictures on this website have been released into the Public Domain (Note: no model releases were obtained from any people in the photos, use care when using photos that have any identifiable brand names or logos for commercial purposes
• Pixabay   -  safe to use without asking for permission (captcha presented at each download unless you register for free account )
  • Note: watch out for sponsored / premium paid images 
• Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online    - images from the Library of Congress, now in the public domain
• Wikimedia Commons   - historical and contemporary images contributed by participants
• Free Images   - license-free image category from a premium site 
  • Note: watch out for sponsored / premium paid images 
• Gender Spectrum Collection   - stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés
• Pexels   - images are free to use 
  • Note: watch out for sponsored / premium paid images 
• kaboompics   - free to use images 
  • Note: watch out for sponsored / premium paid images 

Some links / sources of open access, public domain, and Creative Commons licensed items (not exhaustive). Links may be for the open or Creative Commons licensed category in larger copyrighted fee-based sites

Check licence and usage terms carefully. Although attribution may not be required by the licence terms, MtA recommends you still cite your source

• Open Data Portal - Canada’s open data site. Launched March 2011. Links to federal, provincial, and municipal open data sites in Canada
• Open Data New Brunswick - NB Government datasets

• Kaggle   - free but requires registration

• Google Dataset Search   - keyword search but may link to paid datasets
• Data.Gov   - US Government data
• data.europa.eu - The official portal for European data

• Data.Gov.Uk - UK open data site 

• DataCatalogs.org - a comprehensive list of open government data sites from around the world 
• Datahub.io   - business and finance, some fee based content
• Earth Data   - NASA's satellite observation data
• CERN Open Data Portal   - particle physics datasets
• Global Health Observatory Data Repository   - health-related statistics from across the globe
• FBI Crime Data Explorer   - crime statistics from a variety of universities, local law enforcement, and government sources
• UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository   - wide variety of datasets
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility   - biodiversity data
• Nature Journals Recommended Data Repositories   - public access data repositories by topic area 
• Harvard University's Dataverse   - free data repository open to all researchers from any discipline

Some links / sources of open access, public domain, and Creative Commons licensed items (not exhaustive). Links may be for the open or Creative Commons licensed category in larger copyrighted fee-based sites

Check licence and usage terms carefully. Although attribution may not be required by the licence terms, MtA recommends you still cite your source

Music

• Jamendo Music   - listen online and create a free account to download
• Free Music Archive   - All songs on FMA are free to access and download.
• Bensound   - songs with a black download button are free to use many ways with proper attribution
• International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) [also known as Petrucci Music Library] - browse by composer, performer under 'Recordings' tab
• Musopen   - search by composer, performer, instrument, tag, form, or time period
• Pixabay Music   - music and audio track

Scores

• International Music Score Library Project    (IMSLP) [also known as Petrucci Music Library   ] - public domain music scores 
• Musopen   - public domain classical sheet music 
• Mutopia   - contemporary and classical instrumental music 
• Free-scores.com   - contemporary, classical and educational sheet music

Some Sources for Open Access Government Documents 

MtA's Government Documents subject guide

Canadian Government Documents

• Government of Canada Publications   
• Open Government Portal   - Dataset consolidates all the proactive publication of contract reports submitted by federal government entities
• Open Science Publications   - Links to Federal Science Library and publications from the Federal Government on open science

American Government Documents

• Catalog of U.S. Government Publications   - Finding tool for electronic and print publications from the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the U.S. government

• Govinfo: U.S. Government Publishing Office   - Provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government