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Accessing Research After Graduation: Home

Congratulations graduate! We’re so excited for you! But did you know that when you leave Oklahoma State University, the access you've enjoyed to many research databases will come to an end? So what happens when you have a need for quality research after graduation for an internship or career, but aren't enrolled in a university? Google Scholar is great, but only gets you so far before you run into a price tag. Thankfully, more and more researchers are making their work available to all for free, and we can help you find it. The purpose of this guide is to outline the tools and processes you can use to access research after graduation.

Open Access Resources

Open Access (OA) refers to scholarly research that is made available at no cost to readers. To learn more about finding open access resources, visit the below page:

Download a PDF of the guide here:

Courtesy Card & Oklahoma Digital Prairie

Generally, license agreements with publishers prevent university libraries from giving off-campus access to these resources. However, most public universities provide public computer terminals on campus that provide access to the research databases.

At Oklahoma State University, you may request a Courtesy Card to check-out print books from the collection:

If you are living in the state of Oklahoma, you have access to the Oklahoma Digital Prairie, sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. This provides remote access to a variety of resources, including peer-reviewed journals, newspapers, and magazines. Many public libraries also provide interlibrary loan services, where they will deliver articles and books to you for a nominal charge or free. Use WorldCat (https://www.worldcat.org/) to see if a library near you has a book to loan.

Attribution

Creative Commons License This guide is adapted from Accessing Research After Graduation, created by Carolyn Caffrey Gardner and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It was modified to include information specific to OSU, and some additional content was added to the OA Resources page.