LibGuides: Autonomous Systems and Robotics: Resources for Alumni & Others

Free Open Access Resources for Alumni and Others

Due to vendors' licensing restrictions, the library's subscribed research databases and subscribed journals are only available for remote access to current students, faculty, and staff. If you are on campus and have alumni access to the University's WiFi network or if you can access the EduRoam network you should have access to most of the resources listed for current students, faculty, and staff.

If you are unable to visit campus and are not a member of the Illinois Tech community, the following list of high quality resources are wholly or partially free for all users. If specific content is behind a paywall, try contacting your local library to see if they can request the item for you at no charge. Most libraries, including public libraries, offer this service, often known as Interlibrary Loan.

For more information about our alumni and guest services, see our Services for Alumni page and our Visitor Policy.

Alphabetical Listing

ADAMS - Agencywide Documents Access and Management System
ADAMS provides a collection of publicly available documents produced by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). ADAMS provides access to the Publicly Available Records System (PARS) as well as the Public Legacy Library. ADAMS documents are provided in either Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF).
BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
BASE is one of the world's most extensive search engines of networked academic resources. BASE provides more than 150 million documents from more than 7,000 sources, including Illinois Tech's Institutional Repository. You can access the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free (Open Access). BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library.
City of Chicago Data Portal
More than 200 datasets about Chicago departments, services, facilities and performance.
Data Repositories on OAD
The Open Access Directory (OAD) maintains a list of open data repositories as part o their website. While not searchable, the list is broken out by subject area.
Data.gov
Data.gov is a searchable database of public datasets maintained by the U.S. General Services Administration. In addition to the searchable web interface, there are also a number of free APIs.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers. All DOAB services are free of charge and all data is freely available.
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ can also be used as a "whitelist" by researchers wishing to identify high quality open access journals to publish their research.
DOE Pages
The Department of Energy Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (DOE PAGES) is the DOE discovery tool that makes peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from DOE research funding publicly accessible to read, download, and analyze at no charge to users.
DTIC Online: Public Technical Reports
The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC®) serves the DoD community as the largest central resource for DoD and government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information available today .
Engineering Technology
This website consists of a series of 3D simulations on engineering technology topics. These simulations, developed by e-Learning Company Lucid Way, are approximately from 2-9 minutes long and are used as part of their curriculum to help students quickly and thoroughly grasp the concepts being presented in a visual format.
Ethics Code Collection
The Ethics Codes Collection is the largest online repository of ethics codes and guidelines in the world. With over 2500 individual codes and guidelines from over 1500 organizations around the world, including current and historical codes dating to 1887, it is maintained by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology.
Google Dataset search
Google Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets. Using a simple keyword search, users can discover freely available datasets hosted in thousands of open access repositories across the Web.
INIS - International Nuclear Information System
The International Nuclear Information System (INIS) hosts one of the world's largest collections of published information on the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology. The INIS Repository contains bibliographic references and full-text documents of conventional and non-conventional literature, including scientific and technical reports, conference proceedings, patents and theses.
IQS (Industrial Quick Search) Directory
IQS Directory is a FREE, comprehensive listing of manufacturers and suppliers serving major segments of the OEM industrial manufacturing marketplace across the United States and Canada. Industrial engineers and buyers rely on IQS Directory to specify products within a series of categories and buy products directly from manufacturers.
LibreTexts
The LibreTexts mission is to unite students, faculty, and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of OERs to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society.
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
The Mason OER Metafinder allows you to simultaneously search across the multiple OER repositories (e.g., MERLOT II, OAOpen.org, OER Commons, OpenStax CNX, etc.) as well as many open archival repositories (e.g. HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, etc.).
MatWeb - Material Property Data
MatWeb is a searchable database of more than 135,000 manufactured materials including physical properties, composition, trade names, manufacturers, and other information.
Merlot
The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
NTRL- National Technical Reports Library
The NTRL fills a recognized void in access to a large collection of historical and current government technical reports that exists in many academic, public, government, and corporate libraries. Through NTRL, NTIS provides a comprehensive offering that delivers high-quality government technical content in all subject areas directly and seamlessly to the user's desktop.
Octopart
Best Bet
Octopart is a search engine for electronic components and industrial products. It includes a Common Parts Library, which is a set of commonly used electronic components for prototyping, designing, and manufacturing connected devices
OER Commons
OER Commons is a collection of free open educational resources, such as recorded class lectures, exercises, and document spanning all subjects and all age groups from preschool through college-level.
Open Library
The eCampusOntario Open Library provides educators and learners with access to more than 500 free and openly-licensed educational resources.
Open Textbook Library
Launched by the University of Minnesota, the Open Textbook Library hosts a large collection of openly licensed, peer-reviewed textbooks in all subject areas.
OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)
OpenDOAR is the quality-assured, global Directory of Open Access Repositories. We host repositories that provide free, open access to academic outputs and resources. Each repository record within OpenDOAR has been carefully reviewed and processed by a member of our editorial team which enables us to offer a trusted service for the community.
Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS)
OASIS is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 117 different sources and contains 388,707 records. OASIS is being developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
OpenStax
Rice University's resource which contains peer-reviewed open textbooks in science, math, business, and the social sciences.
OSTI.GOV
Best Bet
Free public access to over 200,000 full-text documents and bibliographic citations of Department of Energy (DOE) research report literature.
PATENTSCOPE
Best Bet
PATENTSCOPE is a searchable database 84 million worldwide patent documents including 3.8 million published international patent applications (PCT). Be signing up for a FREE account, users are able to search chemical patents by structure and have access to PATENTSCOPE's cutting edge translation tools for accessing patents in other languages. PATENTSCOPE is a service of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of the United Nations.
PLoS - Public Liibrary of Science
Online repository of open-access scientific journals published by Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.
re3data
Re3data is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines. In addition to the fully functional search and browse features on the website, they offer a free API to facilitate retrieval of data.
Retraction Watch
Retraction watch is a searchable database of research papers that have been retracted due to ethical issues, such as plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of research results, or unauthorized release or publication of data. Because of these problems, retraced papers should not be cited or used in your own research.
ROSA P - The Repository & Open Science Access Portal of the National Transportation Library
ROSA P is a searchable collection of resources across all modes of transportation and related disciplines, with specific focus on information produced by USDOT, state DOTs, and other transportation organizations. Content types found in ROSA P include textual works, datasets, still image works, moving image works, other multimedia, and maps. All resources in ROSA P are in the public domain and/or explicit permission has been provided by the rights holder to NTL to make their materials available for free over the web.
Science.gov
Science.gov is a gateway to over 50 million pages of authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. government agencies, including research and development results.
SPIRES-HEP
Stanford hosted database with over half a million articles related to high energy physics. In depth information on experiments, journals, conferences, and institutions.

NOTE: Database changed name to inSPIRE HEP
TechRxiv
TechRxiv (pronounced "tech archive") is an open, moderated preprint server for unpublished research in electrical engineering, computer science, and related technology. It is provided by IEEE.
ThomasNet
Online version of the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers. In addition to information on hundreds of B2B industrial suppliers and manufacturers, it includes specifications or links to the specifications of industrial and laboratory equipment.
Note: Requires free personal registration.
TRAIL (Technical Report Archive And Image Library)
The Technical Report Archive & Image Library (TRAIL) is an initiative led by the University of Arizona in collaboration with CRL and other interested agencies to identify, digitize, archive, and provide access to federal technical reports issued prior to 1975.
unpaywall
Unpaywall is a free, open database indexing millions of legally free versions of otherwise paywalled scholarly articles. It also has a downloadable browser extension that integrates into the Chrome and Firefox browsers, allowing users to access millions of legally free research papers as they browse.
UpCodes
UpCodes provides a free platform to access building codes for all 50 states as well as the international codes. The free version allows access to all codes. Searching and advanced functionality is limited to an individual paid subscription.
USPTO - U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Database of all U.S. patents issued since 1790.
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community dedicated to developing Web standards. W3C standards define an Open Web Platform for application development that has the unprecedented potential to enable developers to build rich interactive experiences, powered by vast data stores, that are available on any device.
WorldWideScience.org
WorldWideScience.org, developed and maintained by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information in partnership with the British Library, is a global science gateway enablling federated searching of national and international scientific databases. Users get the most current findings in fields such as energy, medicine, agriculture, environment, and basic sciences, published by contributing nations. WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals. Multilingual WorldWideScience.org provides real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed multilingual scientific literature.

Autonomous Systems and Robotics

Autonomous Systems and Robotics Librarian

Aric Ahrens

Related Subjects

Free Open Access Resources for Alumni and Others

Alphabetical Listing