The Science books and other documents listed below allow free access to their contents and are available online.
For textbooks in particular, see below and the post Free Science books and textbooks.
For journal articles, please search Science Primary Literature (database).
**updated February 2026**
Textbooks
College/University Textbooks (OER Commons)
OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum. Search by “Subject Area” to make your results more precise.
OpenStax is part of Rice University (Texas, USA). As an educational initiative, it’s our mission to improve educational access and learning for everyone. Free access to college-level and AP textbooks.
Open Textbook Library (Open Education Network)
Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions, or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization.
Textbook Affordability Project (University of South Florida Libraries, USA)
Open access textbooks are openly-licensed digital textbooks that are offered for free online. Traditional textbooks use cumbersome copyright license restrictions, while open access textbooks allow anyone to read, copy, distribute, or modify the content at no cost. Many universities around the United States have already developed initiatives to produce peer-reviewed open access textbooks for their students and the positive response has led open access textbooks to be acknowledged as an affordable alternative to traditional learning materials.
Collections
Directory of Open Access Books (a joint service of OAPEN, OpenEdition, CNRS and Aix-Marseille Université, provided by DOAB Foundation)
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.
FAO Knowledge Repository (Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations) 
The FAO Knowledge Repository is FAO’s official repository for all its publications, past and present. Fully free and open access, it promotes the unhindered flow of knowledge as it amplifies the Organization’s scientific and technical impact.
Internet Archive — Books to Borrow
Over 3 million ebooks that may be borrowed and read online.
Includes journal articles, research reports, and primary source materials as well as books. Covers all subjects including the sciences. JSTOR is a mission-driven nonprofit working hand-in-hand with 14,000+ libraries worldwide to expand access to knowledge. Together, we make research, teaching, and digital collection stewardship more affordable, sustainable, and impactful for your community.
National Academy Press (National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America)
The full text of thousands of books covering a wide range of the sciences; includes a powerful searching interface.
NCBI Bookshelf (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, USA)
Bookshelf provides free online access to books and documents in the life sciences and healthcare.
University of California eScholarship Repository–Books (University of California, USA)
The Repository offers faculty a central location for depositing any research or scholarly output deemed appropriate by their participating University of California research unit, center, or department.
Individual books
Open access, peer-reviewed online journal covering a broad range of topics in research on Arabidopsis thaliana and related species, supported by the American Society of Plant Biologists.
A Heat Transfer Textbook (John H. Lienhard IV and John H. Lienhard V)
An introduction to heat and mass transfer oriented toward engineering students.
Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy
For easy-to-understand, authoritative information about human diseases and disorders.
A comprehensive, open access collection of original, peer-reviewed chapters covering topics related to the biology of Caenorhabditis elegans and other nematodes.
Theses and Dissertations
Open Access Theses and Dissertations
OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions.
If you are looking for a specific book and can’t find it through the sources above or have questions, please let me know (engelk@grinnell.edu):
