Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER) put peer-reviewed business research, economic data, finance and accounting texts, and statistics training within reach of every African student, researcher and librarian — free, legal and reusable. This guide curates the best free resources across Business & Management, Economics, Finance & Accounting, and Statistics & Analytics.
Subdisciplines — jump in
- Business & Management (search FRELIP) · OER course
- Economics (search FRELIP) · OER course
- Finance & Accounting (search FRELIP) · OER course
- Statistics & Analytics (search FRELIP) · OER course
New here? start with these courses
- Business & Economics OER course (this subject's open course)
- Navigating Research Guides
- Accessing Open Access Journals
- Using VuFind Discovery Search
Search everything
Search across all FRELIP collections at search.frelip.org.
Start here for definitions, terminology and authoritative overviews across business and economics.
General
- Wikipedia: Outline of Business (broad reference map of the field)
- OAPEN Library (search OA reference handbooks in business & economics)
Business & Management
- Glossary of Business Terms (Wikipedia) (core management terminology)
- Investopedia Dictionary (free dictionary of business, management & strategy terms)
Economics
- Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (free full-text encyclopedia, Library of Economics & Liberty)
- Glossary of Economics (Wikipedia) (key economic terms defined)
Finance & Accounting
- Investopedia Financial Term Dictionary (free finance & accounting glossary)
Statistics & Analytics
- OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms (authoritative statistical definitions)
- Glossary of Probability & Statistics (Wikipedia) (analytics terminology)
Free, legally downloadable books and openly licensed textbooks you can read, print and reuse.
OA book libraries (general)
- DOAB — Directory of Open Access Books (economics & business search)
- OAPEN Library (peer-reviewed OA books in business & economics)
- Open Library / Internet Archive: Economics (lendable & public-domain texts)
- Project Gutenberg: Economics (classic public-domain economics, e.g. Smith, Mill, Marshall)
- OER Commons: Business (openly licensed business & economics materials)
- Open Textbook Library: Business (peer-reviewed open textbooks)
Business & Management
- OpenStax: Principles of Management (free, peer-reviewed textbook)
- OpenStax: Organizational Behavior (free textbook)
- LibreTexts Business: Management Bookshelf (open management texts)
Economics
- OpenStax: Principles of Economics 3e (micro & macro, free)
- LibreTexts Social Sciences: Economics Bookshelf (open economics texts)
- CORE Econ: The Economy (free open economics textbook, globally used)
Finance & Accounting
- OpenStax: Principles of Financial Accounting (free textbook)
- OpenStax: Principles of Managerial Accounting (free textbook)
- LibreTexts Business: Finance Bookshelf (open finance texts)
- LibreTexts Business: Accounting Bookshelf (open accounting texts)
Statistics & Analytics
- OpenStax: Introductory Business Statistics 2e (free textbook)
- LibreTexts Statistics Bookshelves (open statistics & analytics texts)
- OpenIntro Statistics (free, widely adopted statistics textbook)
Peer-reviewed open access journals plus working-paper and preprint servers where new research appears first.
General & discovery
- DOAJ — Directory of Open Access Journals (economics journals search)
- DOAJ: Business & Management journals (search)
Business & Management
- AJOL: African management journals (African Journals OnLine search)
- DOAJ articles: Management (OA article search)
Economics
- RePEc / IDEAS (largest economics working-paper & article archive)
- NBER Working Papers (leading economics working papers)
- AERC Publications (African Economic Research Consortium research papers)
Finance & Accounting
- DOAJ: Finance journals (search)
- DOAJ: Accounting journals (search)
Statistics & Analytics
- arXiv: Econometrics (econ.EM) (preprints)
- arXiv: Statistics — Applications (stat.AP) (applied stats preprints)
- Journal of Statistical Software (OA, peer-reviewed)
Search engines and indexes that surface millions of OA papers, plus citation tools and economics-specific databases.
Discovery & bibliographic (general)
- BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine — economics)
- CORE (world's largest OA full-text aggregator)
- OpenAIRE Explore (European OA research graph)
- OpenAlex (open index of works, authors & institutions)
- Semantic Scholar (AI-powered literature search)
- The Lens (scholarly & patent search)
Citation indexes
- OpenCitations (open citation data)
- Dimensions (free publication & citation search)
Economics & finance databases
- RePEc / IDEAS (bibliographic database for economics)
- EconPapers (RePEc economics working papers & articles)
- World Bank Open Data (development & economic indicators)
- FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) (economic time-series database)
Open datasets, statistical sources and primary data for business, economic and financial analysis.
General data repositories
- Zenodo (CERN open repository — economics datasets)
- Dryad (curated research data)
- Figshare (datasets, figures & supplementary files)
- OSF (Open Science Framework) (project data & materials)
- re3data (registry of research data repositories)
Economic & financial statistics
- World Bank Open Data (global development indicators)
- IMF Data (international finance & macroeconomic statistics)
- OECD.Stat (economic & social statistics)
- UN Statistics Division (global statistical data)
- FRED (free economic time series)
Africa-focused data
- Ghana Statistical Service (national statistics example)
- Africa Open Data Portal (Knoema) (African economic & trade data)
- World Bank Microdata Library (household & firm survey microdata)
Free lectures, courses, visualisations and openly licensed images for teaching and learning business and economics.
Video & courseware
- MIT OpenCourseWare: Economics (full free courses)
- MIT OCW: Sloan School of Management (management courses)
- Khan Academy: Economics & Finance (free video lessons)
- Marginal Revolution University (free economics video courses)
- Khan Academy: Statistics & Probability (analytics video lessons)
Data visualisation & images
- Our World in Data (open charts on economics, trade & development)
- Wikimedia Commons: Economics (freely reusable images & diagrams)
- Gapminder Tools (interactive global economic data visualisations)
Free tools to organise references, manage your scholarly identity, find full text, and analyse economic data.
Reference managers & citation
- Zotero (free, open-source reference manager)
- JabRef (open-source BibTeX reference manager)
- ZoteroBib (quick bibliography builder, no install)
Scholarly identity
- ORCID (persistent researcher identifier)
Find full text
- Unpaywall (browser extension to find legal OA copies)
- CORE Discovery (one-click OA full-text finder)
Analysis & writing (economics/stats)
- R (free statistical computing environment)
- GNU PSPP (free SPSS-compatible statistical analysis)
- gretl (free open-source econometrics software)
- LibreOffice Calc (free spreadsheet for accounting & finance)
The licences, registries and policies that make open scholarship work — and how to apply them.
Creative Commons & licensing
- Creative Commons Licences (the six CC licences explained)
- CC Licence Chooser (pick the right licence for your work)
Self-archiving & repository registries
- Sherpa Romeo (publisher OA & self-archiving policies)
- OpenDOAR (directory of OA repositories)
- ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)
OA mandates & research assessment
- Plan S / cOAlition S (full & immediate OA policy)
- DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment)
Metadata & accessibility standards
- Dublin Core Metadata (core metadata element set)
- WCAG Accessibility Guidelines (make resources accessible to all)
Connect with professional bodies and keep building your research skills.
Learned societies & associations
- American Economic Association (AEA) (global economics association)
- The Econometric Society (economic theory & statistics)
- African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) (African economics capacity building)
- African Management bodies via AJOL (browse African management research at AJOL)
Keep learning (Moodle)
- Business & Economics OER course (this subject's open course)
- Evaluating Information Sources
- The Research Impact Track
Need help?
- Search FRELIP (discovery across all collections)
- FRELIP Learning (all open courses)
- Email a librarian: info@frelip.org