Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER) put peer-reviewed medical and health research, textbooks and clinical guidance within reach of every African student, clinician, nurse and researcher — for free. This guide curates the best OA and OER for the health sciences and shows you how to find more.
Subdisciplines — jump in
- Medicine & Clinical (FRELIP search) — also see the Health Sciences OER course
- Nursing & Midwifery (FRELIP search) — also see the Health Sciences OER course
- Public & Global Health (FRELIP search) — also see the Health Sciences OER course
- Pharmacy & Pharmacology (FRELIP search) — also see the Health Sciences OER course
- Anatomy & Physiology (FRELIP search) — also see the Health Sciences OER course
- Nutrition & Dietetics (FRELIP search) — also see the Health Sciences OER course
New here? Start with these courses
- Health Sciences OER (this subject) — open resources for the health field
- Navigating Research Guides — get the most from guides like this one
- Accessing Open Access Journals — find free peer-reviewed articles
- Using VuFind Discovery Search — master the FRELIP search engine
Search everything
Search all FRELIP collections at once at search.frelip.org — books, journals, articles and data in one place.
Authoritative, freely available reference works for definitions, terminology, drug data and clinical facts across the health sciences.
General health & medicine
- NCBI Bookshelf (free full-text biomedical books, handbooks & reports from NIH/NLM)
- MSD/Merck Manual Professional Version (free clinical reference covering diagnosis & therapy)
- StatPearls (via NCBI Bookshelf) (continuously updated peer-reviewed clinical articles)
- MedlinePlus (NLM consumer-health encyclopedia & medical dictionary)
- MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) (NLM controlled vocabulary & thesaurus for biomedicine)
Medicine & clinical
- WHO ICD-11 (International Classification of Diseases, free online)
- WHO Health Topics A–Z (authoritative fact sheets on diseases & conditions)
Pharmacy & pharmacology
- DrugBank Online (free comprehensive drug & drug-target reference)
- WHO Model List of Essential Medicines (core medicines reference, vital in African settings)
Anatomy & physiology
- Kenhub Anatomy Library (free anatomy articles & terminology)
- IMAIOS e-Anatomy (free atlas sections) (interactive anatomical atlas & terminology)
Nutrition & dietetics
- USDA FoodData Central (open food composition & nutrient reference data)
- WHO Nutrition (authoritative nutrition guidance & definitions)
Free, legally downloadable scholarly books and open textbooks for the health sciences. Look for Creative Commons licences so you can reuse and adapt.
OA book platforms
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) (peer-reviewed OA books — medicine search)
- OAPEN Library (OA academic books — health search)
- NCBI Bookshelf (free full-text biomedical & life-science books)
- Open Library / Internet Archive (medicine subject collection)
- OER Commons — Health Sciences (open educational materials hub)
- Open Textbook Library — Medicine (vetted, reusable open textbooks)
Anatomy & physiology open textbooks
- OpenStax Anatomy & Physiology 2e (free peer-reviewed textbook)
- LibreTexts Medicine Library (anatomy, physiology & clinical bookshelves)
- LibreTexts Human Biology (open human-biology texts)
Nursing & midwifery open textbooks
- Open Textbook Library — Nursing (open nursing textbooks)
- BCcampus — Clinical Procedures for Safer Patient Care (open nursing skills textbook)
- Open RN — Nursing Fundamentals (open-access nursing textbook)
Pharmacology open textbooks
- OSU — Open texts (anatomy/physiology) (free university-published texts)
- LibreTexts Pharmacology (open pharmacology bookshelf)
Public health & nutrition
- DOAB — Public Health (OA public-health books)
- Open Textbook Library — Nutrition (open nutrition & dietetics texts)
Peer-reviewed open-access journals, repositories and preprint servers for current health research — including African-focused outlets.
Find OA articles & journals
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (vetted OA journals — medicine search)
- PubMed Central (PMC) (free full-text biomedical & life-science archive)
- PubMed (NLM index of biomedical literature; filter for free full text)
- African Journals Online (AJOL) — Health (largest collection of African-published health journals)
Medicine & clinical
- PLOS Medicine & PLOS ONE (fully OA medical journals)
- BMC (BioMed Central) (large OA medical journal portfolio)
- medRxiv (preprint server for clinical & health sciences)
Public & global health
- BMJ Global Health (OA global-health journal)
- Bulletin of the WHO (OA public-health journal)
- Pan African Medical Journal (OA continental public-health journal)
Nursing, pharmacy & physiology
- DOAJ — Nursing journals (OA nursing & midwifery)
- DOAJ — Pharmacy journals (OA pharmacy & pharmacology)
- APS Journals (Physiology) (many OA physiology articles)
- bioRxiv (preprints for physiology & biomedical science)
Nutrition
- DOAJ — Nutrition journals (OA nutrition & dietetics)
Open discovery, bibliographic and citation databases to search the global literature and trace how research connects.
Open discovery & bibliographic
- BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) (millions of OA documents — medicine search)
- CORE (world's largest aggregation of OA research papers)
- OpenAIRE Explore (open European research graph)
- OpenAlex (free index of works, authors & institutions)
- Semantic Scholar (AI-powered scholarly search with TLDR summaries)
- The Lens (free scholarly & patent search)
Citation indexes & bibliometrics
- OpenCitations (open citation data infrastructure)
- Dimensions (free publication, citation & grant search)
Subject-specific biomedical databases
- PubMed / MEDLINE (premier biomedical literature index)
- Cochrane Library (abstracts free) (systematic reviews of healthcare interventions)
- ClinicalTrials.gov (registry & results of clinical studies worldwide)
- WHO Global Index Medicus (literature from low- & middle-income countries, incl. Africa)
- PMC (free full-text biomedical archive)
Open data repositories and health datasets for reproducible research, secondary analysis and teaching.
General research data repositories
- Zenodo (CERN-hosted multidisciplinary repository — health search)
- Dryad (curated open research data, strong in life sciences)
- Figshare (open datasets, figures & supplementary files)
- Open Science Framework (OSF) (project, data & materials sharing)
- re3data (registry of research data repositories — health search)
Health & biomedical data
- NCBI GEO & Datasets (genomics & functional biomedical data)
- EMBL-EBI Data Resources (open molecular & biomedical databases)
- PhysioNet (open physiological & clinical signal data)
Public, global & nutrition data
- WHO Global Health Observatory (global health statistics & indicators)
- Global Health Data Exchange (IHME) (Global Burden of Disease & health data)
- DHS Program (Demographic & Health Surveys — extensive African data)
- USDA FoodData Central (open food & nutrient composition data)
Openly licensed images, video lectures, courseware and interactive simulations for learning and teaching the health sciences.
Images & media
- Wikimedia Commons — Medicine (freely licensed medical images & diagrams)
- Open-i (NLM) (open biomedical image search from the literature)
- CDC Public Health Image Library (public-domain health images)
Video lectures & courseware
- MIT OpenCourseWare — Health Sciences & Technology (free course materials)
- Khan Academy — Health & Medicine (free video lessons)
- Coursera — Public Health (audit free) (university courses, many auditable)
- WHO OpenWHO (free public-health & emergency learning, African-relevant)
Simulations, 3D & atlases
- PhET Interactive Simulations (free biology & physiology simulations)
- InnerBody (free interactive 3D human anatomy)
- GetBodySmart (interactive anatomy & physiology tutorials)
Free tools to manage references, build your scholarly identity, find legal full text and analyse health research.
Reference managers & citation
- Zotero (free, open-source reference manager)
- JabRef (open-source BibTeX reference manager)
- ZoteroBib (quick bibliographies, no account needed)
- My NCBI / My Bibliography (manage PubMed citations & bibliographies)
Scholarly identity
- ORCID (free persistent researcher ID)
Find legal full text
- Unpaywall (browser extension finding free legal versions)
- CORE Discovery (one-click access to free copies)
Analysis & writing for health research
- jamovi (free, open statistical software for health data)
- R Project (open statistical computing, widely used in epidemiology)
- Covidence (free trial) (systematic review screening tool)
- EQUATOR Network (reporting guidelines for health research, e.g. CONSORT, PRISMA)
The frameworks behind open scholarship: how to licence your work, check publisher policies, find repositories and meet accessibility standards.
Creative Commons & licensing
- Creative Commons Licences (overview of CC licence types)
- CC License Chooser (pick the right licence for your work)
Publisher & repository policies
- Sherpa Romeo (publisher OA & self-archiving policies)
- Sherpa Juliet (funder OA policies)
- OpenDOAR (directory of OA repositories)
- ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories) (global repository registry)
OA & research-assessment policy
- Plan S / cOAlition S (funder mandate for full & immediate OA)
- DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment)
Metadata & accessibility standards
- Dublin Core Metadata Terms (standard metadata vocabulary)
- WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) (accessibility standards for digital resources)
Connect with health-science communities, professional bodies and African networks — and keep building your skills with FRELIP learning.
Learned societies & associations
- World Health Organization (WHO) (global health authority & resources)
- Africa CDC (African Union public-health agency)
- World Federation of Public Health Associations (global public-health network)
- International Council of Nurses (ICN) (global nursing federation)
- International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) (global pharmacy body)
- The Physiological Society (physiology research community)
- FESTMIH / tropical medicine networks (tropical & African health research)
Keep learning (Moodle)
- Health Sciences OER (this subject) — open resources for the health field
- Evaluating Information Sources — judge quality & credibility
- The Research Impact Track — grow & measure your impact
Need help?
- FRELIP Discovery Search — find books, journals, articles & data
- FRELIP Learning — free courses & tutorials
- Email a librarian: info@frelip.org