Regional Studies brings together African studies, geography, history, international relations, and the study of languages and cultures. Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER) put peer-reviewed scholarship, classic texts and teaching materials in front of every African researcher, student and librarian — free, legal and reusable.
Subdisciplines — jump in
- African Studies · Regional Studies OER course
- Geography & Area Studies · Regional Studies OER course
- History & Heritage · Regional Studies OER course
- International Relations · Regional Studies OER course
- Languages & Cultures · Regional Studies OER course
New here? Start with these courses
- Regional Studies OER course (subject foundations and curated resources)
- Navigating Research Guides (make the most of guides like this one)
- Accessing Open Access Journals (find and read OA literature)
- Using VuFind Discovery Search (search the FRELIP catalogue)
Search everything
One box across the whole FRELIP collection: search.frelip.org.
Start here for definitions, overviews and authoritative background across the regional disciplines.
General reference
- Wikidata (open, linked structured knowledge base)
- Oxford Research Encyclopedias (many peer-reviewed survey articles free to read)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (free scholarly entries spanning ideas, ethics, politics)
African Studies
- Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (peer-reviewed survey articles)
- African Studies (CUNY Commons) (open scholarly community resources)
Geography & Area Studies
- The World Factbook (free country profiles and geography facts)
- GeoNames (open geographical names gazetteer)
History & Heritage
- UNESCO General History of Africa (landmark multi-volume work, free volumes)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica (free overview entries on history and heritage)
International Relations
- E-International Relations (free IR reference and open textbooks)
- UN Charter & primary documents (foundational IR reference texts)
Languages & Cultures
- Ethnologue (reference catalogue of world languages)
- Glottolog (open catalogue of languages and language families)
- World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) (open database of linguistic features)
Full OA scholarly books and free open textbooks you can read, download and reuse.
OA book platforms (general)
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) (peer-reviewed OA books)
- OAPEN Library (OA books in the humanities and social sciences)
- Project Gutenberg (public-domain classics)
- Internet Archive — Texts (millions of digitised books)
- OER Commons (open course and textbook collections)
- Open Textbook Library (peer-reviewed open textbooks)
Open textbook libraries
- Social Sciences LibreTexts (geography, political science, anthropology)
- Humanities LibreTexts (history, languages, cultural studies)
- OpenStax — Social Sciences (free peer-reviewed textbooks)
- BCcampus OpenEd (open textbook collection)
African Studies
- DOAB — African studies (OA books on Africa)
- Aluka / JSTOR Africa collections (digitised African scholarship and heritage)
Geography & History & IR & Languages
- Geosciences LibreTexts (physical and human geography texts)
- OAPEN — African history (OA history monographs)
- E-IR open textbooks (free international relations books)
- Languages LibreTexts (open language and linguistics texts)
Peer-reviewed OA journals and preprint servers across the regional disciplines.
General OA gateways
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (vetted OA journals)
- African Journals OnLine (AJOL) (largest collection of African-published journals)
- SciELO (OA journals from the Global South)
African Studies
- DOAJ — African studies journals (browse OA titles)
- CODESRIA journals (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa)
Geography & Area Studies
- DOAJ — geography journals (OA titles)
- EarthArXiv (preprints in earth and geographic sciences)
History & Heritage
- DOAJ — history journals (OA titles)
- SocArXiv (open preprints across the social sciences and humanities)
International Relations
- DOAJ — international relations journals (OA titles)
- PLOS ONE (multidisciplinary OA, incl. politics and policy research)
Languages & Cultures
- DOAJ — linguistics journals (OA titles)
- Language Science Press (OA linguistics monographs and series)
Search engines and indexes that surface OA full text, metadata and citation links across all regional fields.
Discovery & bibliographic
- BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine — OA-focused)
- CORE (aggregator of OA research papers)
- OpenAIRE Explore (open research graph)
- OpenAlex (open catalogue of works, authors and venues)
- Semantic Scholar (AI-powered literature search)
- The Lens (scholarly and patent search)
Citation indexes
- OpenCitations (open citation data)
- Dimensions (free linked research, grants and citations)
- Google Scholar (broad scholarly index)
Subject-specific
- JSTOR Open Content (free history, area studies and humanities articles)
- Africa Bibliography & area indexes (African studies discovery)
- LINGUIST List (linguistics resources and indexes)
- WorldCat (global library catalogue)
FRELIP discovery
- FRELIP VuFind Search (search the whole FRELIP collection)
Open datasets, statistics and primary sources for regional, historical and geographic research.
General data repositories
- Zenodo (CERN-hosted multidisciplinary repository)
- Dryad (curated research data)
- Figshare (open data, figures and supplements)
- Open Science Framework (OSF) (projects, data and preprints)
- re3data (registry of research data repositories)
Geography & area data
- Natural Earth (free vector and raster map data)
- OpenStreetMap (open editable world map data)
- World Bank — Sub-Saharan Africa data (development indicators)
African studies & IR data
- ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data — strong Africa coverage)
- Afrobarometer (pan-African public-attitude survey data)
- Correlates of War (IR and conflict datasets)
History & heritage primary sources
- Digital Public Library of America (primary sources and archives)
- Europeana (digitised cultural heritage)
- Endangered Archives Programme (digitised at-risk archives, much from Africa)
Languages data
- Glottolog language data (open language metadata)
- ELAR (Endangered Languages Archive) (language documentation collections)
Openly licensed images, lectures, courseware and maps to learn from and reuse.
Images & media
- Wikimedia Commons (freely licensed media)
- Flickr Commons (public photography archives)
- Library of Congress — Free to Use (public-domain images and maps)
Video & courseware
- MIT OpenCourseWare (free course materials incl. history, political science, linguistics)
- Khan Academy — World History (free history lessons)
- Khan Academy — Geography (free geography lessons)
- CrashCourse — World History & Geography (free educational video)
Maps & spatial
- David Rumsey Map Collection (historical maps, many free to use)
- OldMapsOnline (historical map discovery)
- Google Earth (3D global imagery for area studies)
African heritage media
- South African History Online (heritage articles, images and timelines)
- Wikimedia Commons — Africa (openly licensed African imagery)
Free tools to manage references, build your scholarly identity and find full text.
Reference managers
- Zotero (free, open-source reference manager)
- JabRef (open-source BibTeX manager)
- ZoteroBib (quick citations, no install needed)
Scholarly identity
- ORCID (persistent researcher identifier)
Find full text
- Unpaywall (browser extension for legal OA copies)
- CORE Discovery (find free full-text versions)
Writing & analysis
- Overleaf (collaborative LaTeX writing; free tier)
- QGIS (free, open-source GIS for geography and mapping)
- TimelineJS (free tool for building historical timelines)
- Lexilogos (free multilingual dictionaries and keyboards)
Licensing, repository policy and accessibility standards behind open scholarship.
Licensing
- Creative Commons (the open licences explained)
- CC Licence Chooser (pick the right licence)
Repository & publisher policy
- Sherpa Romeo (journal self-archiving policies)
- OpenDOAR (directory of OA repositories)
- ROAR (registry of OA repositories)
OA mandates & assessment
- Plan S / cOAlition S (OA mandate principles)
- DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment)
Metadata & accessibility
- Dublin Core (metadata standard)
- WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)
Scholarly societies, networks and FRELIP courses to keep growing in Regional Studies.
Learned societies & associations
- CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa)
- African Studies Association (ASA) (international African studies network)
- Royal Geographical Society (geography research and education)
- International Studies Association (ISA) (international relations scholarship)
- Linguistic Society of America (linguistics and language studies)
- ICOMOS (heritage conservation network)
Keep learning (FRELIP Moodle)
- Regional Studies OER course (subject deep-dive)
- Evaluating Information Sources (judge quality and bias)
- The Research Impact Track (build and measure scholarly impact)