Discovering online resources

Scientific publications and datasets can be accessed through various types of sources. Here are some definitions to help you understand the differences.

• Online catalogs and indexes

You can find catalogs and indexes online to help you retrieve and locate bibliographic resources. 

• Subscription-based commercial platforms

Many publishers offer professionals and academic institutions direct access to their online platforms, providing subscription-based access to publications or datasets. 

To access the content, you typically need to go through a specific IP recognition process or authenticate via OpenAthens, the IDEM-GARR federation, or Single Sign-On. Check the access method for each database in the A–Z List of Electronic Resources.

• Institutional and subject-specific archives

Institutional or subject-specific archives provide another reliable source for academic research. Most of them offer direct, open access, while others require a simple registration.  

• Open-access databases

A wide range of open-access portals and databases are available online, provided by organizations at various levels, both governmental and non-governmental. In most cases, the data collection is fully open access; at other times, sensitive content is restricted to subscription-based access. Some authoritative examples include data provided by the United Nations, the World Bank, or the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Finally, to determine and verify the objective reliability of sources across all disciplines, you can use the so-called CRAAP Test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.

Open-access citation sources

• DoGi - An archive of legal scholarship containing abstracts of articles published in over 300 Italian journals (with information on court rulings, reviews, commentaries, legislation, conference proceedings, and critiques).
• ESSPER - A review of Italian journals covering economics, law, social sciences, and history.

Main catalogs

• ACNP - Bibliographic descriptions of periodicals held by Italian libraries nationwide, covering all subject areas.
• National Library Service Catalog (SBN) - A publicly accessible catalog from the National Library Service.
• Ulrich's web - A global directory of periodicals across all disciplines. It allows you to browse by topic. 
• WorldCat - The world's largest bibliographic catalog.

Subscription-based citation sources

• EconLit with Full Text - Bibliographic references and abstracts covering international economic science literature, including journal articles, monographs, conferences, proceedings, and dissertations.
• Scopus - A database of abstracts and bibliographic data, complete with citations and enriched with academic literature across a wide variety of disciplines.
• Web of Science - References from leading journals, conference proceedings, and books, including those in the social sciences, for finding high-quality literature in your areas of interest.

Luiss subscribes to a wide range of electronic resources to support study and research activities.

If you want to access a specific database or aren't sure which resource is right for your research, you can explore the A–Z list of Electronic Resources. You can browse it by tag, subject, or content type. Each title in the list opens a card that describes the content and how to access the resource. 

If, on the other hand, you want to find books, articles, or other documents without specifying the title of the collection or database, use Luiss Library Discovery, and you'll be redirected straight to the source.

Google Scholar is an open-access search engine for retrieving scientific literature, including peer-reviewed articles, e-journals, e-books, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other relevant scientific materials, including patents and court decisions.

Visit the Search Help page to discover other search features.

If you're at a Luiss location or using the off-campus proxy connection, you might notice that some results have a link labeled Full text @ Luiss on the right side of the page. To make accessing resources easier, the Library has integrated subscription information into Google using system parameters.

Open access repositories, such as institutional or disciplinary ones, provide the relevant scientific community with free access to research results and are among the most recommended sources, as outlined in the Budapest Open Access Initiative's policy document on Open Access. 

To learn more, visit the global Directory of Open Access Repositories OpenDOAR. 

Since 2014, Luiss has been running IRIS, the institutional repository dedicated to the results of research conducted at the University. The Library also manages the institutional archive LuissThesis, which preserves and disseminates degree theses.