DOAB
The Directory of Open Access Books — DOAJ's counterpart for scholarly monographs.
At a Glance
- Publisher
- OAPEN Foundation
- Coverage
Tens of thousands of peer-reviewed open-access academic books and chapters from hundreds of publishers, across disciplines (verify current counts).
- Access
Free and open; metadata and a discovery service.
- Free alternative
- It is free; Google Books, OAPEN Library.
- Regional
Global, with strong European scholarly-press representation.
Our Take
DOAB is to open-access books what DOAJ is to journals — a vetted directory that lets you find and trust peer-reviewed OA monographs, which the article-focused indexes largely ignore. For the humanities and social sciences, where the book is still the unit of scholarship, it fills a real gap and helps verify a publisher’s OA credentials. It’s a discovery and vetting layer over metadata, not a full-text search engine in itself. Use it to find and vet open-access scholarly books, especially in book-heavy fields.
Power Tips
- Search here for peer-reviewed OA monographs the journal indexes miss.
- Use it to confirm a book publisher’s open-access and peer-review credentials.
- Pair with DOAJ to cover both OA books and journals in a review.
Alternatives & Complements
DOAJ, OAPEN Library, Google Books, JSTOR
Figures last verified: June 15, 2026