Online Journals

To be included in this list a journal must maintain access to an article once it is posted. There are many nursing "ezines," but the articles on these are only posted for a given time period and are generally news items, not scholarly articles.

 

Free Nursing Oriented (Open Access)

(Please report any changes to this list. Thanks!)

Advanced Practice Registered Nurses of Washington State. Archives from 1996 are available.
http://www.nurse.org/wa/arnpcare/

AHRQ Morbidity and Mortality Rounds on the Web. This is monthly publication of cases submitted by clinicians of errors and near errors. You can register (free) and get notices each month when it is posted. You can read the cases without registering.
http://webmm.ahrq.gov

Alternative Journal of Nursing.
A holistic journal of nursing that explores the evolution of the nursing profession.
http://www.altjn.com/

Australian Journal of Nursing Education Online
A completely online journal focusing on nursing education. This journal has not published since April 2002, but the original articles are available, but only if you know your subject. Does not allow browsing of older issues.
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/nhcp/aejne/

Biomed Central Nursing. This journal is one of many research journals in Biomed Central. The first article was published in April 2002. Since then there have been, and continue to be, many excellent research articles posted here. .
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcnurs/

Cienca y enfermeria-Revista Iberoamericana de Investigacion. "...the official voice of the Nursing Department at the University of Concepción, Concepción, Chile. Its main mission is to spread knowledge in Nursing and Health, which will scientifically support the praxis over our discipline within the different occupational scopes." Articles on line since June 2002. A few articles have an abstract in English.
http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_serial&pid=0717-9553&lng=en&nrm=iso

Evidence Based Nursing Online. Articles are open access one year after publication. They are a selection from the health related literature reporting studies and reviews that warrant immediate attention by nurses attempting to keep pace with important advances in their profession. These articles are summarised in "value added" abstracts and have comments from clinical experts.
http://ebn.bmj.com/

Graduate Research in Nursing (GRN) & Research for Nursing Practice (RNP). These online journals are published by LLC . GRN publishes research and other scholarly writings of nursing graduate students, while RNP publishes research, case studies and other practice based work developed by nurses in the practice setting. Has had nothing published since June 2001, but archives are still posted.
http://www.graduateresearch.com/

Internet Journal of Advanced Nursing Practice. This journal is one of several health related online journals that are a part of the Internet Scientific Publications. Once there, drop down the box under Internet Journal of and select the above. Started in 1997, this journal publishes two issues a year.
http://www.ispub.com/

Journal of Community Nursing. Articles available online since January 1998. Publishes monthly. You must first register (free), then wait for an email to activate your account.
http://www.jcn.co.uk/index.html

Journal of Undergraduate Nursing Scholarship. This journal is for publication of articles by students in any BSN program. Although sponsored by the University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona, USA) the members of the editorial board represent many different colleges. . It is peer reviewed and contains some excellent articles, plus provides a chance for undergraduate students to start publishing.
http://www.juns.nursing.arizona.edu/

Nurse Author & Editor. Aimed at potential authors (and every nurse is one), this journal has some great articles. Requires registration, but that is free.
http://www.nurseauthoreditor.com/

Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. Completely online journal that addresses issues in nursing such as managed care and nursing languages. Sponsored by Kent State University (Kent, Ohio USA), the American Nurses Association and Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing.
http://www.nursingworld.org/ojin/index.htm

Online Journal of Nursing Informatics. Completely online journal about nursing informatics.
http://www.ojni.org/

Online Journal of Rural Nursing and Health Care. Completely online. Started publishing in 2002. Sponsored by the Clinical Digital Libraries Project, a research, teaching and service effort of the University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies and the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Sciences.
http://www.rno.org/journal/index.php/online-journal

Open Medicine. Access is free to all, but you must first register. As of August 2009 they are testing a policy whereby articles are posted as wikis and readers can comment. (See http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/332/248 for information about this.
http://www.openmedicine.ca/

Revista Médicas Cubanas. Starting with Volume 11 (1995), articles are available online. Articles in Spanish, but titles are translated to English.
http://bvs.sld.cu/revistas/enf/indice.html

Southern Online Journal of Nursing Research (SOJNR). This research journal is sponsored by the Southern Nursing Research Society.
http://snrs.org/publications/journal.html

World Wide Wounds: The Electronic Journal of Wound Management Practice. This is not strictly a nursing journal, but there is much of interest here to nurses and one of the Professional Advisors is a nurse.
http://www.worldwidewounds.com/index.html

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Free Books

This site lists many areas where books that are out of copyright can be accessed. Includes the Gutenberg Project books which has many classics.
http://www.e-book.com.au/freebooks.htm

Indexing for Online Freely Available Journals

Google Scholar. This site is an offshoot of Google. Its purpose is to provide searching for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Not all of its listings link to a full text.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html

Index for free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
http://www.doaj.org/

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Subscription-Based or Limited Access

International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship. Sponsored by the Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress), this journal publishes original papers on nursing education issues and research. The contents of IJNES are available only through the Internet to faculty, practitioners, students, of agencies with subscriptions.
http://www.bepress.com/ijnes/

Nursing Standard Online. A British Journal with many features besides articles. Not peer reviewed, but contains some interesting articles. Must subscribe to one of their print journals for access.
http://nursingstandard.rcnpublishing.co.uk/

Online Journal of Clinical Innovations. (OJCI) This journal, sponsored by CINAHL, provides up-to-date access to research reports and innovation implementation from conferences and communication with investigators and clinicians. Cost is $12 per article, or $40 for an individual subscription ($100 for institutions.)
http://www.cinahl.com/cexpress/ojcionline3/index.html

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Miscellaneous

BioMed Central. An open access journal in the biomedical field.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/

British Medical Journal. All articles are freely available online at time of publication in the print journal.
http://www.bmj.com/

Current Clinical Strategies Publishing - Professional Online Journals
This site is interesting in that it is taking a new approach to online access. I paid the $10 and it was worth it. This company has many valuable items online, journals in many medical areas, a medical reference library of books online, such as a color atlas of skin diseases, a manual of family medicine, and diagnostic history and physical exam. They also have online journals which are current. A few of these are a journal of AIDS/HIV, Journal of Current Emergency Medicine Management, and a Journal of Family Medicine online. All of these are available for the subscription price of $9.95 a year. Much information is in PDF format, which makes it useful only for printing and creates a longer download time - still a bargain. Without a color printer the color on all will be missing. One can subscribe online.
http://www.ccspublishing.com/

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Provides links to open access journals from many fields including nursing and public health. Contains 1107 journals.
http://www.doaj.org/

Electronic Journal of Health Informatics (eJHI). Open access healthcare informatics journal.
http://ejhi.net/ojs/index.php/ejhi

Free Medical Journals. This site provides access to any medical journals that are available online without any cost or registration process. Has a list of journals that gives information about how long after publication articles are freely available.
http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/

Global Nursing Knowledge Network. A group working to make all nursing scholarly articles freely available on the Web.
http://www.gnkn.org/

Journal of Community Informatics. This journal, started in 2004, is published by The Canadian Research Alliance for Community Information and Networking. They publish three issues a year. To read the complete article, you must click on Abstract, then select the full article from that screen.
http://ci-journal.net/index.php

Journal of Internet Medical Research. A peer-reviewed trans-disciplinary journal on health and health care in the Internet age. Excellent articles, JIMR is top ranked as the #6 journal in the health sciences category (out of 57 leading journals) and #2 in the health informatics category (out of 20 journals). (Note that the #1 in this category, JAMIA, has an almost equal Impact Factor of 3.1)
http://www.jmir.org/index

PubMed. Although PubMed finds articles that are not open access, if you select the "Limits" tab and check "Links to full free text" the search will produce only those articles that are "open access" to all. To reach the article from the list click on Links opposite the title, click on LINK OUT, and then follow the directions.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/

Qualitative Report. A online journal from Nova Southeastern University available to anyone.
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/index.html

The University of Houston provides links to established Web-based scholarly journals that offer access to English language article files without requiring user registration or fees.
http://info.lib.uh.edu/wj/webjour.html

Wikipedia. An open access encyclopedia, not only for readers, but also for writers and editors. Articles are contributed by anyone anywhere on the globe, and can be edited by anyone. A record of the current status is maintained so if someone defaces or otherwise makes objectionable changes the original can be restored with just a click. This has been in operation since January 2001.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

This list is complete to my knowledge. If you know of others !

Updated June 1, 2009

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