39 Best Websites to Find Free Textbooks, Research Papers, Study Guides, and Books
Whether you’ve just received a long list of textbooks you need for a specific uni class or are looking for a particular book/research paper for a high school project, books (and journal subscriptions) can be expensive.
The good news is that there are plenty of resources online where you can find free PDF versions of most written materials, starting with Atkinson & Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology and ending with Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Note that although some of the websites below provide access to copyright-free texts only, or texts that publishers/authors have agreed to share freely, others have been accused of internet privacy.
However, many people see open access practices as morally acceptable, especially considering the unsustainable prices of academic textbooks and papers.
To quote a recent paper on the topic:
"Since shadow libraries are a product of the cooperation between scholars, who contribute texts and other resources (such as donations, volunteer work, etc.), shadow libraries represent a ‘bottom-up’, radical approach to open access: a physical approximation of the Platonic ideal of knowledge sharing that would exist if there were no legal, economic, or institutional barriers to the circulation of scholarly knowledge."
Library Genesis, or Libgen for short, is a shadow online library website where college students can find academic books (including those that are hard to find/very expensive) and scholarly journal articles.
The site also hosts general-interest books, audiobooks, comics, magazines, and images.
Z-Library is another shadow library website that hosts college textbooks, scholarly journal articles, and general-interest books. It calls itself “the world’s largest e-book library.” It mirrors Library Genesis.
The front page also features some of the most popular books at the time. When we viewed it, these included “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and Harry Potter the Complete Collection by J. K. Rowling.
You can also use the right-hand navigation menu to see the books that have been added most recently, as well as sort through books based on category.
Use the Book Request option if you can’t find a book you’re looking for. There’s no guarantee your book will be added, but community members look at requests to see what books to upload (you can also upload books).
PDF Drive is an online library with a ton of free ebooks and PDF textbooks in various categories, including academic & education (but also lifestyle, personal growth, art, linguistics, etc.)
Forcoder.su has lots of online textbooks on programming. It also provides free access to online courses, like Apache Kafka for beginners and object-oriented programming with Python. Currently, there are hundreds of free courses available.
Online Mathematics Textbooks
Online Mathematics Textbooks is your source for free digital textbooks on all things math. It’s just one page featuring 77 textbooks.
Tech Books for Free Download
Tech Books for Free Download is where you’ll find free science and engineering books on topics ranging from data mining to general relativity.
There’s no way to search for books easily. However, the site is divided into books on Linux, Java, Microsoft, C and C++, Perl/Python, Science, Networking, Database, Security, and Assembly.
Free Tech Books is an open textbook library. It provides access to free computer science books and textbooks, plus lecture notes. All the books and lecture notes listed on this site are freely available on authors’ and/or publishers’ sites.
You can browse books by category (computer science, mathematics, supporting fields, operating system, programming/scripting, miscellaneous), author, publisher, or license.
Directory of Open Access Books
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a website that indexes and provides access to academic, peer-reviewed open-access books. All disciplines are covered, but there’s a particular emphasis on humanities, social sciences, and law.
Ubiquity Press has been an open-access publisher of academic, peer-reviewed books and journals since 2012. It was founded by University of College London (UCL) researchers.
Sci-hub has the most expansive collection of research papers. Its mission is to “remove all barriers in the way of science.”
Directory of Open Access Journals
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an online directory of open-access, peer-reviewed research journals covering humanities, social sciences, technology, science, medicine, and art.
The directory indexes journals from different countries and languages. DOAJ is supported financially by publishers, libraries, and other organizations.
Wiley Open Access provides peer-reviewed open-access journals across topics like biochemistry, economics, sociology, mathematics, and law.
SpringerOpen publishes open-access journals across a wide range of areas, mainly STEM.
Elsevier publishes open-access, peer-reviewed journals. You can search for journals by title, keyword, or subject (dentistry, nursing, decision sciences, etc.)
Springer Link provides access to ebooks, peer-reviewed journal articles, and other resources (mostly scientific).
BASE is a search engine for academic texts, including journals, digital collections, institutional repositories, etc. You can access about 60% of the indexed texts for free.
Bibliomania has study guides to the most-read books, like “A Hero of Our Time,” “Animal Farm,” and even Irish politics. It also has over 2,000 classic texts, book summaries, author biographies, and more.
Open Library is an open library catalog of more than 3 million new and old books. The project was created by the nonprofit organization Internet Archive. It has also received partial funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation and the California State Library.
You can read old books without an account. However, for new books, you’ll need to set one up (it takes just a few minutes).
Internet Archive is a digital library of ebooks. It also has free movies, music, and software.
Project Gutenberg is a famous site where you can find lots of free books. There are more than 60,000 books in its collection.
Standard Ebooks take public domain texts and make them as nice as new books. They fix typographical errors and typos, create cool cover art, and format the text for e-readers like Kindle and iPad.
Planet eBook is where you can download free PDF copies of classics like Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
What really makes Planet eBook stand out is its UX. It’s one of those rare sites that are super easy to navigate and actually look good (aesthetically speaking).
The Ultimate Book Search Engine
The Ultimate Book Search Engine is an ebook search engine that includes 350 open directory sites that relate to ebooks. It was created by the Reddit user u/NotoriousYEG.
The Classic Bookshelf is a site where you’ll find lots of classic novels, everything from Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy.
Literature.org features classic works of English literature, both fiction and non-fiction.
Bartleby is a site that features both fiction and nonfiction books.
Fiction.us has a ton of books, including fiction, short stories, children's picture books, poetry, books on writing, and plays.
Classic Literature Library
As the name suggests, Classic Literature Library is where you’ll find classic literature works.
Ideology.us is a site that has ebooks on philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, and education.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is where you’ll find all of Shakespeare’s work. The site is run by The Tech, the largest and oldest newspaper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Read Books Online has around 6,000 ebooks, including novels, short stories, poems, essays, plays, and non-fiction.
Public Bookshelf is a site dedicated to romance novels.
Categories of ebooks here include contemporary romance, romantic suspense, historical romance, regency romance, inspirational romance, vampire romance, western romance, general romance, and fantasy and paranormal romance.
The Perseus Project is a digital library created by Tufts University with books from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in original languages and English.
Chest of Books has books on a ton of different subjects, including animals, finance, real estate, science, and travel.
The Literature Network has books by authors like Anne Bronte, Lewis Carroll, and Lord George Gordon Byron. It also features forums, literature summaries, and quizzes.
The Online Books Page is a site by the University of Pennsylvania that houses books in categories like philosophy, history, medicine, science, agriculture, music, anthropology, and more. The site also links to the following:
Banned Books Online: A directory of books that were once banned and links to places where you can read them in full.
A Celebration of Women Writers: A directory that lists online editions of literary works by women as well as resources about women writers.
Prize Winners Online: A directory of prize-winning books.
Many Books is “your friendly neighborhood library.” It houses over 50,000 books in genres like romance, mystery, young adult, horror, and non-fiction. You can read books online or download them to your device.
Authorama turns public domain books on sites like Google Books and Project Gutenberg into HTML format, making it easier to read them.
Librivox has free audiobooks that you can listen to from any device.
