Look for a statement that specifies that the specific article you want to use, or the journal content, is licensed under (or protected by) a Creative Commons license, or that specifies that the journal content is in the public domain, or is open access.
Some journals make their content freely available on the internet (free to read) but this does not mean it is Open Access. A journal may make its content free to read but maintain an "All rights reserved" copyright over the content. This means you do not have the right to reproduce (copy) the article as part of the class reader.
If you are unsure, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at wtavern@iu.edu.
ERIC indexes and abstracts materials in education and related fields. It includes document citations, journal article citations from over 1085 professional journals (983 comprehensive coverage and 102 selective coverage) and ERIC digest full-text records. The database also includes full-text from 84 journals and full-text of most of the ERIC documents from 1993 to the present.
ERIC is a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, Internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information. It covers over 1085 periodicals and nearly half a million documents. Limit your search to peer-reviewed full-text articles. The ERIC website contains full-text resources protected by US and foreign copyright laws. While many of the journals indexed by ERIC use a Creative Commons (open-access) copyright license there are some that apply a traditional "All Rights Reserved" copyright. Make sure to check the journal website to ensure that the article you select is Open Access.
DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Covers the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Comprised of 21,000 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers. Exporting data to Reference Managers such as Mendeley, RefWorks and EndNote, tracking citations with Citation Overview/Tracker, analyzing journal performance with Journal Analyzer and alternative journal impact metrics SNIP and SJR are some of its unique features.
Scopus is a citation database of peer-reviewed academic journal articles.
Scopus indexes at the journal level, not the article level. It has the capability to indicate the open access status of the journal. Once you execute a search, use the right hand panel to refine your results to Gold open access. These are journals where all the articles are open-access. If you select another status, you run the risk that the article you choose will not be open access. For example Hybrid Gold OA journal offer authors a choice to publish open or closed access - therefore only some articles in that journal will be open access. Bronze means that the article is free to read, but not to reuse or reproduce, and Green means that only a previous version of the article (including pre-prints that are not peer-reviewed) can be reused or reproduced.