FARO
FARO is a curated directory developed by the Editorial Processes Unit. It brings together open-access and freely available databases, repositories, and institutional sources. Its purpose is to facilitate access to up-to-date and reliable biomedical information for the academic and medical community, thereby strengthening scientific research and supporting evidence-based practice.
1. Databases and bibliographic repositories
| Name | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Medical Library (UNAM) | Electronic resources curated by UNAM’s Faculty of Medicine. | https://www.facmed.unam.mx/bmd/ |
| BioMed Central | Publisher and portal of open-access journals in biomedicine and health. | https://www.biomedcentral.com/ |
| VHL – Virtual Health Library | Integrates scientific and technical health literature from Latin America and the Caribbean. | https://bvsalud.org/es/ |
| ClinicalTrials.gov | Database of clinical studies on medical treatments and diagnostics. | https://clinicaltrials.gov/ |
| CUIDEN | Spanish-language database specialized in nursing and care. | https://cuiden.es/ |
| DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) | Directory of peer-reviewed open-access journals. | https://doaj.org/ |
| Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) | Open-access repository; provides, among other services, text-mining tools. | https://europepmc.org/ |
| Free Medical Journals | Directory of 2,000+ health-related scientific journals with free full-text access, including specialized nutrition titles. | http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/f.php?f=index |
| Global Index Medicus (GIM) | International health literature database promoted by WHO and BIREME; integrates regional indexes such as LILACS, AIM, IMEMR, WPRIM, and IMSEAR. | https://www.globalindexmedicus.net/es/ |
| LILACS | Health sciences literature from Latin America and the Caribbean (VHL). | http://lilacs.bvsalud.org/ |
| PubMed | NLM biomedical database with 35+ million citations and abstracts. | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ |
| PubMed Central (PMC) | Free full-text repository of biomedical and life sciences journal articles. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ |
| Redalyc | Network of open-access scientific journals from Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal. | https://www.redalyc.org/ |
| ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories) | Global directory of institutional open-access repositories. | https://roar.eprints.org/ |
| SciELO | Open-access electronic scientific library with a strong focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal. | https://scielo.org/ |
2. Preprint repositories
| Name | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| bioRxiv | Preprints in biology and biomedicine. | https://www.biorxiv.org/ |
| medRxiv | Preprints in clinical medicine and health sciences. | https://www.medrxiv.org/ |
| Preprints.org | Multidisciplinary platform with biomedical sections. | https://www.preprints.org/ |
3. International institutional resources
| Name | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| BDU (Unified Database – COSEChADOR SIU) | Argentine discovery tool that aggregates information resources from libraries, institutional repositories, and journals, providing access to full texts and bibliographic records. It currently hosts more than 3,130,000 records. | https://cosechador.siu.edu.ar/index.php |
| WHO Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) | WHO institutional repository for technical documents and policy materials. | https://iris.who.int/home |
| CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA) | Scientific publications, clinical guidance, and epidemiological databases. | https://www.cdc.gov/ |
| DIGITAL.CSIC | Institutional repository of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). It organizes, preserves, and disseminates CSIC’s scholarly output in open access. Since 2016 it has assigned DOIs to datasets and other non-traditional outputs, and in 2019 an institutional open-access mandate was established. | https://digital.csic.es/ |
| Dryad (Data Repository) | International open-access data repository that enables researchers to publish, preserve, cite, and reuse research data. It is particularly oriented toward basic science and biomedicine datasets, and it requires a CC0 license for deposited data. | https://datadryad.org/ |
| European Union Open Data Portal | Open access to data and reports generated by European Union institutions. | https://data.europa.eu/ |
| LA Referencia | Latin American network of institutional open-access repositories that supports national open science strategies by harvesting and increasing the visibility of scholarly output from Latin America and Spain. | https://www.lareferencia.info/es/ |
| OECD iLibrary | Digital library with statistics, reports, and publications from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. | https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/ |
| UN Digital Library | UN digital repository featuring resolutions, official records, technical documents, and multilateral publications. | https://digitallibrary.un.org/ |
| World Health Organization (WHO) | Reports, clinical guidelines, databases, and systematic reviews. | https://www.who.int/ |
| Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) | Technical information, research outputs, and public health guidance. | https://www.paho.org/ |
| Latin American Repositories Network | Aggregator portal operated by the University of Chile that brings together institutional repositories across Latin America—books, articles, theses, and other documents—to ensure visibility and open access. It functions as a regional network, aggregating more than 2,500,000 publications from over 160 institutions in more than 20 countries. | https://repositorioslatinoamericanos.uchile.cl/ |
| UNESCO Digital Library | Collection of publications, reports, statistics, and policy documents in education, culture, and science. | https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ |
| UNICEF Data & Publications | Reports, indicators, and global analyses on childhood, health, and education. | https://data.unicef.org/ |
| Zenodo | Multidisciplinary open-access repository operated by CERN under the OpenAIRE programme, allowing researchers to deposit articles, data, software, and other digital research outputs. | https://zenodo.org/ |
4. Health data and statistics
| Name | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| INEGI | Data on infrastructure, services, and population health status. | https://www.inegi.org.mx/temas/ |
| Global Health Observatory (WHO) | Global health indicators and international comparisons. | https://www.who.int/data/gho |
| Our World in Data – Health | Statistics and visualizations on global health and epidemiology. | https://ourworldindata.org/health |
5. Specialized resources (images, genetics, evidence)
| Name | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Cochrane – Our Evidence | International organization that produces high-quality systematic reviews in human health, with plain-language summaries to support informed healthcare decisions. The “Our Evidence” section provides accessible summaries for the general public. | https://www.cochrane.org/es/evidence |
| EBM Tools (CEBM) | Repository of methodological resources and guidance for evidence-based medicine developed by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (University of Oxford). | https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/resources/ebm-tools |
| Epistemonikos | Health evidence database (systematic reviews and primary studies). | https://www.epistemonikos.org/ |
| European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) | Secure archive for human genomic and phenotypic data. | https://ega-archive.org/ |
| Find Cancer Clinical Trials | Tool to search cancer clinical trials that are active or recruiting, including those funded by the NCI or conducted at NCI-designated centers. | https://www.cancer.gov/research/participate/clinical-trials-search |
| ICTRP / WHO Trial Search | WHO global clinical trials registry platform integrating data from multiple national and regional registries, facilitating public access to information on ongoing or completed clinical studies. | https://trialsearch.who.int/ |
| Open-i | Open-access biomedical image search engine. | https://openi.nlm.nih.gov/ |
| PubTator | Semantic annotation (genes, diseases, compounds) over biomedical literature. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/pubtator3/ |
6. Scientific search and evaluation tools
| Name | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) | Multidisciplinary academic search engine operated by Bielefeld University Library; harvests repository metadata via the OAI-PMH protocol. | https://www.base-search.net/ |
| DeCS Finder IA | VHL tool that uses AI to automatically identify DeCS/MeSH descriptors from free text (Spanish, Portuguese, and English), supporting terminological normalization, subject indexing, and the expansion of health sciences search strategies. | https://decsfinder.bvsalud.org/dmfs |
| CORE | Open-access research search engine aggregating articles from thousands of repositories and academic institutions worldwide. | https://core.ac.uk/ |
| Open Access Button | Tool to locate open-access versions of scholarly articles or request them directly from authors. | https://openaccessbutton.org/ |
| RECOLECTA (FECYT) | Spain’s national open-access repository aggregator promoted by FECYT; harvests, visualizes, and certifies scholarly metadata. | https://recolecta.fecyt.es/ |
| Scite | Scientific citation analysis tool indicating whether an article has been supported, disputed, or merely mentioned in the scholarly literature. | https://scite.ai/ |
| Semantic Scholar | AI-powered academic search engine that helps discover relevant scholarly articles across disciplines. | https://www.semanticscholar.org/ |
| Think. Check. Submit. | Checklist to help researchers identify trustworthy journals before submitting a manuscript. | https://thinkchecksubmit.org/journals/journals-spanish/ |