BGS Publications Viewer – publications from 1835 to present

This resource provides access to a range of free to view publications produced by the survey, and by other bodies whose responsibility was later taken over by the survey (for example the Imperial Institute/Imperial Mineral Resources Bureau).

Access is provided to formal BGS print publications, to the recent Research Reports/Open Reports series, and a first tranche of c. 8000 of the older Technical Reports. They are arranged into the traditional categories shown below.

Links are provided to the BGS Online Shop for purchase of print versions. Other links are to PDF downloads where available.

Scanning of publications is a work in progress, and further reports will be made available as they are they are completed. This includes an update of OR reports and new series such as the publicly available Commissioned Reports and Internal Reports. Please contact us if you require a publication which is not yet available.

A large number of technical reports issued between c. 1950 and 2000 have been released as PDF downloads. Given the large number of files involved, we have not been able to fully quality check all reports. If a report has a star icon against it, it has been checked. PDFs without a star have not been checked and may contain errors. If you spot any errors, please let us know.

Search publications

A to Z list of series

Browse publications


Terms of use

To meet with BGS's commitment to the openness of its data, the materials available through this portal are viewable under the Open Government Licence. This licence is subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying any use of the material: "British Geological Survey © NERC [year] ".