Getting Full-text Articles

Have you been pulling your hair out trying to get to the full-text of the articles that you have found? Everything not quite as freely available on Google as you thought?

Here are a few hints and tips to getting your hands on the articles you need.

Know your reference
You need to know as many the bibliographic details about the article as you can find. Just the article title won’t be enough, so make sure you know:

• Where it was published – the Journal title
• When it was published – the Issue it was published in; this will include the Year it was published, also possibly the Volume and Issue Number, sometimes also a Date.
• Who wrote it – the Authors

You’ll need all this information for your reference list.

Search our Collections
Once you have the Journal title and issue you can start to look in various collections:

1. Print Journals at the Health Library
We still have a print collection located in the rotunda at the Health Library. To look for a print journal check on our catalogue first; here you will find the Journal title as well as the issues available. Our etutorial How to Find a Print Journal will help you.
You can photocopy any articles you need.

2. eJournals for NHS users
We pay for a wide range of journal titles for our NHS users. To search the A-Z list you need to login with your NHS Athens username. Our Finding an NHS eJournal etutorial will show you how to find an NHS ejournal.
Keele healthcare students who go on placement with our local NHS organisations can apply for an NHS Athens account during their placement.

3. eJournals at Keele University
Keele University subscribes to many ejournals and databases. You can search through the Keele journals A-Z list to see whether they provide access to the journal you need. Keele staff and students can access the full-text of the journals using their Keele computer username / password.
NHS users can get access to most Keele networked resources via walk-in access at the Health Library.
Our etutorial Find a Keele eJournal will help you; it includes video demonstrations. If you need more help accessing journals off campus try our Keele Access to eResources tutorial.

4. Pubmed Citation Matcher
If your article is listed on Pubmed and is open access (ie freely available), then you might find a link to it via the Pubmed database. Use the Citation Matcher; enter as much of your reference details as you know and click the Search button.

Screen-shot example of the Pubmed Citation Matcher

5. Advanced Google Scholar
Try the advanced options in Goggle Scholar (click the arrow on the text box to get the advanced options). Enter your Article title in the text box (tip – use either the “all” box or the “exact phrase” box), then your author in the “authored by” box (tip – use the surname of the first author), and your Journal title in the “published in” box.

Screen-shot exampe of the Google Scholar advanced search options

Click the Search button. If the article is freely available you may find a link to the full-text. However if it is a subscription-only article you may only find the abstract.

6. Are you a member of another university or institution or society library?
If you are completing a course with another university you can check the journals list for that institution.
If you work for a number of organisations they may have additional subscriptions and it might be worth checking if they cover some journal titles that we don’t have.
Some professional societies also include access to a limited but specialised group of journals. If you are a member why not check whether you can access their collections.

7. And finally…
If you cannot get access to the full-text any other way ask at the Health Library or request an Inter-Library Loan.

You can find links to all our journal collections via our Journals page.