![]() I suspect there is a hierarchy of how comfortable someone would feel using these methods. You can even do a ezproxy trick like technique by appending a string to the end of a domain to gain access! Someone even added a bookmarklet that does exactly that.įrom what I’ve read, any article obtained this way will be added automatically to Libgen.Īll of these methods are illegal of course, with the last been hated particularly by system people at institutions. If my understanding is correct, it works as a proxy to allow you access via other institution’s access. Unfortunately this fails a lot, because either the email on file is no longer working (author has moved), or the author just doesn’t bother to reply.īibliogifts in LibGen?A study of a text-sharing platform driven by biblioleaks Besides the already mentioned Lazy Scholar extension, there is also Unpaywall, Canaryhaz, Google Scholar button, Open Access button among others.Īnother option is write to the author or click on the “Request a copy” button on institution repositories (available on Eprints, Dspace, Fedora) which will route your request for a copy to the author. Besides if you already use Lazy Scholar extension you get best of both worlds as both methods are used.īONUS II (added Jun2017) - There is now a suddenly influx of services that will automatically try to find free copies of paywalled articles. In reality though, Google Scholar is still much better at finding free articles. This covers both items in Open Access Journals and in Institutional/Subject Repositories. such that Elsevier has sent take-down notices to them.īONUS (added Oct 2016) - There is also the very useful resolver where you feed it a doi and it will try to find a free version. In fact, a lot resides in, ResearchGate etc. The interesting thing is that plenty of articles found this way freely actually shouldn’t be legally available. With tools like Google Scholar button or Lazy Scholar extension, you don’t even need to copy and paste the title into Google Scholar and search as the extension will automatically recognise you are on a page that is worth checking for free full text in Google Scholar and offer a link to the full text if free full text is found via Google Scholar. This is surprisingly effective (depending on your discipline), if you haven’t done this before. That said the user’s perception of what is legal is subject to their understanding and knowledge.įor example, while many would stop short at using some of the more illegal methods like searching in (see below), some would not mind emailing a ex-colleague to gain access to a paper (via their institutional access) and I would submit almost none would worry a paper found on via Google or Google Scholar even though it isn’t a legal copy.įirstly the most obvious way is to search for free copies via Google Scholar etc. Generally, each alternative varies in terms ofĪ) Reliability - Document delivery by your library is pretty reliable (high chance of getting what you requested) as compared to emailing an author as the email might bounce etc.ī) Speed - Searching for free copies is fast (if available) compared to Document delivery usually.Ĭ) Legality - Generally legitimate researchers will desire to stay on the right side of the law. What are your choices? Below I list a couple of methods. ![]() Let’s say you are searching for an article in Scopus and you come across and article or book that your link resolver fails to find full text and you don’t feel like doing a Document Delivery or inter library loan. Still I’ve been recently thinking about the amount of free scholarly material available online and the amount of it that is legally or otherwise available and how they stack up against library document delivery. I always been fortunate to be associated with a institute with a good academic library so I haven’t really kept up with illegal or semi-illegal ways of getting access. 5 Alternative ways to get scholarly material that don’t involve the library ![]()
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